what is it with t-shirts?

for the past several weeks i've devoted my time to packing up our house for our big cross-country move. today i focussed my attention on the master bedroom and sorting through the dressers and closets for clothes that aren't worthy of the journey. even though i did this very thing 3 years ago when we moved into this house, and last year for purposes of holiday donations, i'm still amazed by how many clothes we have. and the thing we seem to have most of is t-shirts. 

where do they come from? why do we keep them? how is it that they pile up over the years?

going through my t-shirts was a bit like reliving various eras of my life - there was the high school tennis team practice shirt wonderfully decorated with a hand scrawled likeness of our team coach drawn by one of my teammates, the feminist slogans in big bold letters on t-shirts from my years at my venerable women's college alma mater, a policy 'wonks' inter-mural flag football team shirt from my grad school days, campaign t-shirts from candidates who won and lost, symbols of 5k walks and races completed on behalf of various charitable organizations, names of vacation locations and conferences attended, and a strange assortment of shirts advertising everything from the piggly wiggly to ralph lauren. 

so many shirts and so many memories. how do i part with these cotton blasts from the past? it should be easy, but obviously not entirely so otherwise i wouldn't have t-shirts from the mid-1990s still in my drawers.  i don't wear most of them, but that's not the point. i saved many of them because they represent happy times of the past. and even if i only relive those memories every few years it's worth the closet space. i'm weeding out the collection for sure, but i'll happily tuck away my favorites to rediscover next year.