As I sit on the lounge-room floor with a needle, some thread and a little pile of clothes that need repairing, I suddenly feel rather old-fashioned, but modern at the same time.
Darning is one of those forgotten skills that is once again flourishing through necessity. Thrift is the new black because the world is in the red and has a desire to be green.
Is this the universe’s way of bringing everything back into balance? If the current generation is all about ME, then is a global financial crisis Mother Nature’s way of cutting the big spender off at the knees and bringing her back to old-fashioned values?
I’m proud to be a career woman, but I am secretly just as proud to channel my inner housewife and use my nanna’s 46-year-old Sunbeam Mixmaster to whip up a birthday cake. I love making sausage rolls and sewing nametags onto the kids’ gear.
Faced with having to tighten the purse strings, we are forced to return to our nanna’s skills set. It may be driven by need, but ultimately it’s about being practical. Thrift is good for the planet, good for our wallets and good for our own satisfaction.
Now before you conclude I’m some modern Mrs Cleaver, rest assured I cut corners as well as the next mum. The filling in my sausage rolls might be homemade, but the pastry is bought. I may buy the kids’ clothes a size too big and hem them in order to get an extra year’s wear, but it’s a pretty dodgy job!
I remember my grandmother washing the plastic bags she used to bring the fruit home in. She saved every jar and reused them for her homemade jams or sauces. She had spent her life on the land and made it through the war with very little, so knew what it was like to go without. She was thrifty because she had to be.
Today’s conditions might not be as tough, but they call for similar measures. We are all tightening our belts, thinking twice about which cuts of meat we buy and in which areas we can trim the fat.
We’re even learning to ‘shop’ our own wardrobes. It’s called ‘slow fashion’: when you buy something that lasts longer than one season. Apparently the trend is to use clothes you already have in your wardrobe and wear them in different ways. One magazine editor wrote about the novelty of having something for more than five years and actually wearing it.
Wow, my economic credentials are frightening even me. I must have been planning for the GFC for some time now. I’m wearing clothes I’ve owned for ten years. I’d be wearing more, if they still fitted.
Who on earth starts her wardrobe again each season? Who doesn’t wear clothes she bought last year? Does it really take a GFC to teach people to stop wasting money?
In our house, it’s the kids who need new stock each season—not because they are fashion savvy, but because they grow like weeds. Pants that I hem at the beginning of winter need letting down by the season’s end. Sleeves are inching up their arms, and feet are pretty quickly being squashed into shoes.
That’s why my daughter goes to school in a size-too-big winter tunic reaching half way down her shins and her sleeves rolled up, because Mummy, the recessionista, sees no point in forking out for a uniform that she’ll grown out of in three months.
We see a sale and we stock up. We tap into the hand-me-down network. I scored four school uniforms for Talia from the friend of a friend. I then paid it forward by passing on Nick’s winter pants to a work colleague with a son two years younger.
And I don’t really think my friends can tell if my plain black pants are this year’s cut or 2010’s. I have no idea so I can only assume they don’t either.
I also look at some of my purchases safe in the knowledge I can one day hand them down to my daughter. Anything I buy of quality is justified with the intention that I will one day pass it on to her. I’m sure she’ll find it all incredibly daggy and we’ll have one of those ‘I can’t believe you wore that, Mum!’ conversations, but I have myself convinced that what I buy might one day be vintage and coveted.
Twenty years from now . . . that’s slow fashion.
Which brings me back to my pile of sewing. Why not darn the socks or mend the knickers? It saves me buying new ones.
Everything seems to go in cycles. The generation that does it tough makes sure the next never misses out. Baby boomers gave their children every opportunity. The current generation has grown up in a time of abundance of everything from jobs to life choices. So maybe this is the world’s way of slowing that down, throwing a little challenge into the mix so we appreciate what we have. Some children will grow up affected by a global recession, so maybe they and their peers will have similar values to my grandmother’s and appreciate that not everything is to be thrown away—a backlash to the excess of the eighties, perhaps.
For this or other reasons it seems we are all focusing a little more on home. We’re cooking more, gardening more and even sales in craft supplies are up.
Hopefully manufacturers will follow suit and go back to making goods that last. I wish for mixmasters that survive as long as my nanna’s and socks that won’t need darning.