We seem to live in a world now where everything is disposable and everything can just be replaced and it drives me a little bit crazy! I sometimes think I was born in the wrong era because my mindset, more often than not, is of a bygone age where you used, repaired and reused everything. If the table was wobbly you didn’t throw it out, you put a book under the wonky leg! If an item of clothing ripped, you sewed it up. And that is just how I spent my Saturday morning. Trying to get dressed I was hunting for a pair of leggings (which a girl my size probably shouldn’t wear but they are comfy) and of the 4 pairs I found, not one was without a rip!
“Just throw them out Mum and I’ll have a look for another pair on the washing line,” chimed in my oldest, as she could see the frustration on my face. And it was in that moment that I realised I must not have been setting the right example for my children. It almost appalled me to hear those words coming out of her mouth, but how could I blame her when I too have been guilty in the past of chucking something out just because it may have a small rip in a seam.
Even though we were getting ready to go out I decided there and then to give up the search for a pair of ‘intact’ leggings and sit down quietly to repair the ones I had already found. Every one just had a rip in a seam up the inside of the thigh, my own fault for having such chunky thighs, but they weren’t significant rips, more just a seam had come open. Not a hard job, not particularly time consuming but most people probably would have just chucked them in the bin and gone to buy some more.
I am a single parent, and my budget is somewhat tight. Some weeks, after bills and the like, I have a little more money to play around with than other weeks. But I usually find there is always something far more pressing that needs the attention. And yes, I could pop up to the shops to get another pair of leggings for less than a fiver, but why should I have to when it is purely a seam that has come undone? What is the point, really? I don’t have so much disposable cash that I can afford to spend it on something I don’t really need. I have enough problems with that and my crafting obsession and, to be honest, until the leggings completely fall apart I’d much rather spend that spare cash on craft supplies!
So out came the needle and thread and within a few minutes I had 2 pairs of leggings, with their holes sewn up. In walked my daughter with a very puzzled look on her face, like I was doing something completely crazy. “Oh, I found you these on the washing line,” she said. I explained that I was going to wear the ones I’d repaired but thanked her anyway. She had the obvious moan about how long it was going to take and how we had somewhere to be but by this point, I was really trying to prove a point. That point of course was why bother throwing them away when actually, if I’d just sewn up the first pair I’d found, it would have been done quicker than the whole time I spent looking for the other pairs and the time Aimee had spent getting another pair off the washing line.
I think, at least I hope, that she got it in the end. She even commented later that she couldn’t even tell where the mend had been. Funnily enough, she had a couple of small holes in a pair of trousers she wanted to wear for school one day a few days later and instead of throwing her usual strop about something like that, she just asked, “Mum, if I go and get your sewing box, could you sew these up for me before school please?” Pretty sure I proved my point!