What is Old is New Again

Can someone be too picky when it comes to textiles? The reason I ponder this is personal. Recently I took a good hard look around my apartment and realized I live in a house that is a mecca of the reusable.

I loathe drinking from anything but glass tumblers. I wear wood and glass plugs in my ears that were my fathers. I wear my Great grandmother's vintage Ray-Bans because they are made out of solid carbonate and are sturdy. I even refuse to use disposable women's panty liners because I want flannel cotton that I can get in fun prints with Care bears and sock monkeys.

I want quality and I want it to last and become better with use.

Not so much for the environment but for the nostalgia and loathe of the feel of the "disposable".

It is a definite feel to things disposable. A realization that I have come to at 30 years that truly it feels better to buy something that is of solid substance. Something firm and tested that has stood, or will stand the test of time.

Here in lies the dilemma living in the land of the disposables.

It has been becoming increasingly difficult to find reusable things that are reusable as well. More lately I have been having to either cobble them together by myself, For example learning to knit to fashion; own pot holders, hats, arm warmers, and finally a tea pot cover. Or forced to find artisans and crafters who have taken up skills long since thought obsolete; Such as finding a "Horologist" (Clock Repair Person) to repair my grandfather clock or a seamstress to fashion me reusable menstrual pads.

Places like Etsy.com and Knitty.com and even Crafster.com thrive on creating communities in which the personal creative genius can flourish and fuel the individual to create, reuse, reduce and recycle things into art, home, and household. They are still the individual, the small, and the eclectic who latch on and stick with these ideas of keep it simple and keep it solid.

Magazines have even spread into this market further fanning the create juices but create a ironic dualism on every other page where ads scream "buy, gather, and dispose!" with magazines like BUST, Ready Made, and Real Simple Magazine. There is a genre for just about every taste in a touch of simple real ideas for ridding yourself of some stuff you might not need.

However, the industry of the future thrives on the youth of tomorrow gripping onto the disposable lifestyle and upgrading whenever something newer and flashier comes its way. This has been the way for centuries, but now we no longer donate our old phones, old clothes, or old cars. We want to get as much out of them as possible, sometimes ever hording them away just in case we can use them in the future.

However, think about that pile of stuff we all have. You know that stuff. The stuff you have sitting in that corner. The stuff that you couldn't tell anyone what it was, where it came from, or when the last time you even looked at it? Here is your challenge. Take that stuff, go through it and give away five things. Then take one thing you really truly have always loved and take better care of it. Maybe tell your partner about it, why you love it, what it does, how it works, or tell your kids why you want them to have it and why.

Because when we truly think about taking something in, taking care of it, treating it well so it will stand the test of time it will be there for a long while and it will serve us well. Is the concept that far fetched? I don't think so.