Yvonne Glasgow
When it comes to buying bras, it’s easy to underbuy or overindulge. Here are some practical tips for ensuring you have enough bras for every occasion.
While you may think you can get by with only a few bras, one of the keys to getting the most life out of your bras is to have enough to rotate through them and rest them. Let’s take a look at how you can do that with ease.
Buy Enough to Make It to Laundry Dash
If you only do laundry once a week, you want to be sure you have enough bras to get through seven days. Of course, there’s more that goes into it than owning seven bras to suit your weekly laundry schedule. You can usually wear a bra more than once between washes, and you may want to have different styles of bra for different outfits. With that in mind, the time-to-wash-day is just a starting point for our planning.
Buy Enough that You Can Rotate Them
Having a proper bra rotation pattern extends the life of your bras. You never want to wear the same bra two days in a row—give each bra a “day off” to allow it to recover shape and elasticity. Weather and workout routine pending, you can wear the same bra at least three times before it needs washing. That means you want at least three bras to get you through an entire week, rotating them as you go.
Buy Enough Styles to Cover Your Wardrobe Needs
It’s important to have more than one of each style of bra you prefer to wear. If you love balconette bras and only own one, but need to wear a balconette two days in a row, you’ll wear your favorite bra out sooner. Invest in two to three of each preferred type of bra, and consider having a few types on hand, so you have something fo whatever outfit and occasion that arises. You may not wear outfits that require a strapless bra frequently, but when you need a strapless bra, there’s really no substitute.
The same goes for frequently worn bra types. If you hit the gym hard every single day after work, you need enough sports bras to see you through all your workouts and through to the next laundry day.
You Shouldn’t Fill an Entire Drawer with Bras
If money isn’t an issue and your clothing budget is sufficient, it might be tempting to go nuts buying all the bras your heart desires. If a whole dresser full of lingerie makes you happy, by all means, go nuts. But, your bra size fluctuates over time due to a variety of factors like age, weight gain or loss, use (or discontinuation) of hormonal birth control, pregnancy, and more.
With that in mind, it makes a lot more sense to stock up on enough bras to meet your current needs and spend the money on replacing bras more frequently (so you get fresh and correctly sized bras) rather than stockpiling bras that might be the wrong size in a year.
You can find good deals on bras, but they’re still a pricey investment. The goal is to have enough bras on hand for all your wardrobe needs, but not so many that you’ll go broke replacing them all if your bust size changes!
