I have been hearing more about how people don’t wear most of their clothes and the clothes they do wear they only wear a couple of times before getting rid of it. This blows my mind. Today my toddler is wearing a shirt I bought for EC. MC wore it. Then we sent it off to the cousins and I think they each wore it at least a couple of times? I’m going to have this kid wear it until I can’t button it across her chest anymore.

One of the many blessings of moving to Scotland is I am getting a rather noticeable percentage of hand me downs back that started with EC. I’m getting all of my favorites back. And the other hand me downs are more weather/location appropriate than anything I sent over so it’s working out really well.

Because our stuff still isn’t here (GAH! I think the boat arrived last night! Progress!) I am living mostly in hand-me-downs from Jenny. I have also purchased two pairs of trousers that are more weather appropriate than anything else I owned for this area. (And a water proof pair of over-trousers.) I have a few jackets, one of which was purchased new here because I literally didn’t have anything weather appropriate. I have already worn it more times than the average number of wears for clothing?

I am very confused. How do people find the money and the time to shop? I feel dramatically inconvenienced by how often I have to enter a clothing store. I can’t imagine doing it 4 or 5 times as often. Baffling. Where do people get the money?

I do need to stop by a charity shop because YC is outgrowing the 2T stuff really quickly and her cousin is still wearing the 3T stuff. Soon they will be the same size and I can’t count on hand me downs to provide her entire wardrobe.

So I will go buy used clothing. Who in the heck needs all-new clothing?! I don’t get it. I’m also developing an interest in figuring out how to sew so that I can recycle used clothing into stuff that fits/is more my style. I can’t buy what I want off the shelf and I don’t need brand new fabric.

I want to figure out how to make skirts that are very adjustable in size. I go up and down and up and down and up and down. I don’t really want sized clothing. I used to have a wrap skirt I got from a Mennonite company. It was incredibly adjustable. The only trouble with it was that it was about 6″ too long to be serviceable for daily wear. I was not brave enough to figure out how to shorten it at that time.

Maybe I don’t want to make friends and instead I want to stay home and figure out how to do more things. I need time.

I’m not getting any younger and I totally don’t have all the skills I wish I had. Sigh. That’s life, right? Always more to learn.