Recycling clothes

is something with which I am very familiar. However, it seems this is not the case for everybody.

There have been concerns raised in the media in the last couple of days about the amount of clothing which is going to "landfill". Indeed alarm was expressed about the amount of clothing going that way, particularly old school uniforms and "cheap imports".

If I go back to very early kittenhood I have a memory. I must be about fifteen or sixteen months old. It is evening. I am standing on a table in the high school and my mother is marking the hemline on the winter coat she is making for me. I have to "turn around" - which of course I cannot do without falling over - so the teacher picks me up at the waist and turns me around.  My mother was doing a "Certificate III " in dressmaking, the "tailoring" section and making a child's winter coat was one of the requirements. 

My mother would have drafted the pattern as well but it is the material which is of interest. It was cut down from a winter coat belonging to my maternal grandmother. It was brown tweed and  the finished garment had a brown velveteen collar.  The velveteen probably was new but the tweed certainly was not.  

It is likely every other mother in the class had found similar material with which to work. They would have been anxious not to waste money on new material when "old will do just as well". 

My brother wore the coat after me. I graduated to a garment which had first belonged to the eldest girl in the family of local insurance salesman. When I outgrew it the coat went back to the same family to be worn by the other two girls in that family and was then returned to us so Middle Cat could wear it. Yes, it was worn by five little girls. We probably didn't wear it as often as little girls in colder climates but it was still well cared for so that it would last. I had other clothes from the same family and from other families as well. My mother would have passed on items I could no longer wear too. I wore overalls intended for boys and shirts that buttoned "on the boy side".  We did not have much money for clothes and neither did anyone else in that small rural community. 

My school uniforms were made out of "left overs" or remnants from my paternal grandfather's tailoring business. He would have been happy to make me proper tunics and blazers but my mother insisted on doing it herself. The only exceptions she made to accepting things from her father-in-law were my brother's Sunday suits and one skirt for herself so that she could use it to wear when relief teaching.

I also had garments knitted from recycled yarn. I can remember watching as other garments were unravelled, wound into skeins and steamed to get the kinks. They would then be wound into balls and knitted again. 

A lot of that sort of thing went on. I was by no means the only child dressed that way. We thought of it as normal. It was everyone did. Looking back I realise we did know people who were well off but even they did this sort of thing.

Now people seem to simply discard things in the bin and go and buy something new.  Questions are being asked about this - and so they should be asked. I know even our local charity shops throw out bin loads of clothing that nobody wants.  Quite a number of my clothes come from the closest charity shop. I have bought items in there which still have the shop tags on them. The Manager of the once told me when I was passing, "There's a new denim jacket in there Cat. You said you were looking for one. It's about your size I think."  

I bought the jacket and I am still wearing it six years later - almost every time I go out on the bike in summer. The old jacket, the one I bought for $3, was recycled - my BIL used it for rags to soak up oil while working on something.  The old jacket had been in use by me for almost twelve years. 

"Why don't more people recycle Cat?" I was asked by our neighbour across the way. Her boys get "hand-me-downs" from friends.

We both thought about it and came to the conclusion that it is too easy to go and just buy something new. If people had to put more work into actually making something they might be more willing to try and make it last even if they had to do it by passing it on to someone else.