11.18.2008

The Fourth R - ReWear




We recycle, we renew, we re-use, it's now time to re-wear ( outer clothes, I mean!!!)


Re-wearing cuts down on washing and helps make your clothes last longer.

Strategies for introducing re-wearing into your household.


1. Have 'town clothes' and 'house clothes'. You get dressed in your house clothes, do your jobs and then put your tidy clothes on to go to town, meet friends for coffee, have an appointment etc. When you return home, hang your 'town clothes' up, after all you have only worn them for an hour or so and continue working in your 'house clothes'. This will help your 'good clothes' last longer as they are no being worn as much.

2. Wear an apron when you are cooking and cleaning to protect your clothes.

3. Your children can have a set of 'after school clothes' that could last quite a few days. They can change out of their uniforms and be in their play clothes for those few hours between school and bath time. They can then fold those clothes up before bedtime and get another afternoon out of them.
Some days these strategies are completely impractical! Especially when after school activities include digging in the garden and playing in the mud.

I am certainly not advocating that we get around the place looking and smelling like an old tramp, but in a world where we wear things for one hour and then advertisers tell us that they must be washed with expensive brand named powder, with an added 'brightener' to the wash, followed by a fabric softener and ironed whilst being sprayed with a fresh smelling ironing aide, there are lots of opportunities to re-wear some outer clothing. It's great for the environment, it saved us money and most of all cuts down the amount of washing.

It's worth thinking about.

3 comments:

Jan said...

You are absolutely right! We have practiced that for along time. DH wears "go to work pants" at least twice and sometimes more. Work clothes are worn most of the week. Only the unmentionables are changed daily!

Anonymous said...

Great post. I have shared it with my Flylady support group. We all need ways to re-duce laundry

Anonymous said...

Good post. When I was growing up on the farm, we had three sets of clothes:

Our Sunday clothes - our best and newest.

Our School clothes - the ones that used to be our Sunday clothes.

Our Every-Day clothes - our oldest ones, only worn at home.

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