Mending kids clothes and why I am into it

Believe it or not, the reason why I mend (and sometimes make) my kid’s clothes is not the money. Making clothes, even fixing them is not always cheaper. It is simple, today “time is money” and everyone who’d sewn anything in their life will know that it takes time even to make the simplest thing. However, MONEY IS NOT EVERYTHING!

So here is why I am into mending kids clothes

Take my son’s pants for example. He loves wearing them and this pair will fit him for the next two years size-wise but they got a rip on the back. I am guessing it was the slide. There is also a rusty stain on the left pocket that I didn’t seem to be able to remove. Frankly, I am not good at that, I already wrote about my stain removing skills before. So I asked P what to do with these…

See, children today don’t have a sense of where stuff comes from. They think water comes from the tap and stuff comes from the shop. When you say you have no money, they will tell you you have your card so you just go get the money from that machine. Break a toy, throw it away, buy a now toy…this is how life goes now. And I sort of don’t want that.

Don’t get me wrong, I am nowhere near revolutionary, I buy stuff too, probably too much of it. But, at the same time, I know how much effort and skill goes into making a piece of clothing like the above pants with a small hole on the back. I also know that the person who made them was probably underpaid and overworked, and I know that I will not be able to make myself sew pants like these, because it is just to time consuming and detailed and because I can buy them for a ridiculous amount of money.

It is important to show our children there are options. It is important to show them how all that stuff comes about and that it is not just there to be served to them. Mending things (not just clothes, anything) is practicing creative thinking, as well as making their own toys or maybe jewelry.

Problem-solving skills are important and they can’t be practiced by getting everything ready-made.

So, back to our pants. I asked P to think of a way to fix these pants so that he could continue wearing them. Here is what he came up with (with help, of course, help is always allowed)

The best thing about this project is that you don’t even need to be able to sew. These knee patches are iron-on, I did sew around them, but that is totally not required. The whole thing looked great even just with the patches on, but P insisted on drawing a face, and WHY NOT? Right?

To recap, why I mend my kids clothes:

1. I don’t want to create more trash, there is enough of that in the world.
2. I like my kids clothes and I want them to be able to wear it longer, because they can – and have fun in the process.
3. I want my kids to know stuff doesn’t grow on trees and that for everything we use someone else needs to make an effort.
4. I want my children to learn to become problem solvers, and they can as well start with making faces on their butts.
5. Most importantly, because it is fun and rewarding. Because every time I see them in their handmade, prolonged life expectancy clothing I want to yell to the world I MADE IT, WE MADE IT, it was fun and it cost me some time and some thinking, which nowadays we don’t do enough of anyway.