I think what you are doing is brilliant. Love the dresses. I sew, paint, up cycle things for the home and I have a vegetable garden every summer. I just found a sewing box at a thrift store for my 15 year old. She sews bits of this and that. I love to take old quality pieces of furniture and redo them. And I do buy second hand clothes. My 15 year old loves cargo shorts, they are hard to find new. I have bought her several pair for a couple dollars each. These are just a few things I do. Oh, I also hang clothes out to dry in warm weather.
It sounds like you’re on an amazing journey with all those things! I’m definitely still learning to sew but this project was a really fun one! I’m going to try a quilted jacket next I think!
Hi I have just found you and have loved the content I've watched so far! I am 53 and over the last few years myself and my husband decided we needed to do 'more'. We've gone from living in the city and relying on all the mod cons on offer. Online shopping - ✔ Not even considering our power / energy source and usage - ✔ The provenance of our food, hey Ocado delivers who am I to question?- ✔ Garden maintenance taking time? - No problem just lay huge amounts of artificial grass and gloat that come Winter we still look green -✔ Have I been guilty of buying new clothes without thinking and for with no event in mind but just because I 'liked them' - ✔✔ Even worse, did they languish unworn in wardrobes and not even returned? ✔ Absolutely! I allowed myself to even take the 'moral' high ground with this because I would then donate them to charity shops and so I was positively a hero for helping out right?! I admit to ALL of this with shame and a heavy heart. With our children grown and looking towards grandchildren arriving and inheriting the planet we stopped thinking about work and what made life easier for us, we stopped shaking our heads at the news or on reading the environmental impact to the world and realised change started with us. We sold the house, moved to the countryside, our 'artificial' always green garden is now 3 acres of field we have worked hard to re wild, planted many trees, grown fruit and veg with varying degrees of success! We have chickens and ducks who have the greatest of lives and give us our eggs. We have deer who visit (and sometimes destroy) and more wildlife than could be imagined. The gas guzzling cars have gone, we store solar energy in our batteries and bit by bit, day by day we are trying. The clothes however...for me that is not for the mister, has been the last thing to change. I still don't quite have my eye in on the charity shops, often finding it all just a little overwhelming and finding it hard to picture the wardrobe I have in mind. I do peruse Vinted often, but have found myself just looking at the tried and true labels I would shop from before because "well they were expensive so they must be ethical right?!" (insert huge eye roll here) So I (eventually) get to my question for you which brands do you suggest looking for? Do you have any clothing brands that you are comfortable in knowing the ethics behind and provenance of where they source? I, like most women in their 50's these days did not stop caring about style and resorting to frumpy mum wear the minute the clock struck midnight at 40 or the menopause fairy approached. So clothes that work for country living and tramping around outside all day are necessary but so is a little something to wear out for cocktails, a nice restaurant and theatre. Any advice would be hugely appreciated by both myself and the planet!
Thank you for your comment - I love hearing about your world and what you're doing. Your 3 acres sound incredible, you've been able to do a lot. I think so many of us have gone through those same thought processes as we've gone on this journey: the idea that expensive must mean things are done well. But as you said, sadly so wrong. Clothes can be so hard. They're so much a part of our identity and creative expression. I'll say I know there are a lot more small brands and designers doing incredible things, and I'm not that current on the landscape as more pop up all the time. But I'm always looking for real transparency on where things are made, for natural fabrics, low impact dyes ideally, and proof of a commitment to the environment and treatment of people - third party certifications are useful too but not everything. There don't end up being many that I feel amazing about but there are some gems. Are you in the UK or the US or somewhere else? I'll make some suggestions based on that!
I love your sweater! I wish I could find something like that second hand 😮
Thank you! This actually took a surprising amount of searching out cos I refused to spend more than £10 and I wanted wool! 😜
I think what you are doing is brilliant. Love the dresses. I sew, paint, up cycle things for the home and I have a vegetable garden every summer. I just found a sewing box at a thrift store for my 15 year old. She sews bits of this and that. I love to take old quality pieces of furniture and redo them. And I do buy second hand clothes. My 15 year old loves cargo shorts, they are hard to find new. I have bought her several pair for a couple dollars each. These are just a few things I do. Oh, I also hang clothes out to dry in warm weather.
It sounds like you’re on an amazing journey with all those things! I’m definitely still learning to sew but this project was a really fun one! I’m going to try a quilted jacket next I think!
Hi I have just found you and have loved the content I've watched so far! I am 53 and over the last few years myself and my husband decided we needed to do 'more'. We've gone from living in the city and relying on all the mod cons on offer. Online shopping - ✔ Not even considering our power / energy source and usage - ✔ The provenance of our food, hey Ocado delivers who am I to question?- ✔ Garden maintenance taking time? - No problem just lay huge amounts of artificial grass and gloat that come Winter we still look green -✔ Have I been guilty of buying new clothes without thinking and for with no event in mind but just because I 'liked them' - ✔✔ Even worse, did they languish unworn in wardrobes and not even returned? ✔ Absolutely! I allowed myself to even take the 'moral' high ground with this because I would then donate them to charity shops and so I was positively a hero for helping out right?! I admit to ALL of this with shame and a heavy heart. With our children grown and looking towards grandchildren arriving and inheriting the planet we stopped thinking about work and what made life easier for us, we stopped shaking our heads at the news or on reading the environmental impact to the world and realised change started with us. We sold the house, moved to the countryside, our 'artificial' always green garden is now 3 acres of field we have worked hard to re wild, planted many trees, grown fruit and veg with varying degrees of success! We have chickens and ducks who have the greatest of lives and give us our eggs. We have deer who visit (and sometimes destroy) and more wildlife than could be imagined. The gas guzzling cars have gone, we store solar energy in our batteries and bit by bit, day by day we are trying. The clothes however...for me that is not for the mister, has been the last thing to change. I still don't quite have my eye in on the charity shops, often finding it all just a little overwhelming and finding it hard to picture the wardrobe I have in mind. I do peruse Vinted often, but have found myself just looking at the tried and true labels I would shop from before because "well they were expensive so they must be ethical right?!" (insert huge eye roll here) So I (eventually) get to my question for you which brands do you suggest looking for? Do you have any clothing brands that you are comfortable in knowing the ethics behind and provenance of where they source? I, like most women in their 50's these days did not stop caring about style and resorting to frumpy mum wear the minute the clock struck midnight at 40 or the menopause fairy approached. So clothes that work for country living and tramping around outside all day are necessary but so is a little something to wear out for cocktails, a nice restaurant and theatre. Any advice would be hugely appreciated by both myself and the planet!
Thank you for your comment - I love hearing about your world and what you're doing. Your 3 acres sound incredible, you've been able to do a lot. I think so many of us have gone through those same thought processes as we've gone on this journey: the idea that expensive must mean things are done well. But as you said, sadly so wrong.
Clothes can be so hard. They're so much a part of our identity and creative expression. I'll say I know there are a lot more small brands and designers doing incredible things, and I'm not that current on the landscape as more pop up all the time. But I'm always looking for real transparency on where things are made, for natural fabrics, low impact dyes ideally, and proof of a commitment to the environment and treatment of people - third party certifications are useful too but not everything. There don't end up being many that I feel amazing about but there are some gems. Are you in the UK or the US or somewhere else? I'll make some suggestions based on that!
@thewholehome Thanks for the reply! We are in the UK x