September 4, 2018
Hand-Me-Downs
Driving to pick up a long-distance call, I was listening to Christian talk radio. A guy comes on talking about how he and his family love hand-me-downs.
I can totally relate! All my life I’ve loved, and lived in, hand-me-downs. When my kids get a bag of clothes, they all get excited. It’s sorting, trying on, modeling, and deciding how to “fix” something they love to make it fit (sewing skills). Anything we can’t use (and everything we grow out of or don’t have room for) gets passed on. We only allow them to keep what they can fit “in their drawers” and on their bit of hanging rack space. Rebeccah, who loves shoes, has created some interesting storage adaptations to stretch her allotted space to keep extra shoes.
Kids grow so fast! At one stage, Kimberly jumped through one full shoe size every month for about six months! During this same time, Jaquline sprouted through three shirt sizes and Rebeccah’s legs stretched by nearly a foot!
We had quite a few bags of shoes and clothes to give away! Most, we had received as hand-me-downs but they looked practically new! Lots of happy kids got to pass around clothes in this growth spurt. The girls like to plan who can get their clothes – if anyone we know needs them, if anyone is their size and is okay with used clothing, or if they know a friend who “loved” some outfit. Otherwise, we donate to Alpha-Omega or Betty Griffin Thrift.
The radio talk show guy was mentioning that he was super excited one day because a friend gave him some amazing hand-me-downs that were almost new and stylish. He was showing one off at work and realized he was wearing the emblem for a college he didn’t attend! So he almost felt embarrassed telling a coworker it was a hand-me-down. Then, he stopped. He said we are to be good stewards and trading clothing around if it still has wear in it is being a good steward of the materials (less waste) and finances (less purchases made). He told his coworker that the money he and his family saved on clothing allowed them to give more financially to charities they supported.
I had never thought of our hand-me-downs as “good stewardship” in that way! I have always told others that it saves waste (why throw something away when someone else can use it?) and it stretches our budget. I never actually thought of what I do with the money I save.
We do give a lot of what we make, sometimes we end up giving more in time than in money, but we still help in a lot of places monetarily.
When we do buy clothes, it’s usually underwear (I do buy that new from target on “clearance,” it seems some character is always going out of style), sneakers, or jeans. We go to the thrift shops on the day when said clothing is x% off or wait for an end-of-season sale (thrift shops do that too). So, annually, we spend about $300 on all 8 of us.
I never really thought about how much money I’d spend without hand-me-downs. Using thrift shop prices (I still wouldn’t buy new): I figured that for each growing child, I’d spend about $80 twice a year, and for each adult, I’d spend about $40 a year (what we already buy from thrift stores can’t be counted as savings). So for our family, that would be about (160×6)+(40×2)=$1,040 annually in addition to the $300 we already spend!
$1,040 is almost a rent payment.
That’s about three weeks’ of work.
Then I realized that I never buy anything new – furniture, animal cages, books, movies, games, toys, yarns, craft stuff… the list is endless. Except for food, most cell phones, a few tools, the coffee maker, most mattresses, and one computer, we’ve taken hand-me-downs or bought resale items when it comes to everything else. And we donate what we no longer need. Oh yeah, and the drum set was new – Louis got a full size eight piece drum set on a clearance sale for $120 about 10 years ago.
We save for items we want (like our couch). We had a hand-me-down one that served great for a while, but Louis wanted a big one that all of us could sit on at once and it would double as a kid bed when guests came. We ended up saving and finally bought a really nice used sectional that had two backless sections that doubled as storage (bonus & I love dual-purpose!) and seats six adults without using the backless parts – it was on clearance at Alpha-Omega Thrift so we spent only $165 of the $200 we’d saved for it. (Yes, Louis was shopping, so we ended up buying $35 of future birthday gifts while we were there.) And one of my sisters said “let me crash here, this is comfy!”
The radio guy quoted the scripture about “where your treasure is, there your heart is also.”
Yes, my treasures are in my children, my family, my friends, the really important things in life. Our hand-me-down and thrift-store lifestyle helps me to understand that even though we have some cool stuff, it’s just temporary and I’m not really concerned with it. I mentally note that I’m wearing sandals from one sister, a skirt Christina grew out of that was a hand-me-down from a friend, and a shirt from another sister… all hand-me-downs!
I’m sure the radio guy is right. Our family is able to do as much giving as we do because we don’t spend “full retail” on temporary items. Our treasure is in heaven. Our treasure is the character growing in our six awesome blessings on loan from God…
Thanks for reading!
Type at you next time…
~Nancy Tart