So I am not super far into my no spend challenge yet, so recapping my progress may be a little unnecessary at this point. However, I feel like I am already having to rethink a few ideas, so here we go.
First of all, going 10 days without spending money on myself (with the exception you can find here), has actually not been too challenging . This may be because I have allowed myself to purchase Christmas presents, so maybe that has taken the place of any urges to shop for myself.
As I’ve been waiting for the last of my items to arrive, I have discovered that I really do love the feeling of anticipation that comes with waiting. I’ve always tried to dissect why I like to online shop, and this may be a part of it. I like the feeling of knowing something is coming in the mail. I like to watch its progress as it ships across the country, and I love the feeling of ripping open the box to see if it’s everything I was hoping for. But one thing I have noticed is that often, my thrill of the item fades just as soon as I take the item out of its packaging. It’s not that I don’t like what I’ve purchased; it’s just that the excitement over it is usually gone.
Science seems to back this experience up. You can read more about it here, but basically in a nut shell, while dopamine (the chemical our body releases that plays a role in how we feel pleasure) is often associated with receiving a reward, it is actually released in anticipation of a reward…meaning that the longer we wait for something, the more excited we are. Think of a family vacation…so often, the most exciting and happiest parts of the vacation come in the weeks and months leading up to it, during the planning and imagination stages. Just the thought of the vacation and all of the unknowns is enough to release that addictive pleasure feeling. And so does online shopping.
I can say for a fact that I have been a little addicted to online shopping. Every month, I like to set aside a certain amount to spend on myself, and I will space my purchases (usually used books) out over the course of the month so I have little surprises waiting in the mail for me each week. But once they arrive, often they immediately go on the shelf and then are neglected. Magazines are another thing…just receiving them in the mail gives me a little jolt of excitement. But often opening them up and perusing the cover and table of contents is as much attention as I give them. I’m so excited to receive them; I’m much worse at actually sitting down and reading them. How can this be? How can I spend money on an item, anticipate its arrival with so much interest, and then completely ignore it once it has actually arrived? The answer is dopamine, and finding a more responsible alternative is going to have to be a goal of mine over the course of the next year.
For now, as I said before, this challenge has not been too difficult yet, but that may all change once the Christmas packages stop arriving and I stop receiving those regular jolts of dopamine. We shall see.
My No Spend Challenge Outline
Okay, so I have been wanting to do an update on how my no spend challenge has been going for a few days now, and I keep putting it off because I don’t have any images to go with it. But I guess it’s best to just start writing, and if I ever find the time, I’ll add in images later.
So here’s my first update:
I started my no-buy/low-buy challenge (I learned from YouTube that it is a thing, and that no, I’m not the first person to try to go a year without purchasing nonessentials. So basically, I’m not as creative as I think I am) on December 1st. And other than Christmas gifts for family members, I have not spent any money in these past ten days until today, when I realized that I am not going to have enough yarn to complete a sweater that I started way back in July. So even though I have LOTS of yarn to use up, I did go ahead and make that purchase, because it would be pretty disappointing to have a sweater with just one partial sleeve after all of those hours spent on it.
Which brings me to my rules, since I never did set them down in stone. Basically, my ‘no spend’ challenge is actually ‘low spend’, with the following thoughts:
First of all, I want to go from December 1, 2020 until Black Friday 2021 without spending any money on nonessential items for myself. My goal with this challenge is to rethink the way I bring in new items and how often, plus to use up items that I already own. My hope is that my bank account will be happier and my home a little more orderly.
I will be allowing a few exceptions to my general rule:
1. I am allowing myself to still purchase gifts for others.
2. I am allowing myself to purchase essential items for myself, meaning things that I really do need and that I have used up entirely in my home without anything that can substitute in a pinch.
3. I am allowing myself to purchase supplies for creative projects (ex. sewing, knitting, etc.), but only if I don’t have anything else that will work for the project.
4. I am allowing myself to spend money on things I have been meaning to do for a while but have been putting off. For example, I’m a photographer, but I am THE worst at actually getting my photos printed. For years now, I have been wanting to put together family books for every year, but never seem to have the extra time or money to follow through with it. So this year, I will allow myself to actually purchase photo prints and photo books, since it has been such a longtime goal.
I may add to these general rules in the future, but for the time being, this is what I have come up with. I was going to write out my thoughts on week one, but will go ahead and make that post on a separate day, since this one is already long enough. Thanks, friends!
I’m Back!
Wow. This blog has been a little neglected. And by ‘little’, I mean that I have not logged on in over four and a half years. YEARS.
Needless to say, a lot has changed in that time. My family moved across the country, my husband switched jobs, we had another baby, and I actually left my little sewing shop to pursue photography full-time. So yes…lots of changes. And of course, with three kids, a one-woman business and a pandemic raging across the country, what do I decide to do? Add one more thing on to my plate, of course, and revisit the idea of this blog.
When I left off, I was in the midst of trying to detox my life of stuff. As a recovering maximalist, the idea of minimalism sounded so very appealing to me. I loved the idea of pursuing simplicity, of whittling down my possessions and ridding myself of clutter. Soon after I wrote my blog post where I revealed the amount of clothing I owned, I did indeed pare down my wardrobe and spend the next year in a mostly-clothing fast.
I learned a lot from that personal challenge. The main habit that stuck with me was an adherence to buying better quality items. I no longer roamed the clearance aisles at Target, looking for great deals on clothing items I could nab for a couple of bucks. In fact, most of my in-person shopping went out the window. Maybe that was me learning from my challenge; maybe it was also me just discovering that loading three kids into car seats is not fun. At all.
But soon after, I started to turn to the lure of online shopping. Shortly before our move, I had cancelled my Amazon Prime membership. I remember at the time wondering how I would do without it, and afterwards feeling very relieved that I really didn’t miss it. But slowly over the years, the appeal of online shopping started to creep back into my life. I think at first it was buying for the kids. But I have this thing where if I spend money once, it’s a lot easier to do it again. So then I tend to go in cycles of shopping, not shopping, shopping, not shopping.
And I have learned that it’s not a completely terrible thing. I don’t need to feel guilty for every purchase that I make. I do tend to purchase things that I actually like and, for the most part, really do use. But this year, I think I am ready to give myself another challenge. With several more years under my belt, I am finding my closet and drawers getting fuller again, and quite honestly, living with three kids, I am so sick of clutter. And although I regularly go through our things and donate items we no longer use, the fact that our space doesn’t feel lighter indicates to me that I am once again starting to creep back to my old habits of donate, buy, donate buy. That unhealthy cycle of not actually utilizing old purchases to their full extent before replacing them with something newer.
So I am back to my old blog to once again say I am ready to take on a new, perhaps even more stringent challenge than before. And I want to use this to document that journey. My hope is that this challenge will be less about stuff. (Isn’t it funny that even the concept of ‘minimalism’ is still geared around stuff?) My goal is to not just downsize my items for the sake of owning less, but to enjoy what I already do have, to put the brakes on the cycle of consuming ever more. I realize that I have more than enough, that I am grateful for what I do own. And for one year, my hope is to cut out unnecessary purchases to enjoy what I already do have to an even fuller extent.
I also hope to share more of my creations in the months ahead–while I will be trying to abstain from non-essential purchases for myself, I have decided I am okay with creating for myself. I simply want to try to use up materials that I already have on hand if possible first.
I hope you’ll join me in this new challenge. I have no idea if anyone still checks in here without my shop to go along with it, but for some reason, putting this all out there in the online universe feels like it makes it a bit more official. So thank you, online world! I’m looking forward to sharing more in the months ahead.
Book Review: No More Dirty Looks
Book: No More Dirty Looks
Authors: Siobhan O’ Connor and Alexandra Spunt
Book Overview: Addresses the issue of potentially dangerous chemicals within beauty products sold in America.
Many people may roll their eyes when they hear the topic of ‘living cleanly.’ ‘Organic’, ‘chemicals’, ‘green’, ‘clean’….all of these are popular buzzwords today, usually associated with granola-eating pseudo-hippie-yuppies who drink $8 bottled water while wearing their North Face jackets in 70 degree weather. While I like to shake my fist at the SUVs that nearly run me over in the Whole Foods parking lot just as much as the next person, I am afraid that the longer I live, the more I am realizing that being aware of what I am putting in and on my body may actually be kind of important. Recently, I have read books and watched documentaries that have addressed the issue of ‘clean’ eating and ethical wearing, but this is the first book that I have read that deals with the issue of using ‘clean’ cosmetic products. While I recommend reading the book for a more detailed look on this topic, below are a few things I took away from reading it.
- Remember that your skin is your body’s largest organI have a long history of finicky skin. As a young girl, I would get scaly red patches behind my knees that itched to no end. Everyday when dressing myself, I was faced with the dilemma of whether to wear my dresses that I loved so much or to hide my embarrassing legs from the world. Thankfully, perhaps due to my mother’s nightly diligence of rubbing my skin with Vitamin E, these patches disappeared for a number of years before reappearing with a vengeance, this time on my hands. As a poor college student, I put off a visit to the doctor as long as possible before I could no longer take the itching and blisters. Finally, I received a diagnosis: I had eczema. I needed to use a gentle cleanser such as Cetaphil, slather my hands in lotion after each washing and use a prescription steroid cautiously as it might cause peeling and thinning of the skin.I did all of these things religiously for more than 5 years before I finally had a revelation. One day, as I was washing my hands, I suddenly realized that the worst part of my flare-up was in the exact location that I always squirted the liquid soap into my hand. In fact, the shape of my skin irritation was directly in line with where I used the soap. My husband and I began to research the ingredients and ran into two that might be the primary culprits: sodium lauryl sulfate and sodium laureth sulfate. Used as a detergent and a foaming agent in most cleansers, these two ingredients were known skin irritants. At the time, we had never heard of them, but set out to Target to find a soap that did not contain them. We had no luck. Every single soap in the cleansing aisle had at least some variation of these ingredients.
Long story short: we finally found a lovely individual seller online that sold soaps that did not contain either of these ingredients. As you might guess, my skin cleared up for the first time in over half a decade within just a few days. While I was thrilled that all it took was such a simple (and cheap!) fix, I somehow also felt a little betrayed and silly. I had been to several doctors by this point over this skin issue and had used a number of very powerful creams. Even the ‘gentle’ soaps recommended by the dermatologists still contained skin irritants–how could I have never heard of such a simple and seemingly obvious remedy? How did I never think of this myself?
My sensitive skin continues to this day. My hands will let me know when I am using too harsh of ingredients, and my arms will break out if I so much as use a fabric softener with fragrance. Needless to say, over the years, I have been forced by my sensitive skin to make lifestyle changes. I have always blamed my skin, thinking of it as high-maintenance, when in reality, perhaps it is just simply telling me that what I am putting on my body probably shouldn’t really be there anyway.
It’s easy to forget that our skin is actually our body’s largest organ. Apparently, the average adult actually has around 22 square feet of it. What we put on our skin does get absorbed, and for that reason, it is probably best to be aware of what we are subjecting it to…which leads me to my second point.
- Be an ingredients readerIf you have read any of my other blog entries, you already know that I have slowly learned to read the ingredients in my food and the labels on my clothing. While I am slowly learning to be more aware of what I buy, this habit had not yet bled over completely into what I put on my face, hair and body. I think there is a certain level of trust that we inherently want to have in companies to only give us options that are healthy. Sadly, this will not always be the case.One of the things that I was struck with as I read through No More Dirty Looks was the reminder that many of the ingredients we put on our bodies are, in fact, chemicals. We hear that term tossed around quite a bit these days, but that is the reality of it. Think back to chemistry class, and remember: not all chemicals play nicely with each other. One of the things this book kept coming back to were things called byproducts. Byproducts are the result of several chemicals mixing together; some may be harmless, some are not. However, byproducts do not have to be listed under a product’s list of ingredients, as they are not an intentional ingredient used–they are simply, and aptly named, a byproduct.
It would be nice to assume that companies would simply take measures to ensure that only chemicals that play nicely with one another be used together, but that, of course, is not the case. Imagine what a daunting task it would be for a company to do clinical studies on how each ingredient might react with each other over a long period of time. It would not only be expensive, it would probably be impossible. We wouldn’t have the products on the shelf that we as consumers demand. That is why it ultimately will fall on us as consumers to be educated in the ingredients that might cause trouble.
I recommend picking up this book for a more in-depth look at the characteristics of various ingredients and the different ways they may be listed on a label. For now, here is an overview of some of the ingredients that do have side effects to be wary of. You may notice many familiar words–a good rule of thumb, as recommended in the book, is to be aware of having multiple ‘blacklisted’ ingredients within a single product.
I also recommend visiting the website www.ewg.org to look up particular products, ingredients, and things to watch out for in cosmetics.
- Some ingredients are used for the product’s benefit, not yoursI was saddened to realize that so many ingredients listed on labels are used to make a product more appealing, not necessarily for how well they may work on our skin or hair. Fragrance was one example brought up again and again in this book. Fragrance is a mysterious ingredient that could be many combinations of things. A company is not legally required to reveal the individual ingredients used to make their particular fragrance, as it is considered a trade secret. This could be harmless, or it could be bad, but who knows? It is simply listed as fragrance, parfum or perfume, and for all of the unknowns, is listed unsafe.
- Use common senseWhen you read this book, you may either want to discard all information as fear-mongering, or you may be tempted to throw away all of your products in one go. I think the wisest thing to do falls somewhere in the middle…use common sense. Let’s assume you have a product that has a few less than optimal ingredients. If you use it on a daily basis, it might be worth swapping out for a gentler product. If you use it only on rare occasions, it probably is fine.
- No matter what products you use, you will not have healthy glowing skin if you fail to live a healthy lifestyle.
In summary:One of the things No More Dirty Looks stresses (that I personally agree with) is that many products may have minute traces of bad ingredients–these may or may not cause long term issues, but if you have a choice, why not buy products that you know are better for you? I strongly believe that the best way to get companies to change their ways is to vote for what we want by the way we spend our money. This involves effort on our part–taking time to become familiar with common good and bad ingredients, researching and supporting companies that practice good ethics, perhaps even taking on the role of making many products ourselves. Just as with food and clothing, it seems like the best things for our bodies are often the simplest.
Before & After: A Colorful Blouse Gets a Makeover
If you’ve been following along on my blog this year, you’ll already see a lot of the same themes popping up a lot: sewing (duh), making clothes for my family and finding new uses for old things. I love sewing clothes for little people 🙂 The fabric needed for many outfits is so minimal that it opens up a whole world of possibilities.
This blouse is one that I picked up from the thrift store earlier this year for just a couple of bucks. While I usually try to keep a fairly neutral and subdued palette in my shop, I do still love color! Sometimes when I see something as enticingly vibrant as this, I will pick it up with the intent of making something for the girls. So now, not only do I have a desk and part of a closet devoted to storing fabric for my shop, I also have a few paper bags full of potential projects for the girls. I shudder to think what the moving guys are going to think when they are packing up all of my stuff later this year.
I originally wanted to make a little blouse with a Peter Pan collar for Lily, but I was completely distracted while cutting the fabric, and ended up wonkifying all of the dimensions on mistake. Out of desperation, I ended up sewing itty-bitty French seams on the sides and scrapping the sleeves and collar in favor of a more simple look. A word to the wise: don’t cut fabric unless you are 100% engaged in what you are doing. You will always do dumb things…or at least I always do, anyway.
This was the end result. Not perfect, but better than I expected after I botched the cutting. Thankfully, Lily still seems to love it! I just need the weather here to warm up already so we can actually get outside in short sleeves. Get with the picture already, Chicago!!!
Behind the Scenes: Reducing Waste
According to the EPA, an average American throws away roughly 65 pounds of textiles every year. I have no idea how they come up with that number, or how accurate it truly is, but if so, that is disturbing. Continuing on with the statistics, of the roughly 13.1 million tons of textiles thrown out, only about 15% (or 2 million tons) are recovered for recycling or reuse. However, nearly half of what is thrown out is perfectly useable.
Part of what I love to do when sewing is find ways to reuse old clothing items. Many of the clothes I make for my daughters are from clothes that either my husband or I were planning on getting rid of. I also adore thrift store shopping, so I take any excuse I can get to wander the aisles and look for interesting fabrics and materials. While I have been feeling pretty good about reusing, one thing I am still challenging myself to do more is find creative ways to cut down on the amount of waste that I create.
Every project will have some sort of residual waste. If I were to throw out all of my scraps, my personal textile waste would be phenomenal. Even the little bits from just working at the sewing machine fill up my waste basket with odd bits of scraps and pieces fairly quickly. It doesn’t seem like a big deal until Hazel, who is already a major dumpster diver, tips the trash can over and starts eating and trailing bits of fabric nuggets all around the house. While I tell myself I’m doing pretty well on keeping waste to a minimum, I still like to challenge myself to get use out of virtually every piece that I can. The following is a break-down of a typical project for me and where all of the odds and ends go to use:
1. These are the main pieces of fabric that I have cut from one of my patterns. If I have plenty of fabric left, I’ll simply roll it back up to use again for the next project. When there are odd shapes of fabric or just not enough left to make an entire outfit, I’ll usually save the largest pieces to create bonnets, then move on from there with the small pieces.
2. Ribbon. I love love love making raw-edged fabric ribbon. I have always loved ribbon and have kept it around the house for packaging or using in the girls’ hair. As I have opened my shop, I have gotten a lot pickier about the ribbon I use. My current favorites are silk, velvet, grosgrain or high-quality satin ribbons. With the exception of grosgrain, none of these are available in local craft stores, and they can very quickly get expensive, so I like to save them for clothing items or special occasions. It was only recently that I realized how quickly and easily I could turn scraps from my projects into ribbon. Now I have the option to use this for customer packaging, as sashes on dresses, ties on headbands and bonnets, in addition to regular use for wrapping gifts at home. Even better, it is so much prettier than anything I can find in the shops. The neutral ribbons look so pretty on paper mache boxes, and I love using the floral prints with any of my solid color tissue paper that I wrap the items in. I am starting to have lots of it around, though, so I have been toying with the idea of wrapping surplus ribbon around some spools and including it as a cheap item in the shop.
3. Hair bows and fabric tape. Cutting small bits of fabric into rectangles for hair bows is one of the original ways I started trying to cut back on fabric waste. Before I opened my shop, I had planned on just selling headbands and hair bows. Ambitiously, I cut out probably hundreds of these little rectangles and in my mind I imagined them flying off the virtual shelves. I am pretty glad I ultimately opted to sell my clothing as my main thing instead. I still include a few headbands in the shop, but I mostly love to use these as thank you gifts for customers and will try to customize them to coordinate with the outfit they purchased. I also like to use small strips of fabric to turn into fabric tape for packaging.
4. Fabric cards. This is one of my newest ideas. I like to write a personal thank you to every customer. It really does mean so much to me that individuals seek my shop out and support it, despite the fact that there are so many bigger, cheaper places they could choose to buy clothing for their children. The very least I can do is let them know how very grateful I am for their support. I have always loved stationary and have kept an embarrassing box of cards that moves from home to home with us. I finally put those cards to use writing thank-you notes, but recently started running out of ones that went well with my items. I began to keep an eye out for cards or card stock to make new ones, but wasn’t happy with any of the choices I could find. One day on a whim I decided to add a little stiffener to some of my fabric scraps, and it worked perfectly! Now I simply keep a stack of fabric cards on hand to write my little notes on.
5. Packing bits. Now we’re getting to the nitty-gritty nuggets of fabric left. I still like to keep these on hand in freezer bags sorted by colors, and I will use these for packing in lieu of peanuts or shredded paper. I feel like it goes well with the rest of my brand, and again, it simplifies things by not having to buy more items. This is another thing I’m thinking about adding to the shop, just as I have so much of it around. I am thinking I might make little drawstring bags and sell them for a song to anyone who would like a creative alternative to typical packing shreds.
6. Leftover string. Okay. Now I’m getting a little crazy here. However, these little threads are what is leftover from cleaning up the raw-edged ribbon, and believe it or not…these piles of thread can add up. I typically peel these loose threads off the sides of the ribbon, and they come off three or four at a time. While I am pulling, I simply will wrap the large chunks of thread around mini-spools, and then use them for tying the packages together.
7. What is left. This tiny amount of string is typically all that is left at the end of a project. Now I can happily let this bit of trash go and feel good about using putting almost every other spare piece to use.
The end result: packages of handmade clothing ready to ship out, utilizing scraps from the projects themselves. Please let me know what you think or if you have other great ideas for ways you have found to reuse ordinary things in your own life!
The State of My Closet and 5 Lessons I Hope to Learn
Today’s blog post is a bit of an embarrassing area for me to write about…the state of my closet. First of all, if you are a sane person, you probably don’t really care AT ALL about what my closet is like, and I would applaud you for not caring. Still, I am going to write about it, because it’s probably a little bit like going to an accountability group. It’s healthy for me to admit that I have a problem, face the issues and in the face of witnesses, vow to change my habits.
The summer before seventh grade, I attended my very first band camp. Not knowing what to pack, I loaded up the very biggest suitcase that my family owned and filled it to the brim. Hairspray, hair dryer, clothes for every occasion I could possibly think of, makeup…every girly thing I could fathom using went into that suitcase. It didn’t even matter that I didn’t use 75% of those items on a regular basis, the fear of being without it for an entire week possessed me to bring it along just in case. You can bet what I’m going to say: I hardly used any of it. Not only that, it just made my life a bit more hectic trying to find what I was looking for and was impossible to keep organized. But the thing that really topped it off was my embarrassment when one of the high school boys helping us with the luggage literally could not pick the stupid suitcase up because of how much it weighed. I vowed then and there to change my ways. To this day, I still feel a little pride surge up in me when someone comments on how lightly I pack.
The last time our family moved across the country, we had the luxury of using a professional company to move our belongings. It really was nice; all we had to do was say what stayed and what was going, and everything was loaded up into boxes. When it came time to load up the clothes, I felt the old familiar wave of embarrassment come over me as the poor man stood gaping at the closet stuffed to the brim with my clothing. I had invested in every organizing mechanism that I could fit into the closet, and still items were pouring forth. It only got worse as box after box kept being filled, and I had to come to terms with the fact that I owned far more clothing than I had cared to admit to myself. To top it off, I had to take him on the walk of shame to the upstairs bedroom where I stored my out-of-season clothing, which was also filled to the brim.
How had I accumulated so much? Just a few years prior, my clothing had been able to fit neatly into a tiny dorm room closet. How had it expanded to take over multiple closets and dressers? Why did I even have this much? Should I not be embarrassed to have an issue with owning too much? Once again, I vowed to change my ways. I began purging my closet and donated bags and bags of clothing in my pursuit of simplifying. For the past year, I have taken pride in having all of my clothes, in season and out, fit nicely into one closet and dresser.
Yet even so, my habits were still not changed. Although I had downsized the space I was occupying, I still had the bad habit of bringing in new clothes, so now I was working in a circular-door method: bringing in new, donating the old. I still did not necessarily have a method behind my madness. If you read my last entry, you already know that I was purchasing solely based upon price and rarely looked at the tags to find out more information.
Enter the great clothing count of 2016: in an effort to look this issue squarely in the eye, I went through every single piece of clothing that I owned and notated where and when I purchased the item, the country of origin, and the fabric content. The damage? I own 11 coats, 36 dresses, 9 button-up shirts, 5 long sleeve tees, 15 short sleeve tees, 11 blouses, 17 tank tops, 16 scarves, 10 belts, 13 purses and bags, 7 skirts, 3 pair of dress pants, 5 pair of shorts, 4 sets of pajamas, 12 lounge bottoms, 12 pairs of jeans and 5 pairs of pants, 5 sweatshirts, 12 sweaters, 11 cardigans and 38(!) pair of shoes. All in all, I own 258 items of clothing, which averages out to having purchased around 37 items each year of my marriage; probably more than that if I consider that I had already made a number of large donations. Now, out of those 258 items of clothing, only 13 items had been made in the US, and 3 of those had been made by me.
When it came to quality, my clothing was abysmal. I was shocked to find that the very best-looking item that I owned was probably also my oldest: a red cashmere cardigan crafted in Scotland that my mother bought for me in 1997. While many of my clothes were already pilling after a few wears, this cardigan had stood the test of time and looked just as good now as the day that she bought it. I also found that quality was not necessarily restricted to price point. While it was true that the items I had bought for a song did show signs of poor construction and quick wearing, some of the more expensive garments were not necessarily any better made. Many were made with the same fabric contents and often even quicker methods of seaming.
My husband thought that I was nuts for going through and notating all of this. He is probably right. But if there are a few lessons to take away from it all, I hope to learn these:
- I am not saving money by spending money on great deals. There will always be great deals. Every time I go to the store, I can count on great clearance prices and doorbuster sales. That is no longer a special occasion; it is the norm. I am obviously not hurting for anything to wear, so the best way to save money is to not spend it on impulse purchases in the first place.
- If I need an item, I hope to make it worth the money I am turning over for it. This means having a plan and considering purchases as investments. I need to follow trends less and invest in high quality timeless pieces.
- I hope to take care of the items I do own. Too long have I trained myself to treat my objects as disposable. By purchasing cheap items that wear out quickly, I feel no remorse by treating them poorly. That also means that I have not learned the discipline necessary to take care of items that are well made. I have not once taken a pair of shoes to get maintenance work done and I rarely get around to mending those items that need mending. I hope to lengthen the life span of the clothing I do own.
- I hope to inspect items with greater care before purchasing, and be aware of the fabric content’s tendencies.
- I hope to teach my daughters how to shop and dress with greater care than I have shown myself.
Healthy Eating vs. Healthy Wearing
I was never a very healthy eater growing up. I was your typical kid born in the 80s…my favorite food groups were Captain Crunch, Blue Bell, beef and Sonic. As I also happened to be embarrassingly stick thin, I never thought much about it, so these eating habits followed me throughout college and well into my young adult life. I couldn’t tell you when things started to change. It must have been the first few years of married life. I can remember my husband and I challenging ourselves to make some of our favorite dishes from restaurants at home. As we started cooking for ourselves more and more, we discovered that often times when we went back to the restaurants for those same dishes, they didn’t taste quite as good as we had remembered. So we kept cooking.
Despite our changing habits, one thing we still rarely did was check the labels on our food. I can still remember the day that we started looking at ingredients. I was having an insane craving for a Totino’s pizza…because no matter how much I cooked at home, every once in a while, I would still get a serious hankering for one of those triple meat pizzas. I was sitting on the couch, eating the pizza off the box like I always used to do, and my husband was sitting across from me eating his pizza and looking at the mile-long ingredient list. To my dismay, he began to look up every single one of the ingredients. I cannot tell you how heartbroken I was to find out just how unhealthy my beloved Totino’s pizzas were. As heart wrenching of a break up as it was at the time, I broke off my love affair with my snack-size frozen pizzas and set out to find better alternatives. I haven’t missed it.
A funny thing happens when you start eating well. When you start getting back to the basics and discovering the way that foods taste in their natural forms, processed foods no longer taste very good. I used to hear some of my friends say that to me, and I would smile and nod, then internally label them as smug food snobs. I hope I’m not being smug in saying it now. I just think that real food tastes better, and it is very hard to be enticed with fast food these days. I know I can make it better at home.
And now I arrive at the point of this blog post. While I had improved my eating habits and was getting better at reading and interpreting the labels on the food that I bought, I never thought about transferring what I had learned about food to the clothes that I wore. Like I said before, my main criteria for buying clothes was that it be less than $10 when possible and…well, that’s really about it. I never looked at the labels when buying my shirts and pants, had very little idea about the fabrics or stitches that went into them, no clue as to where they originated, and was rarely surprised if they started unraveling at the seams after just a few wears. I wasn’t heartbroken…after all, I had only paid the same amount I might pay for a Subway sandwich. I could just donate the shirt and move on to my next impulsive purchase.
It wasn’t until recently that I realized just how little I knew about the clothes I was putting on my body. I have sewn off and on since my teenage years and knew basic stitches and seaming techniques. It wasn’t until recently that I started learning more about what goes into a well made piece, from the fabric to the seams that are chosen and where. A well-made piece of clothing is like a piece of art. I am inspired when I go to the thrift store, pick up a vintage item and see all the ways that an individual put time and care into the production. The items were made with the intent to last, with far greater care placed on the fabrics chosen and the techniques used. And sadly, despite my sewing background, I am realizing how very little I know.
Just as fast food is no longer enticing, I am beginning to look at clothing in a different light. Whereas I have always walked into stores and been giddy with excitement to see sales and clearance notices, I am starting to see a slightly different image: clothes that are produced with the intent of selling quickly and disposed of even quicker. Items that appeal to our sense of novelty instead of timelessness. Outfits that will be rotated out and replaced with the next trend, dating themselves almost instantly. Suddenly, it feels much more like a strategy to get us to empty our pocketbooks on a frequent basis rather than actually saving money. How long can this be sustainable? And how much basic knowledge of quality have we allowed to slip away in the process?
I find it staggering to realize that just a little over 50 years ago, only 5% of clothing sold in America was imported. Fast-forward to today, and the numbers have entirely flip-flopped. Today, only about 3% of our clothing is made within our country. I say this not to demonize globalization, but to simply point out what I find to be symbolic. As we have lost touch with the physical production of our clothing, our generation seems to be teetering on the edge of losing touch with the entire knowledge of clothing production and the personalization that once made it a special and central part of the American life.
Maybe it’s just me. Maybe not everyone is as ignorant as I have been. Regardless, as I learn more about fabrics and seams and structure, I am finding that it is hard to turn back. Just as the food that I eat seems more flavorful and enriching when I make it at home, I am finding that pouring myself into the clothes that I create seems to enrich them with personality and durability that I simply cannot find in the assembly line stores. Equally, I am discovering so many wonderful stories of artisans around the world who pour their personalities into the clothing that they make. In the end, it is the lives behind the items we choose to live with that make them what they are, and I am excited to begin enriching my own life by learning more about these stories.
Hello World!
Hello world, and happy new year! I am so excited that you are taking a moment out of your busy lives to join me. My name is Christina, and I am a wife to a terrific husband, a mother to two sweet little girls (Lily and Hazel), a photographer, a frequent occupant of my comfy couch, and a sewing enthusiast. My days are normally spent sleeping a tad later than I should, playing blocks with my oldest, walking my youngest back and forth down the hallway, cooking, and stealing moments away during naps or while they are occupied to try to get in a few moments for myself.
I started my journey with sewing when I was in middle school. My mother happened to believe very strongly in exposing my sisters and me to as many different hobbies and interests as could possibly fit into a 24-hour day. That amounted to piano lessons, band, art, clown school, lego-robot building classes, science clubs, guitar, tennis lessons, doll-making and sewing…just to name a few. To clarify, taking sewing lessons in seventh grade was not what the cool kids were doing. To make matters worse, the sewing shop in town happened to be located next to the Mr. Gatti’s, a local hang for some of the cooler kids in school. I remember silently praying that nobody would see me through the large windows in the shop as I sewed together the layers of my Noah’s Ark printed vest. In the end, I walked away with a Biblically-themed cartoonish vest and short set that only saw the light of day for grandparent visits, and a vow to never ever sit down at a sewing machine again in my life.
I’m pretty glad that I decided to not keep that vow.
I picked up sewing again about 15 years later as a way to save money. My husband and I were both in the Navy, and at the going rate of $8 per pop to get patches sewn onto uniforms, I quickly realized that a starter sewing machine would be a worthwhile investment. A visit to WalMart.com and $80 later, I was once again sitting behind a sewing machine trying to figure out what in the world I was doing.
I won’t go into all the rest of the details of how I started picking up sewing for fun. Over the course of the next five years it happened. I opened my Etsy shop, LilyandHazelDesigns, in 2015 with the intent to sell classic, timeless children’s clothes that would photograph well. I am having a blast. The thing about it, though, is that sewing all the time has led to several discoveries. The first is that I absolutely love it. The second is that it takes a bit of effort. I mean, a lot. I am still learning every day, and the more I learn, the more efficient I am becoming. Still, cutting a pattern well takes me anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour. Depending on the complexity of what I am sewing, I can complete an outfit in anywhere from one to six hours. If I were to charge myself minimum wage on the time spent alone, these outfits would be priced so much higher than what anyone today would consider spending on children’s clothes. And these are children’s clothes…they’re miniature. What would be a fair cost to pay for adult clothing which easily requires at least three times the yardage in fabric?
Becoming aware of the process behind making clothes has caused me to begin rethinking the way I consume clothing. In the past, I have bought clothing solely based upon price point. I have even gotten out of the habit of trying an item on if it is low enough, figuring that if it didn’t fit, I will only be out a couple of bucks. The result is that I have a closet of clothing that doesn’t fit well, is not very well made, and I’m not sure I even really like. In addition, where does the clothing end up when I get rid of it? It has to end up somewhere, but I’m not really sure where that is. Where does it come from? Again, I’m not really sure. For something as huge as the American clothing industry, how have we as a society become so removed from knowing anything at all about the clothes on our backs?
I am no economist…I cannot tell you how the pros or the cons of the global economy begin to stack up. But as a consumer, it is in my power to educate myself in an attempt to become wiser and more knowledgeable in regards to the ethics and economics behind the companies that I choose to support. I know next to nothing about the processes or the people who put together the items that I am wearing as I type this. And while that may be true for so many things in my life, I want to become more informed. As I am not yet at a point where I feel educated, I am choosing to take a break from the spending cycle in 2016. I am doing so by setting the following guidelines for myself:
1. To not buy any new clothing for myself or my family unless it is
a.) used
b.) fair trade
c.) American-made
2. To make my family’s clothes
3. To spend this year educating myself about the sources of my clothing and consumerism
This blog will chronicle this journey, including the projects I am working on or have completed, what I learn about the production of clothing, how to spend money ethically and how to identify well-made clothing. Please join me in this journey! I am so excited 🙂