The Gift of Thrift And A Happy New Year

The last day of the year is a good day for taking down and putting away stuff from the holidays. In our home, there will be a new addition to Bill's shelf of homebrew supplies: The feed and grain coop store in Antigo  added brewing and winemaking supplies to their inventory, and Bill got a 3-gallon glass carboy. It's rare for us to spend this much on a store-bought gift, but at 23 bucks there's no way I could acquire glassblowing tools, materials and skills to make a big bottle myself.

 
Bill got me a set of wool carders at the Sievers garage sale. Everybody else got something homemade. If you were to add up the time we spend making gifts, it would probably even out with the time other people spend going to jobs to earn money to buy gifts plus the time (and gas) they use to go shop for things to buy.

But making everything does take a lot of time, so Bill and I try to alternate who makes the bulk of our holiday gifts. This was my year. You can read how I used fabric reclaimed from thrift shop sheets and curtains, the indigo vat, and bits of fabric from my stash in my gift posts on Two Red Threads.

With holiday sewing done, I had a chance to catch up on some mending. The breeze at the knees was giving Bill a chill where his Carhartt work pants wear out. My studio jeans had a few breezes of their own.

I don't spend much time on these repairs or worry too much about how they look. Apart from an occasional quick trip to the post office, chances are nobody will see them but us. To us, they're just pants -- something to keep us warm, something to deflect sawdust and slivers and stray drops of dye. And to us, patches represent more than keeping garments out of the waste stream. They represent the way we stitch together a lifestyle measured less by our income than by the progress we're making toward our long-term goals.

In truth, it's a tight squeeze. We spend more on our monthly health insurance premium than on any other category of household expense, including our mortgage -- and that's with a $5,000 deductible. Unexpected medical expenses hit us this year, but then it's always something. You feel like you're getting ahead, and a vehicle needs a new head gasket. We don't take it personally. We just do what we have to do to keep our vehicles roadworthy and our bodies healthy and productive. We've been careful, and we've been lucky.

We're making do. And for that, we are grateful.

We hope that in the new year we all can find creative ways to meet the challenges ahead (whatever they may be), and continue to make ends meet without losing track of which ends are important. Happy New Year!