Live white man's clothes.

Over the weekend I completed a chore I've been dreading for years. 

When preparing to move, it's important to identify the things that should not move with you, to cut down on the waste of lugging things that you didn't use and won't use. That meant, among other things, trying on every single article of my clothing, discarding the worn-out ones, and donating the ones that don't fit anymore.  

It's time.

I've done some weeding before, but this is the first wholesale clearance I've done in twenty-plus years. So you know a LOT of things have been hanging around, waiting for me to lose those excess pounds I put on over Christmas/New Year's/Easter/the Giants winning Super Bowl XLII. And it's time to say, well, if I ever accomplish the weight loss, I can buy some new duds. 

Meanwhile, I had to try on everything. 

The upshot: two lawn bags full of trash, for starters. Old painting clothes, beloved tees with holes, socks and sweatpants with weak elastic, suspect underwear. Out out out. Then: FOUR lawn bags with clothes in good shape that either don't fit at all or just make me look like a potato. That's a pretty good load that won't make the moving truck. 

For the first time in decades I can wear every article of clothing that I own.

The trash men got the garbage and the good stuff was broken down into smaller bags and dropped off at the church clothing collection box. 

Now, about that: I understand that so-called "fast fashion" is polluting the Third World:

Dead White Man's Clothes: It’s the dirty secret behind the world’s fashion addiction. Many of the clothes we donate to charity end up dumped in landfill, creating an environmental catastrophe on the other side of the world.

In short, 15 million garments show up in Ghana a week; no one will wear most of them again, and it's all turned into a tremendous landfill. And that's just one African country. Our donations are also said to have collapsed the local clothing industry.

It's depressing, and I have plenty of reason to accept the Australian Broadcasting Company's report. However, I have to ask: If the clothing collection boxes we see everywhere are just essentially collecting garbage, why is there money in it? Who's paying for them? Most of them are not for local thrift stores or charity drives. When you see them in a parking lot, that means someone is paying rent for those boxes to be there. Who's spending money to collect clothing no one wants?

There's more to all this than I know. 

But in my personal defense, I am not a buyer of fast fashion. I have very little fashion sense of any kind. If I have a shirt that is not obviously stained or ripped and is comfortable, I will wear it until it becomes embarrassing. 

Unless I get too fat for it. 

What I'm saying is that I get quality clothing, not stuff meant to be worn once and discarded. So I have reason to hope that the things I've donated will find a better user along the line. There's still a lot of life in that suit I had to give up. 

Or maybe that suit will be picked up by a funeral home. The jacket will be split up the back for ease of use and put on suitless corpse so he looks nice at the wake. And then my good suit will be interned, not in a landfill, but a human landfill -- the cemetery. 

And who knows? When the final trump is blown and the dead emerge from their tombs, there will be one guy who looks at himself in his resurrected body and say, "Hey, this suit isn't mine! But -- it looks fabulous!"

And: "Why'd they have to slice up the back?"