Exercises in Folding and Stowage 1

Exercise 1: The T-Shirt fold

In boot camp we used to have these folding and stowing exercises all the time. Each recruit got one third of one stand up locker. In the color portion of the picture below you can see the amount of space that we were supposed to fit all of our uniforms into. For you who think it is no biggie… remember that we were issued 5 pairs of jeans, 5 work shirts, 4 dress uniform tops, 4 dress uniform bottoms, 10 t-shirts, 1 sweater, 2 towels, 10 pairs socks, 5 pairs underwear, 4 pairs of shoes, 1 sweat suit, 2 pair workout shorts, and a canteen, bringing it all up to a grand total of fifty four articles of clothing. Now, if you can see half that in the picture than you are good.

They spent literally three weeks of boot camp teaching us how to fold our clothes and how to stow it so that it took up the least amount of room. What you don’t see in the pictures are the 3 jackets we had, and the socks. We put the socks in net bags and hung them on our racks. There are 2 pairs of shoes in the shot, the dress black shoes and the shower shoes. The other two pairs were kept on top of the locker and on our feet.

They would play some games with us during folding and stowing time. One instructor would be pleasant and tell everyone how good a job they were doing while the other was wreaking havoc on piles of clothes he came across. It got to a point where you would have to get your t-shirt pile checked by both of them and one would say “Outstanding, Excellent fold”… and then you take the exact same stack over to the other DI and he would take it in his hands and scream “What the fuck is this shit??? This is the worst fold job I have ever seen!!! This is what you brought me to be checked??? Go long… Go really long…” And with that he would throw the pile of t-shirts as far as he could… scaring everyone around him.

I found this absolutely hilarious! He and I, of course, felt an immediate kinship. His “job” was to break us down and retrain us. I just needed to be told what to do. So yeah, we got on famously. In fact one of the first things he taught me was how to forge his signature so that I could run to the commissary any time I needed. The most useful thing I learned in boot camp was how to fold a shirt. It is the one thing I still do to this very day. I am going to teach you how to do it.

Folding a shirt in this fashion is an amazing way to save space and to pack. As you can see from the picture below, a shirt folds up very small. I have used a dollar bill to show you a size scale, and remember this is my shirt, so yours will fold up even smaller.

Step 1: Lay the shirt flat out with the front down

Step 2: Fold the sleeves into the body of the shirt, fold in from the arm seam

Step 3: Fold the bottom of the shirt up to the top

Step 4: Fold up from the bottom three times

Step 5: Fold in half

As you can see from the first picture I fold all my shirts this way. I can usually fit 40 t-shirts per drawer by doing it this way. If you are like me and most of your shirts have designs or logo's on them. This is still a great way to fold your shirt because, as you can see in the picture below, you can see the logo of the shirt by looking down at it when it is stacked up-right. Let me know if this helps you at all…