FashBlog.com

Over the years, I've amassed quite the collection of T-shirts. I'm just a jeans and T-shirt kind of girl. As I've been cleaning out some drawers of clothing lately, I've had some time to reflect on the fact that a large number of my T-shirts were acquired at no cost. That's right, they were free. I must say that the reason I have so many free T-shirts is one part community-mindedness and one part the college student's desire to gather free T-shirts.

One common source of free T-shirts is races and walks. Usually intended to raise money for charity, each race or walk will commission a T-shirt to give to participants. However, I've only ever taken part in one walk as a participant. But I've handed out registration packets, set-up tables or blocked intersections for more races than I can remember. Sometimes volunteers will receive the same T-shirt as race participants, but other time we were given a different shirt that helped to identify us as members of the volunteer staff. Either way, after each race morning, I walked away with a new shirt. I've also received T-shirts from volunteering at various fairs and booths. It was our perk for giving up our time.

When I was in college, another way that I accumulated a good number of T-shirts was through clubs. Now sometimes I did have to pay for these, but other times they were included in the cost of a conference registration or membership dues. I have an entire array of t-shirts from a community service group that I was a member of every year in college, but even a few shirts from clubs that I tried for a year and found not to my liking. You can track my extracurricular involvement through my shirt wardrobe.

And the final way that college students amass T-shirts is through giveaways. Bought your books for class? Have a T-shirt! Signed up for a credit card? Have a T-shirt! The possibilities are endless as long as you don't mind having the name of a pizza place on your chest, and back, and sleeve. Is a free shirt a bit too garish for you to actually wear in public? Never fear, for it can still be used as sleepwear. Unfortunately, free pants are nowhere to be found on college campuses, otherwise you wouldn't have to spend a dime on clothes.

But now as the years pass and I'm most definitely not a college student anymore, I feel that perhaps it's time to move on from these free shirts plastered with advertising and celebrating events that happened two or three years ago. I've tried to save a few shirts that were special to me, such as the shirt from a Relay for Life event where I led a team, but I grow increasingly self-conscious wearing shirts with slogans urging people to join a club I'm not even eligible for membership in. I think it's a sign of my maturity that I buy shirts from department stores, but I'll never give up the overall jeans and T-shirt look.