GRRJESSIEBEAR

1: Violet -11.4 2: Boone -12.8 3: Jane -18.9

4: Hans -20 5: Rilla -22 6: Peewee -29.2

7: Rocket -36 8: Louie -47.2 9: Yodel -50.5

10: Cesar -52.6 11: Boyd -89.6 12: Al -90.7

Seriously, this is such a great way to go about organizing your home.

I really can’t express how much easier your life can be when you accept that there’s no objectively right way to do this kind of stuff, especially when you let go of the idea that it’s a moral failure when you can’t do something the “correct way” nor is it evidence of you being lazy.

Like okay. People own more pieces of clothing nowadays and they wear them a lesser number of times before throwing them out. BUT.

Why do we pretend like this is pure vanity or careless wastefulness, rather than forced by the qualities of the clothes themselves?

The other day, I was going through boxes of old clothes in the basement in search of fabric to practice sewing on. The difference in quality of the fabrics themselves is shocking! The worn-out old jeans from twenty years ago are MUCH thicker and tougher than anything more recent. My old baby clothes are made as sturdy as my work clothes from today.

In the past couple years, I have had entire seams rip out of clothes on the first wash. That's not normal!

Polyester blend shirts that feel cozy and soft when they are new, become scratchy and rough after 20 washes or so. I am trying to avoid polyester, but it gets harder and harder; the other day i couldn't find a single pack of crew socks that was 100% cotton. SOCKS!

Also, pilling is out of control. The newest pants I bought developed pills within a single day of walking around campus with a backpack.

I still have shirts I bought in middle school that I have worn fairly regularly that are hole-free, or only have holes where there is more wear (e.g. armpits). The wear on them matches pretty closely with the wear on shirts I got in the last couple years. One shirt I got new just a year or so ago is practically dissolving - big ass holes all over, including several in the middle of the chest.

Peer-reviewed tags by @elprupneerg

I can confirm, it is getting harder and harder to find quality fabric for an affordable price. I can't even shop at Joann anymore, and they are the only option for a fabric store in most places that has any kind of variety in their apparel section and isn't owned by religious fundamentalists *cough* like hobby lobby *cough.* The quality of their fabrics has declined rapidly, even from before the pandemic! The only thing they have anymore is cheap synthetic fabrics, mostly polyester, and cotton which used to be decent and is getting worse by the year. AND they charge more for EVERYTHING now. AND they treat their workers like shit. (Like say what you will about hobby lobby and their fundie ideology but at least their pay scale starts at like $18 as opposed to Joann which was still paying $10.50 in 2022 and would never schedule me for more than 15 hours a week)

I know of a few boutique fabric shops but they either just have quilting cotton of varying quality or have prices that are plain unsustainable. Even the online shops I frequent are growing more questionable, and some mislabel their products so it's hard to tell what the fabric is made of or how much it weighs. The sites that are still mostly reliable for quality require you to shell out the cash.

There was one site, fabrics.com, I believe, that had a pretty good search feature and pretty affordable deadstock fabric, but it got bought by Amazon and eventually they shut down the website and subsumed it into Amazon marketplace, where it's impossible to search for anything and get reliable results.

3. Silkbaron.com for silks. REALLY great prices

4. wawak.com for sewing notions (buttons, thread, zippers, eyelets, etc etc etc)

5. tandyleather.com for leather and leather-related tools

“I had been at work about two months when Christmas came on – and here I must relate a little anecdote. The principal [the tailor] and his lady were invited to a party among their friends…while it devolved on me to stay at home and keep house. There was nothing left me in charge to do, only to take care of the house. There was a large cat that generally lay about the fire. In order to try my mechanical powers, I concluded to make a suit of clothing for puss, and for my purpose gathered some scraps of cloth that lay about the shop-board, and went to work as hard as I could. Late in the evening I got my suit of clothes finished; I caught the cat, put on the whole suit – coat, vest, and small-clothes [breeches] – buttoned all on tight, and set down my cat to inspect the fit.