Non-verbally, you could see it on their faces...wondering secretly if I had just stepped out from one of the Little House on the Prairie books. (Ha, I wish!) But sadly, store clerks over and over told me, "Oh...we don't carry them...no one mends their clothes anymore."
Say...what?
A sad moment. Somewhere between sewing feed-sack dresses, re-using pieces of tin foil and online grocery delivery...mending became "uncool". Driven by materialism and amazing advertising encouraging MORE; we have become a "throw-away" society.
The mentality of "why would I mend a shirt or pair of pants if I could just throw it away and get a new one?" has become a way of life. We, as a society, have deemed resources as expendable and/or justifiable that we don't have time to fix it. Ironically, the time it takes to sew on a button is shorter then that drive over to your nearest Fred Meyer or the mall. But, hey...really?
This attitude has got to change. Our landfills are overfilling, resources depleting and yet...we continue to throw away our lives.
I was taught to re-use, re-purpose, mend, fix, re-invent it and we continue to hold fast to this mentality here at The Britten Roost. I cut up strips of worn out yoga pants to tie back plants, re-purpose feed sacks into snazzy aprons or use as garbage bags in the barn, gather sticks and branches that have fallen to use in my fires, buy the $1.29 part to fix the couch, and my cats and dogs sleep on old pillows.
It is a mind shift, but I believe I'm a steward of the resources around me and I want to leave the world better. What about you? What are you doing to shatter stereo-types of our "throw away" society?
For me, I use patches.
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