Overhauling My "Home Clothes" Collection

To make room for things that look as good as they feel.

To my LA readers: I’m thinking about you. If you are one of the many people whose houses or livelihoods were destroyed, my heart aches for you. I’ve been coordinating donations through people in my personal network, but if there is a link or cause that is particularly near and dear to you, I would love to know about it. Please feel free to reach out to me via direct message.

---

If you’re anything like me, the “home clothes” drawer in your closet is where things like random oversized T-shirts and elastic waist flannel pants from college have been permitted to dwell for decades with relative impunity. When I say “home clothes,” I’m referring to items I reach for when I’m mostly hanging around the house and I’m unlikely to see anyone, but might need to wear out for an errand at some point. In their own way these pieces are workhorses, sure — but lately, I’ve been questioning why the clothes I spend so much time in are often the ones I love the least.

A couple months ago, I decided to stage an intervention. I sorted through the stuff I tend to wear indoors with the same level of scrutiny I typically reserve for things I wear outside, and asked myself some hard-hitting questions: Do I actually like this? Or am I just keeping it around because it’s so insanely comfortable?

I wanted to prove to myself that home clothes don’t have to exist as a separate, secret wardrobe — they can be an authentic extension of my personal style, too. Maybe that sounds obvious, but I’ve never made it a priority until now — and I’m making good progress as a result. This week, I’m detailing how I approached the purge, and what I learned from doing it. Next week, I’ll share some upgrades I’ve made to my home clothes collection, and a status report on how things are going.

---

Step 1: Analyzing the Inventory

In addition to the practical goal of making space in my closet, I wanted to try and pinpoint the precise reasons why I keep certain home clothes around even when I don’t particularly like how they look, and also get more specific about the qualities that define home clothes I do like aesthetically. I gathered up everything I wear frequently at home, sorted it into the below categories, and jotted down key takeaways.

Home clothes I’ve held onto but DON’T like aesthetically…

Takeaways:

• I hold onto unaesthetic, oversized T-shirts for 1) sentimentality, 2) pure comfort, and 3) plopping my hair on wash days — which requires a large T-shirt surface area.

• I have 14 (!) pairs of leggings that I literally never wear. I think maybe I hate leggings and I’ve just held onto them in case I change my mind? I always opt for sweatpants or a loose jogger over something tight, and I don’t see that changing.

• Plaid flannel pants are so comfortable but I don’t like how they look.

• My tie-dye sweats are sentimental because I made them with my friends (in 2018! tie dye was really having a moment), but aesthetically they don’t feel like me anymore.

Home clothes I wear regularly and DO like aesthetically…

A good chunk of these items are things I’ve owned for years and are no longer in production, like my Entireworld sweats and Tory Sport track pants, or the now-vintage block print T-shirt my mom bought in the ‘80s. Items that are currently available that I heartily vouch for include: 100% cotton Babaa sweaters (the exact colors I have are no longer in stock, but there are plenty of other great options), Donni’s red terry sweat shorts, this Sunspel sweatshirt (obsessed with the loose hem), and Nikki Chasin’s sheba cardigan (perfect color and boxy fit, and the texture is incredible despite not being 100% natural fibers). My navy J.Crew rollneck sweater is vintage via eBay, where there’s typically a whole slew of them. And M.M. LaFleur still sells this perfectly thick pima cotton T-shirt. I have the striped one in a size small, but I’ve been considering buying a couple more in a size up for maximum just-the-right-amount-of-baggy comfort.

Takeaways:

• I prefer solid or subtly patterned T-shirts to anything graphic or logo-ed. The tees I reach for most often at home are slightly oversized, 100% cotton, and seriously soft.

  My red Entireworld sweatpants are by far my most-worn “home clothes” pants, even though they’ve shrunk length-wise in the wash and there’s a stain on the right leg I can’t get out. That’s because I love how they look, which is mostly because of the color (!!), and partly because they have the ideal amount of bagginess in the legs.

• Color is a defining quality of many of my favorite home clothes.

• Oversized 100% cotton sweaters are my favorite type of extra layer when I’m at home. They look a bit more polished than a sweatshirt (especially when pairing with sweatpants) but are just as comfortable.

• All of my favorite home clothes are things that are comfortable enough to qualify as indoor loungewear but aesthetically pleasing enough that they moonlight with equal consistency in my outdoor wardrobe.

Pictured top left: an outfit composed of home clothes I often defaulted to for comfort, but truly hate from an aesthetic perspective — which is why I would never step foot outside my apartment wearing this. Pictured bottom right: an outfit composed of clothes I often wear at home and love, and would happily wear outside as well.

Step 3: Purging

I allowed myself to keep a total of two T-shirts in the unaesthetic category for sentimentality and practical reasons (I could never let go of the Geography Bee T-shirt Austin acquired in the fourth grade, and my Mets T-shirt is the perfect size for sleeping. Both can serve as hair-plopping vehicles, too). I also hung onto a couple pairs of my highest-quality leggings for layering under sweatpants when it’s really cold out. Everything else, I brought to my local goodwill.

Step 4: Closing the Gaps

With space cleared and insights gathered, I started thinking about what might be worth adding to my home clothes collection to round it out in a thoughtful way. Here’s what I came up with:

• Comfortable long-sleeved T-shirts (I have enough comfortable/slightly oversized short-sleeve T-shirts that I like even after purging the ones I didn’t, but I got rid of all my comfy long-sleeved options in the purge).

• Sweatpants/lounge pants in colors that are compelling and sophisticated enough to wear just as much outside as in.

Next week, I’ll delve into Steps 5 and 6: making a handful of intentional purchases, and charting a clearer roadmap for how my personal style can still manifest even when no one is around to see it.

In the meantime, I’d love to hear about your relationship with home clothes. Are you focused on wearing pieces that reflect your style, or do you tend to think of them as purely utilitarian?

xo Harling