This sounds like a huge waste of labor. Suppose making a shirt (of whatever sort of cloth) takes 5 hours of labor.
If you hand wash and line dry, suppose that's 5 minutes of labor per wearing. If you wear the shirt every week for 10 years, that's 43 hours of labor on washing for 10 years worth of shirt. It would only take 25 hours of labor (compare to 48) to buy a new shirt every 2 years.
And this also assumes your time is equally valuable to the time of the guy making the shirt - I consider my time to be worth far more than $5-15/day.
If the maid's pay is 60% of the factory worker's pay, then you break even. I also ignored the time cost of shopping every 2 years to keep things simple.
The only point I'm trying to make is that durability and preservation of material goods is often overrated, and replacing things every few years isn't necessarily a bad thing.
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This sounds like a huge waste of labor. Suppose making a shirt (of whatever sort of cloth) takes 5 hours of labor.
If you hand wash and line dry, suppose that's 5 minutes of labor per wearing. If you wear the shirt every week for 10 years, that's 43 hours of labor on washing for 10 years worth of shirt. It would only take 25 hours of labor (compare to 48) to buy a new shirt every 2 years.
And this also assumes your time is equally valuable to the time of the guy making the shirt - I consider my time to be worth far more than $5-15/day.
What if the person doing the washing/hanging is paid even less than the one at the factory?
If the maid's pay is 60% of the factory worker's pay, then you break even. I also ignored the time cost of shopping every 2 years to keep things simple.
The only point I'm trying to make is that durability and preservation of material goods is often overrated, and replacing things every few years isn't necessarily a bad thing.
Yes, I forgot, I pay U$ 5/hour to the maid, and I'm paid U$ 10/hour (for now! :) )
And Uruguayans are used to earning very little compared to the U.S., plus brand clothes are MUCH more expensive here.