How Long Does It Take You to Get Dressed?

[image error]As part of my continuing quest to try to understand what other people go through in life, I’ve turned my attention to the very important topic of “How long does it take you to get dressed?” This came to mind this morning, as I was staying home to be with MC while she’s sick (poor thing). Denisa was getting ready to go to work, and I watched her try on probably six or seven different combinations of clothes before she found one she was happy with.

Is this a normal thing?

My “get dressed in the morning” routine involves the following:

Put on a clean pair of jeans. (Or at least pretend they’re clean enough.)
Go to the closet and grab a shirt on the left. (I put fresh shirts on the right of the closet. This way, I continually cycle through clean shirts.)
Add socks and shoes, and I’m good to go!

The whole thing takes about a minute. Granted, there are some shirts I like more than others, and so now and then I’ll skip to the next shirt for one day. But other than that, that’s the full extent of what I do to pick my clothes. Denisa thinks I’m strange. I think I’m efficient.

That said, I suppose when I get dressed up, it takes a bit more time. I have to pick between three different jackets I could wear, two different pairs of pants, and a number of ties. But even then, I usually default to picking what’s closest.

Remember: on my mission, I wore the same time every day for . . . about 18 months? I wore it until my mission president suggested I ought to stop, because it was scaring children. (Or something like that.) I didn’t wear it because it was a rule. I wore it because it involved less thinking. I literally couldn’t care less what clothes I have on. If I bought them at some point, I’m good with having them on me, so long as the occasion is right. (Wearing shorts to a formal dinner isn’t something I would do.)

But let’s calculate this out a little. It takes me around a minute each day to select my clothes. It takes Denisa around . . . 7, I’d guess. Over the course of the year, I spend 6 hours picking out what to wear. Denisa spends 43 hours. This means that since we’ve been married, I’ve spent 4.3 days picking out clothes, and she’s spent 30.2 days. I’ve had almost a complete extra month of my life, free to kick back and play games, read books, and goof around.

No wonder she’s so stressed.