How Tide Detergent Became a Drug Currency

Re:How Tide Detergent Became a Drug Currency by kleiba on Monday January 07, 2013 @11:14PM (#5024855)

[...] the average U.S. consumer buys 68 pieces of clothing a year [...]

I'm speechless. Can that figure be true?

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Re:How Tide Detergent Became a Drug Currency by cperciva on Monday January 07, 2013 @11:45PM (#5024940)

I imagine it depends on definitions. I bought a dozen pairs of socks in November; does that count as 12 pieces of clothing or 24 pieces of clothing? Do the hiking boots I bought count as clothing? And if a new parent is buying baby clothes, who is the consumer -- the parent or the baby?

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Re:How Tide Detergent Became a Drug Currency by kleiba on Tuesday January 08, 2013 @01:13AM (#5025123)

The latter point is probably not as important since we're talking about averages anyway.

I would imagine boots do not count since we're talking about detergent here, although some shoes can be thrown into the washing machine.

There are three comments about socks now :-) But to get to 68 you'd still have to buy 34 pairs of socks. Even if you exchange some of them for shirts, pants and underwear, you'd need a pretty big sock drawer if you keep adding and adding every year...

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Re:How Tide Detergent Became a Drug Currency by cperciva on Tuesday January 08, 2013 @02:07AM (#5025226)

The latter point is probably not as important since we're talking about averages anyway.

Well, unless you say that the baby isn't a "consumer", in which case your average is the same total number of items of clothing divided by a smaller number of consumers.

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Re:How Tide Detergent Became a Drug Currency by lmm on Tuesday January 08, 2013 @05:04AM (#5025541)

I throw away socks as soon as they get holes in, which is pretty frequent (I don't make any effort to take care of them, they're just socks). To replace them I buy a set of 5 pairs maybe three or four times a year. It doesn't seem completely implausible.

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Re:How Tide Detergent Became a Drug Currency by r00fus on Tuesday January 08, 2013 @02:55AM (#5025287)

I have 3 kids (singleton+twins). If my kids are not counted as consumers, then I hit this number by mid-year point each year (and we do use donated clothing from friends). If you count my wife (we buy under the same cards), 130-ish would be about accurate aggregated.

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Re:How Tide Detergent Became a Drug Currency by ducklamp on Monday January 07, 2013 @11:50PM (#5024952)

If we are counting an 8 pack of socks as 16 items of clothing, for example, 68 seems a sensible number. Counted otherwise the number sounds dubiously high.

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Re:How Tide Detergent Became a Drug Currency by JoshuaDavid on Monday January 07, 2013 @11:48PM (#5024947)

If you include socks. Individual socks.

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