Don’t Let Hand-Me-Downs Get You Down

 

Excellent hand-me-down winter wear

When I was eight months pregnant with my firstborn, I was on my way into the university health center with J when we ran into a very slight acquaintance of his. Upon learning we were expecting a November baby, she exclaimed, “I had a November baby last year! Come by my house! I’ll leave bags of clothes outside for you.”

I was floored that someone I didn’t know would gift this poor grad student so generously, and still more so when I arrived at her porch to discover heaping trash bags full of lovely little things. I hadn’t yet learned the rule of motherhood: stuff, stuff, ever going in and out of the house.

Since then, I’ve learned to embrace the constant inflow and outflow of Stuff. I try to pass along things we are done with, and in turn, to accept and make good use of what we are given. A lot of that has to do with organization, so I thought I’d outline my approach.

Your Eco-Friendly Friendships

Recently, I’ve been revisiting Radical Homemakers almost ten years after it rocked my world back in grad school. Parts are brilliant and parts a bit flaky, just like I remembered, but the overall effect is to fire me up. And I came across a cornerstone of X’s vision for domesticity: Save the planet, make a friend!

“Solid and satisfying relationships are beyond a doubt the primary step in building a sustainable home.”

This was good news to me. I don’t recycle anymore and I have a list as long as my arm of domestic skills I should probably cultivate, but I do invest in friendships.

When I think about the claim, I sort of see it. There aren’t all that many days anymore when I don’t feed someone outside my immediate family or get fed in return. I don’t buy many children’s clothes. We do very few formal cultural events –good and wholesome though they are–because much of our time is spent in pleasure and duty to our network of friends: just passing time and sharing meals at one home or another. All of this reduces consumption and waste.

We also are able to sidestep some childcare costs by swapping care for appointments and other one-offs. When we do have to pay for services (childcare, lawn care, tailoring, etc.) we can also often keep it within the church or homeschooling community. We are keeping our money hyper-local and practicing frugality while we’re at it.

J, vanquished by the children of our community of friends

Here is a fairly typical day:

• At preschool drop off, I pass one bag of Pip’s hand-me-downs to a friend who passes me two bags of her daughter’s for Scout. (Everyone needs a friend with children the same ages as her own but opposite genders.)
• I go through an IKEA bag of stuff from another friend who’s in the process of moving. I set aside the things I can’t use to find homes for.
• At naptime a friend’s high school daughter brings by the duvet she finished making as a commission for me.
• In the afternoon, I work out a complicated childcare scenario where a friend piggybacks on my mother’s helper, who subcontracts with her little brother. It ends up costing us $10 each for two hours of childcare, during which time I listen to an audiobook uninterrupted and wrap birthday presents. On the phone, I also walk a friend through setting up an evite for an All Souls prayer potluck.

• A young friend’s husband is finishing up work on our back deck. She drops him off, grabs an apricot and leaves some vases I’ve left her

• Dinner is pasta and homemade meatballs from our yearly cow. I double the recipe and drop half off at the home of the farmer friend who raised the cow, who’s having a difficult recovery from surgery.
• When I get home J is having a beer on the porch with the wife of our deck repairman and the father of the extra kid our mother’s helpers watched.
• After kid bedtime, I eat a brownie baked by one friend and enjoy a cup of tea from the hostess, when I meet to plan our Blessed Is She Advent retreat.

Pretty potatoes from our farm share, run by a parishioner, some of which were delivered to a friend of a friend recovering from a concussion

These friendships are different, more demanding and deeper, than those friendships when you get together when your life is under control for a night that feature fancy food, sparkling conversation and clean countertops. Sometimes we have those things and they are good things to be sure. But this life of ours paradoxically requires more mess and more order. When your child outgrows her wardrobe, you can’t just bag it up for Goodwill or simply toss it; instead, you divvy and deliver it between friends, and you accept hand-me-downs in advance that you’ll have to store. You invite people into the nooks and crannies of a busy family life and hope they don’t walk away when you run late because of a diaper blowout or you offer them half of the non-gourmet thing you froze weeks ago. It’s harder and more vulnerable than the independent suburban way I think a lot of people live, but its porosity and clamor and warmth are a comfort in times of trouble (and morning sickness) and a fortress against the materialism of the world in which our children can flourish.

PS–Would it be helpful for anyone if I did a detailed post on my system for storing hand-me-downs?

7QT: Beginner Thrifting Tips

Coat from Goodwill

Months ago I was charmed to read Jen’s early forays into the world of thrifting. It was fun to see someone’s first foray into secondhand shopping, because I grew up that way. Glamorous as it sounds, taking people’s old used stuff home with me is in my blood. It’s a way to save money, sure, but also a way to help the planet and to avoid supporting unethical business practices. And don’t get me started on the thrill of the hunt!

Frugal Accomplishments for the First Couple Weeks of October

Recently I’ve been reading and enjoying the Prudent Homemaker’s recurring series, “Frugal Accomplishments,” in which she tracks her budget-saving measures over the course of each week. (I think I first discovered her through the also excellent blog, The Big White Farmhouse.)  I come from a frugal family so many of these steps come naturally, but J and I also are careless budgeters, so we still have a lot to learn. Here are some of our recent highlights, though, since I’ve enjoyed reading others’:

Everyday Use and Spending It Down

Today’s post combines two of my favorite things: the short stories you read in college and cute pictures of babies. Double win, right?

As discussed, I’m trying to be less clingy to material objects. Since my impulse is to hoard and preserve beautiful special things, it’s not easy to actually use the handmade items people have given me for my children. But I try! And look how cute!

Scout’s first Easter, complete with Pippin’s owl cardigan and her own womanly bonnet.

Pippin’s first Easter, in his man-bonnet.

Easter bonnets, hers and his — my granny made this little owl cardigan for Pippin, with a boy and a girl bonnet should we ever have a little girl, and I made sure to have them each wear it for their first Easter. It worked great for both, since Pippin was a chubby baby born in October and Scout was a petite thing born in June.

I think we’ve finally retired this green sweater, also by my Granny, now somewhat felted, but we got two good seasons out of it for Pippin. Here he’s sporting it at the lovely Mount Holyoke College greenhouses when he was two.

Finally, I’m not completely sure of the provenance of this little green cardigan, but I think it was mine when I was a baby. And here are both my cuties sporting it! You get the idea.

The old church ladies always assess the kids’ hand-knit and crocheted clothes with an air of professional appreciation.

In my attempts to be more adventurous, J and I use the shorthand reminder: everyday use. It’s from the Alice Walker story of the same name. In it, a woman must decide between her two daughters who will inherit the family’s heirloom quilts — the educated daughter interested in displaying them for their history, or her loyal, homebody daughter, who would use them on her marriage bed. The enlightened, stylish daughter argues, outraged, “Maggie can’t appreciate these quilts! … She’d probably be backward enough to put them to everyday use.”

Her mama answers her, “‘I reckon she would,’ I said. ‘God knows I been saving ’em for long enough with nobody using ’em. I hope she will!’”

And…that’s the point. Clothes, even beautiful handmade things, are made to be worn. They won’t pass pristinely down to future siblings or future generations, but their felting and snagging and staining will tell the story of their everyday use, and that’s a story worth telling.