While I’m busy painting my kitchen, here’s a guest post from Rachel McGladdery, with her thoughts on modern living. If you are a parent, I’m sure you’ll have some sympathy with her point of view. You can get in touch with Rachel via twitter or leave a comment here.
I’ll be back when I have figured out how to justify the cost of my new lovely curtain material!!
The New Austerity
I read with interest (and not a little panic) about other people’s gratuitous spending in the run up to last Christmas.
I have four children, who had been harassing me since the clocks went back about what they wanted this year. The harassment took various forms, from my eldest boy (14) who brought me the catalogue, showed me a variety of extortionate jeans and sweat tops emblazoned with Brand Names and asked me “What’s the budget then?” to the youngest girl (3) who sat in front of the television shouting “Want that, want that!” at anything featuring pink, fur or sparkles.
My younger son, at 12, is on the autism spectrum and wanted an axolotl or a corn snake. He asks for them each year and so far I haven’t relented as I am too aware that his small sisters will be more than happy to release them or feed them tinsel, plus, I don’t agree with keeping animals (exotic or otherwise) caged. And neither does Santa!
I was aiming for a small scale Christmas. For the past decade my sisters and I have lovingly spent November and December knitting, baking and crafting presents for each other in an attempt to save money and to regain the ideals of the season that, to be perfectly honest, we didn’t have for starters back in the 70s when we were growing up.
It just strikes me that we all have Too Much Stuff. it appals me that even by Boxing Day, most of the children’s presents can be found in bits on the bedroom floor or jammed in the vacuum cleaner hose. It is such a devastating waste of money, and time and thought.
A few years ago, I admitted to my ageing grandma that we were late to school one day as I couldn’t find my son’s shoes. She was shocked to hear that in a 3 bed-roomed house I could lose a shoe, she then gave me the lecture….. she had raised 4 small children too , she laid out their clothes each night before going to bed and never, ever lost a single item. It was unthinkable, things like shoes were far too precious to be allowed to be mislaid. I felt chagrin, all absolutely true. Now that we can buy a new pair of socks for a quid, we have lost the gentle art of darning, we feel no shame at chucking away a worn pair of shoes that as a child, would have been ‘Araldited’ and polished back into usefulness.
I think the time is ripe for a sea change. We should embrace the spirit of Make Do and Mend, as our grandparents did.
I asked Grandma about the realities of raising a family in the 50s. Each child had a set of school clothes, a good set for parties and the like, and a set of playing out clothes. She laundered once a week apart from ‘smalls’ which were hand washed and dried in front of the fire (I thought of my brood and the huge washing piles they produce, incapable of keeping an outfit clean for less than a few hours, not to mention the clothes washed, ironed and put away in drawers that end up on the floor in the usual 7.30 dash for clean boxers and PE shorts) My mum and her brothers and sister wore pinnies in the house to keep their clothes clean, so they stayed wearable till Friday when they were washed. Imagine the bedrooms I thought, just a drawer for underwear and 3 outfits (plus coat) in the wardrobe. In fact, in my grandma’s house in the 50s, there was only one wardrobe, in the master bedroom, simply no need for one in each room. Toys were put away when not in use. Books lived on bookshelves. Simple. Tidy. Environmentally friendly! It seems unthinkable right now that we could endeavour to be like that in the noughties but, thinking about it, it seemed unthinkable in the wasteful 80s that we would all be growing fruit and veg in the back garden and keeping chickens, yet not only is this not looked upon as being cranky, it’s pretty much the norm, it’s even reached children’s telly and how’s that for mainstream?
I could throw out three quarters of the contents of my children’s wardrobes, I could go out now (if I had the dosh) and buy my children’s next outfit from a quality outfitter, forgoing the 3 for a tenner shops. hey, I could even scour the charity shops for decent hardwearing clobber then make sure it is well looked after, mended as necessary, given the space to hang it deserves, I could make my children wear pinnies and refuse to put the washer on more than once a week. I could tidy their rooms in half an hour, spend a fraction of the usual time ironing. I could use that free time to dig the garden over, handcraft exquisite presents for next year, make my own sloe gin, jam, Christmas cake, bask in my own self-righteousness.
Hang on, maybe I’m getting ahead of myself here. I don’t for one minute think that I could do this unilaterally. Though I’m happy to be a pioneer of the New Austerity, I doubt my kids are….this is something that needs to be embraced by the whole community, The basic ideology is sound though , and infinitely feasible. I urge us all, this year, to eschew the cheap sweat shop tee-shirts that will twist into unrecognisable shapes after the first wash anyway, save that tenner and wait till you have the where-with-all to buy something properly finished and launder it with care. We can do this people! We can beat the recession and the washday blues in one fell swoop!
Now ‘scuse me, I’m off to the Charity shop to find a well made pair of jeans in waist 26, then I’ll sit in front of the wireless and hand embroider a brand name on the bum, can’t wait to see his little face on Christmas morning next year!