In these days of everyday laundering, one’s undergarments are optional. Presently underwear is largely worn for aesthetic or recreation reasons. It is often forgotten that this was not always the case. Pants, shirts, coats, and dresses were made of different stuff in the olden days. Old-fashion fabrics would not stand up to being washed every day no matter how much All-Temperature Cheer you used. Clothes took too long to dry and houses were too drafty to be hanging out in damp clothes if you wanted to live to be an elderly 40 year old. Indoor plumbing and washing machines did not exist, anyway. Another thing that did not exist was toilet paper. That’s right. We have forgotten that the original function of our unmentionables was to keep our privates from funking up our public--clothes that is.
Those days are coming again. The number of normal number twos is numbered. Toilet paper supplies will not last long. Indoor plumbing will cease well before then, and outerwear will become too precious a commodity to be pooping up regularly. Oh. What’s that? You’ll just be careful? I think you are forgetting about the very real possibility of UNPLANNED
DEFECATION.Sure, you might be a couple decades too old to poop your pants and a couple decades too young to start again, but the end of the world is going to mess up that time table as sure as you’re going to mess up your Fruit of the Looms. Face it, when you kill your first zombie or have a mutant jump out of your going to be scared like you never have been before. Unless you’re Bruce Campbell incarnate--you’re dropping a deuce. Now, this is not the end of the end of the world if this happens. You just have to prepare.
You need underpants. I’m here to help. You could simply stock up on underpants, but that idea has three drawbacks. (1) They don’t make underpants like they used to. The fabric is too week to stand up to the rigors of the survivalist lifestyle and they are not very absorbent. (2) The comfort level of modern underpants is not suitable for extended wear. The waistband is constrictive or saggy and the leg-holes chaff considerably. (3) You can’t make anything out of underpants but underpants. The garment that you need to focus on is tough, absorbent, versatile, and abundant. I’m talking about the ordinary, everyday, 100% cotton T-shirt my friends.
The T-shirt is a wonder! You can obviously wear it as a shirt--but few people know of it’s other uses. If you cut carefully starting at the bottom and cut keep the cut 2 inches wide, you can make a strip of fabric that is over 25 feet long out of just the torso part of the shirt. This can be used for boot laces, braided for rope, or woven into a blanket. The sleeves make great headbands or hand-warmers. And, of course, if you put your legs through the arm holes and tie the bottom of the shirt around your waist--you have comfortable, homemade underpants.
You can save the same shirts and always use them for underpants, or alternate tops and bottoms for more wardrobe options. Either way, they’re great! The arm holes fit snug around the thigh, but they don’t chaff the sensitive regions. The neck-hole can be pinned shut, or just left open for easy access. They also make great shorts in the summer (assuming you don’t do lots of cartwheels) or swim trunks.
Using them as swim trunks is also a fun way to wash them.
The possibilities are as endless as the world isn’t!
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