Garak’s Apprentice: efficient energy planning

Friday, 15 September 2023

Turning Bedsheets Into A Wardrobe and Other Second-Hand Thoughts

The Dilemma

When it comes to my clothes, I'm a remarkably lazy snob.

I want things that fit well. (This isn't an unreasonable thing to want, I feel.) I want comfortable fabrics that breathe, and don't end up smelling like a billy goat slept on them. (I swear, since starting T, I strip my shirts more often than I ever had to strip the cloth nappies.)

I want colours - black and white and grey don't count - that don't make me look dead. (When did all the t-shirts in the men's section become navy and olive?) And I want them to last longer than six months before they start a part-time internship in the mending box.

Clothes that need mending have been tipped into a rough pile on a striped blue picnic rug. There is an olive tank top, a navy t-shirt, a child's ombre blue skirt, a child's mid-blue satin-look skirt, a plaid long-sleeved shirt in red, blue, and white, a black t-shirt, a purple t-shirt, an olive t-shirt, and a child's pink long sleeved t-shirt.

The pile doth wax and the pile doth wane, but there's always a bloody pile.

This short list is surprisingly difficult to achieve, off the rack. Anything that fits my shoulders won't fit my chest, and vice versa. The armscye is usually either comically large, or too small to fit my biceps. And pants? Let's just not go there. (Belts help. Kind of.)