And a habit is born. Whether it’s sit down or take out, it’s you and the spousal unit NOT sitting down and eating together at home. Whether it’s at the counter, at the table, or in front of the tube (which Aunt Toby does NOT advocate, by the way), eating at home is almost always less expensive and more nutritious than eating out. You have complete control over what is on the plate Chez Your House, which is difficult to achieve eating someplace else.

Now, if you have kids, this becomes even more expensive and kids get very easily lured into the habit of eating out and the general taste of stuff that comes on the plate when you eat out or eat take out. Something most of us don’t realize is that little kids don’t have strong food preferences; as a matter of fact, if you have a baby and want to make your own baby food, you should not put in any salt or sugar because first, those are two tastes that babies’ tastebuds are not sensitized to, and second, the more and earlier you put that into food that babies and children eat, the more habituated they become to the flavor of having that in their food. And they expect it and want it. And the more kids eat out, the stronger their attachment to those flavors are because there is more of that stuff in commercially prepared foods.

So, let’s say you want to cut down on eating out, for whatever reasons make sense to you: saving money, dietary issues, just spending more time together as a couple or as a family. Whatever. But you get pushback. People miss going out. There’s a lot of whining. “Let’s just call out for pizza, Mom….”

And the cycle starts again.

At Chez Siberia, when the Little Siberians were indeed little, there was a period of about 7 years when we struggled. A lot of clothing and shoes got handed down, down, down; A lot of ‘no we can’t’ got expressed, which made the Little Siberians very very grouchy. They wanted to go out to eat. We couldn’t afford it.

So, we invented ‘playing restaurant,” which is that we gave the kids the opportunity to come up with a dinner menu on a weekend day (and they were usually really good about filling in a format that had a meat, a couple of vegetables, a salad, and a dessert). We gave them free run of the cook books, the table linens and dishes so that they could set up the dinner table in as fancy a way as they wanted. They would pull out the crayons and construction paper and come up with fancy menus and we would all cook up a storm. Then, at the appointed time, the DH and I would go upstairs and change into ‘adult’ clothing; the Little Siberians would put on fresh aprons and we would go outside the house and make a big show of ringing the doorbell. The Boy, who was the littlest at the time, played the part of the host, with one of his sisters taking the coats. Our eldest would be standing at the table to seat us and give us our menus and then they would serve us and get their own dinners. For the price of less than one person’s dinner out, we were able to serve all of us and have leftovers for the week.

They had been in restaurants often enough at that point to ask us how everything was; if they could get us more water and so on. It was all a lot of fun and frankly, I think it also sowed the seeds of the people they are today, who like good food, who like to cook, who appreciate attractive presentation, and dearly love other people saying, “mmmmmmmmm.”

And frankly, it’s one of the activities that got us all through a pretty tight period.

Something to think about.

But here is as good an example and demonstration of the unfairness of it. I recently bought these shoes. Now, never let it be said that Aunt Toby doesn’t look for quality but in terms of women’s shoes in this country, the whole issue of quality is moot. If you can find a pair made out of leather with a supportive inside that fits you and is comfortable, that is almost the most you can expect. The concept of a ‘quality women’s shoe’ just doesn’t even come into the same radar screen with men’s shoes. A large part of that is the whole ‘women buy for fashion; men buy for wearing..and wearing..and wearing.’ So, men by and large are willing to spend a good dollar for a solid pair of leather shoes with good soles and heels that they will wear to work. They might have two or three pairs of shoes that they wear to work and rotate through during the week, but those are still pairs of shoes that are being worn 260 days a year and will usually last 3-4 years if they are cared for. If they are taken to the shoe repairman for new soles and heels and cared for, then they can last decades. Why? Largely because the inputs into the shoes are tough and first class: heavier leathers, solid soles (with multiple layers of tough materials in them) and heels.

Women’s shoes? Not so much. And these shoes “ri-cheer” are a good example. Yes, they are leather and they have an absolutely fantastic insole system (which is frankly why I bought them; I wear a 6 D and have some, ahem, foot issues, so a shoe that I can put on where my foot let out that “ mmmmmmmm” is a shoe that I am going to buy. If it is fairly stylish, that is the cherry on the sundae). They are a heeled oxford style, which has been fairly popular for the past couple of years and continues to be so.

But the heels? OMG. Unlike the heels on men’s dress shoes, which by their nature are flat and broad, and solid, heels on women’s dressier shoes are plastic. Now, I’ve seen some that are solid plastic, solid plastic which have been covered with the same material as the shoe body is, and then there is this type here: hollow. With a tap at the bottom that fits in like a plug.

I caught the edge of the tap and it yanked right out. The heel itself is attached to the shoe with adhesives and perhaps some sort of nail-gun/staple affair, but the tap at the bottom of the heel just fits in with two little plastic extensions. You can see that in the photograph. But the tap was not glued to the heel itself.

Cheap. Very cheap. And the horrible thing is this: Luxury brand shoes are made…just…the…same…way.

In the same factories in China.

OK..so I really liked these shoes. That foot bed ‘had me at hello’. So, here’s how to fix this – this is a repair you really and truly CAN do at home.

All you need:
Roll of duct tape or other non-stretchy, tough tape
Adhesive that will work on plastic, leather, glass, metal (not wood or carpenter’s glue).
A toothpick or Popsickle™ stick to put the glue onto the tap
A paper towel

How to:
Pull out the tap a little bit more so that you have room to work in terms of getting the glue onto the surfaces.
Squeeze out a bit of adhesive onto the toothpick or stick and carefully smear it on the inside surface of the tap AND onto the matching edges of the heel.

Carefully squeeze the tap back into place so that the extensions go into their respective holes.

Press down hard.

Put the shoe ON and with a piece of newspaper on the floor or something else to protect the floor, step down and put your weight on to the heel. Take the shoe off.

Using the paper towel, wipe off any of the adhesive that has been squeezed out between the bottom surface of the heel and the tap.

Take about six inches of duct tape, and rip in half the long ways.

Take one piece and put in over the tap and pulling slightly, stick it to the side of the shoe. Do the same thing to the other side of the tape and the other side of the shoe.
Let dry and cure overnight.

Now, it’s not that Aunt Toby and the DH are willing to sleep on burlap sacks. A good closely woven cotton (ok, perhaps with a bit of poly in it) sheet set is a joy to sleep on (especially after they are freshly put on the bed, after you’ve had a nice hot bath, and..oh, we won’t go there) and anything else can be frankly annoying. But one problem with sheet sets is this: The sheet where, ahem, the rubber meets the road, is the sheet that starts to wear out first. And unless your linen closet is stocked 100% with one single color (no prints, no weird stuff, no 1970s hippy dippy Indian prints in gold and burgundy) and it’s the same color, then if you wear out the bottom 25% of your bottom fitted sheet (I’m talking to you, Mr. “Won’t trim the toenails”), then you have a flat and two or more pillow cases that do not go with anything else.

Instant candidates for the rag bag or out into the garbage and off into the landfill far away. And usually that flat and the pillow cases are in just fine condition, thank you very much. So, pitching all of that, no matter how much you paid for the sheet set can be more than a bit of a waste.

Many of us who read Laura Ingalls Wilder’s “Little House” series may recall her description of making sheets: Because the looms for muslin did not make the fabric wide enough for sheets, the girls and women would have to take two lengths (long enough to tuck under the mattress at both ends) and oh-so-carefully seam them up the middle with teeny little stitches, in a flat way, to make two flat sheets (America had to go without fitted sheets until an African America inventor, Bertha Berman, was awarded the patent for the invention in October, 1959. Bertha Berman Patent).

The really good thing about linens, under the Laura Ingalls Wilder regime, is that as the middle of the sheet wore out (and the middle of the sheets always wore out first, especially if one sheet was perpetually used as the bottom sheet), the household sewer could take out the stitches, flip the two halves and resew up the outside edges now to the center seam and the center area which was now worn, would be on the outside. The sheet would wear evenly that way and by the time it was done for, it really was worn out and probably would be taken apart, sewn up into something like curtains or used for other things. Once America had two nice matching flat sheets, households could just rotate through the flats and wear them out evenly that way also.

But we, post-Bertha Berman, buy our sheets in sets, with only one fitted bottom sheet, which wears out and leaves us hanging out there with the extra flat sheet and the pillow cases. Cannon Mills, et al. should raise their glasses on a regular basis to Bertha Berman for insuring that they have a steady market in households that have to throw out the usable rest of sheet sets and buy entirely new sheet sets just because the fitted bottom sheet has worn.

And so, Aunt Toby and the DH have found themselves with a bottom flat queen sized sheet from a very nice set which frankly someone (cough) put his toe nails through … and which I am not willing to pitch. I realize there are people (I can hear the eyeballs rolling back into people’s heads right now), regular readers all, who are now saying to themselves, “Oh, no, now she’s going to tell us to repair the damn sheet.”

Yep, that is exactly what Aunt Toby is going to show you how to do. This is frankly a patch job. I admit it, but it’s at the bottom 25% of the sheet; no one but the inhabitants of my bedroom will ever see it and all it will do is provide the DH and me with a certain feeling of Puritanial thriftiness that a) we could still keep using all of the sheet set and b) that we would not be putting more stuff into the landfill that truly does not belong there.

Here’s what you do:
Using a lightweight iron-on fusible interfacing, pull the edges of the rip together and iron a piece over to hold everything in place. If there are other odd holes, patch with small pieces.

Make two patches. The first one, for the underside of the sheet, should not only go over the ripped places, but over the entire worn area. If you are not sure how far that extends, hold the sheet up to the light – you’ll be able to more easily see through the worn area. Make the patch for the underside slightly larger than the worn area, pin on top and sew that on. Don’t bother with hemming the patch; use your zigzag stitch. I also go across a couple of times to hold everything in place. The second patch, for the top, should just go across the actual rip itself. Between these two patches, you will have a solid, well wearing area that should withstand even the thorniest toe nails.

Fabrics to use. On this sheet, I used a shirt weight linen – because I’ve got it from a project I did for the DH. Other fabrics you can use are muslin (regular or bleached, though bleached will not wear as well; bleaching will weaken the fibers). Just make sure the fabric has been washed in hot water, dried and ironed flat.

Happy sheets!

He thought it might be ‘some sort of twill’. Several of us recognized immediately that what he had was not twill but I thought that perhaps a little bit of information on what twill is…and ain’t..might be useful.

The picture at the top is a twill that is probably the most accessible and well known to all of us – and that is denim. I put the pen in the picture to draw your attention to the twill weave effect, which goes diagonally on the goods. That picture was taken straight down the leg of an old pair of blue jeans, so although the ‘straight of the grain’ is vertical, you can see that the twill effect runs diagonally.

The definition, per wiki: “Twill is a type of fabric woven with a pattern of diagonal parallel ribs.It is made by passing the weft thread over one or more warp threads and then under two or more warp threads and so on, with a “step” or offset between rows to create the characteristic diagonal pattern. Because of this structure, twills generally drape well. Examples of twill fabric are chino, drill, denim, gabardine, tweed and serge.” Twill

The one thing this definition does not mention (strangely enough) is that this structure does something else for fabrics: It makes them extremely “hard wearing”. Look at that list and what many times these fabrics are used for:
Chino: Men’s work pants and hot weather military uniforms.
Drill: Men’s work clothing where an element of protection is required; also used as coverings on items that have to take heat such as ironing board pads. Usually light colored or natural and all-cotton.
Denim: The original American work clothing: blue jeans. The original fabric came in a dual fiber form: the dark blue was cotton and the white or natural was actually wool. You can still get ‘wool denim’ clothing and fabrics from time to time and it is a fabric that the Australian Wool Board has promoted (for obvious reasons).
Gabardine: The number of various fibers that this material can be made from are legion, but it remains that this fabric is used for nicer levels of office clothing such as suits for men and women.
Serge: This fabric is not as popular in men’s suits as it once was but was considered very hard wearing; one weakness was that it had to be pressed from the back through a press cloth. The fibers in the weave are so numerous that pressing from the front caused shine.
Tweed: The best use of this form of twill is in outerwear as the fibers in the weave are relatively coarse.

So, what was the fabric that the blogger got? It certainly had a pattern of parallel ribs on it, but the direction was horizontal to the straight grain of the goods. I just made a skirt (thank you; I couldn’t find a navy pencil skirt in my size any place. I had to make one for myself) out of the same type of fabric, though mine is a mixture of cotton and silk. This weave is called “faille” and can be found in many different fibers. The ribs are more pronounced than in a twill (besides the direction being totally different) and this gives the fabric entirely different qualities in terms of draping, durability and so on. In general, it is seen as a dressier fabric than twills are and is generally not used in items such as pants, where durability in the seat and inner leg areas is a concern.

So, from a ‘bang for your buck’ aspect, what’s your best choice? Well, for rough outdoor work clothing, denim and drill can’t be beaten. For suits with slacks, gabardine is best (and even better if you get it in ‘worsted wool’ or a ‘worsted wool blend’ as the worsted processing produces fibers with a hard finish, which makes the fabric even more durable). For women’s suits and dresses, gabardine is a very good choice as gabardine (especially in lighter weights) has a very nice drape but will also tailor well. For outerwear, heavier gabardines and tweeds are very good choices. Remember – hold up the fabric in the item up to the light and move one hand up and down so that the light plays across the face of the fabric and you’ll be able to see the diagonal rib effect. That way, you’ll know you have a true twill.

I’m here to shake the pompoms for vinegar as a utility item. If you are concerned about chemicals in the house (and I’m not even thinking about some little person getting their hands on oven cleaner out from underneath the sink), then Aunt Toby is here today to tell you that you all you need to clean stuff in your home is baking soda (another topic for another time) and vinegar.

And I’m not even going to tell you that you should be using one vs. another. I’ve used cider and white vinegars to clean with and they really are the same. Same strength, same result. Some uses I’ve put vinegar to which have worked amazingly:

Toilets, bathtubs, showers: We live in a hard water state. Stains the toilets, holds that nasty detergent/calcium deposits on the floors and doors of showers, etc. Vinegar, because it is acid, dissolves calcium (remember earth science and the whole thing with stalactites and stalagmites – same deal).
How to clean a toilet: You’ll need 1-2 gallons of vinegar for this, so buy the cheapest jugs of the stuff you can find. You’ll also need a bunch of paper towels. Do this when it is NOT freezing outside because you will want to open all the windows (it’s just that the smell will make you go bald, ok). Empty out the toilet. Yes, it’s gross. Use a yogurt container or something else that you will not feel guilty about throwing away to empty out the last bits at the bottom (yes, the last bits. OK?). Put a gallon of vinegar in the toilet bowl. Put paper towels all around the toilet bowl so that the surface above the vinegar to the top of the bowl is covered. Carefully pour more vinegar into the bowl so that the paper towels wick up the vinegar. Make sure the paper towels are clinging to the sides of the bowl. Close the lid of the toilet, close the bathroom door. If you have family members (ahem, teenaged boys) who would not think about using the bathroom while this operation is going on, take something like masking tape and put a big slug across the door, like crime scene tape and a sign: “Bathroom out of order” or something like that. Go do something else elsewhere for 30 minutes. Then come back, take out the paper towels and throw those away and using a toilet bowl brush (or if you are brave and have lost your sense of smell by this time, 3M ™ pads work great for this, scrub the inside of the toilet. Clean as a whistle. This even works on those nasty blue stains in the bottom.

It’s harder to perform the same trick on tubs, but you can dilute vinegar and scrub the tub and showers with that – 1/2 cup in a couple of gallons of water will do the trick.

DO NOT, I REPEAT, DO NOT MIX VINEGAR WITH ANY COMMERCIAL CLEANING PRODUCT (or ammonia or chlorine bleach or anything like that), THINKING THAT SOMEHOW YOU WILL PRODUCE SOME SORT OF SUPER-CLEANER. My mom tried that, and we found her unconscious on the kitchen floor. vinegar and water is great. Period.

Cleaning stained aluminum pots and pans: I love my heavy cast aluminum pots. They will outlive me, but sometimes you end up with stains on them or you burn something in them (yes, yes, I know) and you feel they are ruined. Au contraire, mes amis. Just take a half cup of vinegar, put in the pot, put more water in the pot, put on the lid and put on to simmer for 30 minutes (and yes, open the damn windows…). Stains gone.

Want to clean dishes and glassware and don’t want to use ammonia (and you shouldn’t you know) – put a little vinegar into the rinse water (takes the spots off if you live, as we do, in hard water country). Even if you don’t rinse it enough, no one will be poisoned by it. Little ones might end up making a face such as the one on the young lady above, but it is not poisonous, won’t freak up the environment or melt your pipes.

Great stuff. And oh yeah..it’s great for a lot of cooking, too, but that’s another topic for another time.

I finally came to the conclusion that no matter how much the DH truly WANTED to do rehab in the house (which needed it desperately – actually more desperately than even WE appreciated), he had ‘fear of screwing up’. So, he was great at starting…and abysmal at…continuing. Finishing was about as within his grasp as performing cold fusion on the kitchen table. The amount of money wasted on started projects was really bad.

When ‘an estate situation’ (ahem) brought me a bit of money, I did not stop, did not hesitate, did not even argue myself out of it (because we’d already decided that we wanted to stay in the house). We sat down with a contractor and talked about the house. We already knew what we were really good at – and we knew we were horrific at almost anything else.

If you want to save money on DIY – watching shows like “This Old House” is really sort of useless unless you grew up in a family where your father was a contractor, one uncle was a plumber and the other one was an electrician and you also had a finish carpenter in the family tree someplace. Unless you have spent your youth actually learning skills, performing tasks and so on, doing DIY consists of a whole lot of frustration. So it behooves you to sit down with yourself and family members (if family members are making themselves available to you) and being honest with one another and yourself. What are you really good at? And what do you suck at?

In our case, we are really good at: demolition, putting in insulation, painting and cleaning up. Even with living in the country (which in our case means that we could do electrical and plumbing if we wanted to and felt competent to), we find that it’s best to use the experts to do the really important stuff. This little video here is a visual tour of the very last room to be rehab’d at Chez Siberia. You see in it – the old leaky wood windows, the plaster work and the saw kerf made by our contractor to help us take out the plaster.

Important stuff includes: Things that will cause flood or fire, blow up the house, cause parts of the house to collapse or kill someone. Also, stuff that people actually SEE, like spackling and taping the seal on wallboard, the installation on the windows and all the trim work.

We’ve learned a couple of tricks from doing all the demolition work at Chez Siberia, which was built in 1939: the plaster work in the corners (see the video) of the walls and where the ceiling meets the walls was done on top of extruded metal lathing, which is really hell to try to pry off. We asked the contractor to run his Saws-all™ in the corners and the seams between the ceiling and the walls (see the video); at that point, we could use pry bars and a truly amazingly nasty tool that can make very short work (see the video). Believe it or not, we were able to take down all the walls in the room, get out all the nails and clean up in about an hour. Now, being that this was built in 1939, the plaster technology had already moved away from the multi-coat/wood lathe system to the first gypsum boards. These were about 18” wide (since buildings were being done with 2x4s 18” on center) and almost an inch thick, and as you can see from the video, once the DH had punched a hole in the wall and gotten his tool in, he could pretty much pull out the gypsum wall boards in rather large chunks. We threw all of that into wheel barrows outside the windows and put that next to the garage – we wanted to get everything done before we ordered the dumpster (a ‘tip’ for any UK readers; sometimes referred to as a ‘roll-off’ in other areas), which will be coming this week.

You’ll notice a couple of things in the videos – I showed the empty walls for a reason. As I mentioned, this house was built in 1939 – when we started this process two years ago, we had a lot of complaints about this house. It was cold; it was dark; it was unpleasant. There were people who did not understand why we did not just sell or use a bulldozer on it. The first room the DH and our son worked on was the kitchen, which was the coldest, darkest, most unpleasant room we had and almost immediately they discovered exactly WHY it was so chilly and unpleasant (the dark part had to do with the lack of windows and the fact that it faces the north side; the dark brown carpet and dark brown cabinets had nothing whatsoever to do with it – oh no, they did not..hehe). The entire rest of the house was built in exactly the same way and the video showing the walls after we got rid of the plaster board show it too: Right – there is nothing there. Zip. Zero. No insulation whatsoever. The entire house’s insulative quality consisted of dead air in the walls and wooden windows which a former owner had tried to improve with aluminum triple track storms and screens. Talk about your ‘triple threat’ in terms of energy savings: no insulation, old leaky windows and storms made with aluminum (which transmits the cold like nobody’s business). No wonder we could practically see our breath in the kitchen during the winter time. It WAS cold. The only thing that saved us was the fact that we had a closed in staircase between the kitchen and everything else in the house; otherwise the entire house would have been that temperature. As it was, the rest of the house was only marginally better; the livingroom on the south side, on sunny days, was a major improvement on every place else in the house.

So, the role for the DH and me, in terms of doing the DIY in this house – so that we really would save as much as we could while at the same time getting the quality appearance that we wanted, was our doing what we do best. We are not against people deciding to ‘learn by doing’ – but we felt that since we only had enough money to do it once, it’s better to invest the money in having people with the skills we did not have do the stuff that we are not competent to do. We’ve done spackling and taping – it never came out looking right. We can’t install windows properly. We didn’t try to do that. We can’t do trim work – a miter box may as well be a nuclear reactor as far as either one of us is concerned – the trim work that the contractor has done for us looks great and fits the rather strange walls that we have in several of the rooms. In an old house, sometimes you have to fiddle around with things a lot.

And that has paid off for us. This room is now ready for the trim work to be put in. It’s been insulated, wallboarded and spackled (and NO bumps or bubbles!!). We finished the painting this morning. It’s a great deal – worked well for us.
It’s great to work with someone who has a lot of experience in old houses. We had a contractor who discovered that the entire center section of the house was not supported the way it was supposed to be so that not only could we not put the ceramic tile on the kitchen floor without it cracking, but we were also in danger of losing said staircase as well (so, needless to say, some of that legacy money went into having an engineer look at the house, the basement, and Rx two beams, some cement slabs and four two-ton jacks for the basement). We also had someone who had the skills on his team to open up the staircase and move the thermostat so that the heating system in the house could be balanced — pretty much all the rooms on the first floor are extremely pleasant now. We also got someone who had the experience with old houses that he could crawl under our front porch and tell us what was absolutely necessary so that it did not fall down either.

But that doesn’t mean that you can’t work with your contractor. We saved money by doing the demolition and hauling ourselves. We saved money with painting (and by the way; the major way you can save money on painting is: buy the best quality interior latex you can get and choose…one color. We did and it saved us a boatload of money and we did not end up with cans of odd colors that don’t go with anything else. At the same time, we find that the color doesn’t look the same, depending on what side of the house the light is coming in and what time of the day it is – it’s as if we really did get four different colors of paint). Another way to save money with your contractor is to understand that they are in the business of selling you ideas and the more ideas they can sell you on, the more money they can make. So, it pays to know exactly what you want and unless the contractor can show you a much better technology or idea, you stick with it. Even with discovering all of those ‘problems’, it helps if your eyes don’t get too big for things like lighting, handles for cabinets, special systems inside cabinets, downdraft grills for islands built in the center of your kitchen and so on.

It also helps if you go into it with a budget in mind. Contractors really do understand when you tell them, “We only have xxxxx to work with; what can we get for that in terms of doing yyyyy? They will be able to tell you what they can do and what quality level they can do it at for a certain amount of money. But they do need to know if you have a firm idea of what you want to do. “A kitchen and 1.5 baths” is one thing; “work on the house” is just too amorphous to deal with. But especially if you live in a house built before 1965, however, you will have to expect to find problems, mistakes made by former owners, old technology, or totally missing technology, which may raise your budget considerably. So you might want to take the figure of the money you have, remove 1/3 in your mind and give your contractor THAT reduced figure so that when he comes to you and says, “We found a problem” you will have money set aside to deal with that.

At the same time, though, talk to your contractor about what you and your family can do. Most contractors will be more than happy to let you take care of demolition, hauling, painting, etc. – they can work up their estimate in detail and can, when you sit down with them and the detail, take items off as you divvy up the jobs.

And that way, you can get not only what you want, but also what you’ll be able to afford.

If you aren’t already, you may want to sit down to read this, because the things I’m about to discuss are considered unpleasant by a lot of people. Physical discomfort and even sickness, throwing money away, and contributing to larger landfills – all of these things can and do happen when you use… disposable tampons and pads.

Betcha weren’t expecting that!

Let’s talk money. I just did a little quick and dirty math. I can buy a box of 30 non-branded tampons from my local Tesco (UK supermarket) for about £1.20 (roughly equivalent to $2US); I can generally go through one of those boxes in 1 month, since my cycle is short and heavy (a lot like me, in fact, and in case you didn’t already know, having a 28 day cycle is fairly atypical, not the norm). That’s £14.40 a year, and I’ve been menstruating for about 15 years now; I’ve spent £216 ($354US) on tampons alone. Factoring in pads and pantiliners to deal with the inevitable leaks, spots, very heavy days and accidents over the course of a month, and I’m up to £1116 ($1829US), spent in the last 15 years. Assuming that I’ve got another 20+ years of this ahead of me, I could potentially spend more than $3000US to bleed on some cotton and then throw it away. And those are conservative numbers; there are some who estimate that the average woman spends around $6000US in her lifetime on disposable menstrual products. Call me crazy, but there are probably a million other things worth saving $6000 for.

To add injury to financial insult, tampons are actually kind of bad for you. TSS (toxic shock syndrome) is now firmly associated with tampons in the mind of the public, but is there more to be aware of? Most tampons are made from bleached cotton and rayon. The chemical process used to bleach the fibers in tampons has been shown to produce dioxins, which the US EPA consider as probable carcinogens. (Remember Victor Yuschenko, the President of Ukraine? Yeah, dioxins.) While the amount of dioxins found within tampons is incredibly low, dioxins bioaccumulate (build up in fatty tissues over time), and some researchers argue that any amount is unacceptable. In addition, Snopes.com reports that “conventionally-grown cotton is one of the most pesticide-intensive crops in commercial agriculture. About 10% of the world’s pesticides and 22.5% of all insecticides are used on cotton.” So what exactly are we putting inside ourselves on a monthly basis? (As a personal sidenote, I know I’m not the only woman who finds tampons to be uncomfortable; I don’t need to feel like I’m getting a pap smear every time I take it out with the fibers scraping up my vag.)

The cherry on the cake (as if we need one)? Where are all those used pads and tampons going? Your local landfill. 14 billion tampons, applicators, and pads end up in landfills each year. If we don’t want the earth to look like WALL-E-World, surely we have an obligation to stop with this.

Ok, scaremongering over. There’s hope, y’all. After thinking about all of these things for awhile last year and doing some simple internet research, I found out that we have options!

Reusable Cloth Pads

Guess what – ladies back in the day weren’t out growing and bleaching cotton so they could make disposable pads to stick in their underoos; they were using rags and washing them out after use. We’ve upgraded a bit since then, but honestly, there’s no point reinventing the wheel, right? Most modern reusable pads have two parts: a “case” and a towel insert. They can be made out of a variety of fabrics, but the basic premise stays the same: you bleed on them and then wash them out. Simple, honest, easy. If the thought of handwashing your bloody pad sends a cold tingle down your spine, just throw it into your washing machine (on the cold setting to prevent stains setting). Or, some people, who I would consider especially granola, like to soak their used pads in a jar of water and then use that water in their gardens. You can buy reusable pads in a variety of online shops (seriously, just google search “reusable cloth pads” or “reusable menstrual pads”), or you can sew your own! (This site has excellent guides and patterns to work from, and a good section on reusable pads on a budget.)

Menstrual Cups

Forgive me while I gush (har-de-har-har, no pun intended) for a minute. Buying a menstrual cup has changed my life. I don’t have to worry if I’ve got a tampon with me while I’m out. I don’t have to worry about pesticides leaching into my uterus. I don’t have to spend money on something that I end up throwing away after 8 hours of use. It’s heavenly.

Menstrual cups are what they say they are – cups that collect menstrual fluid. I’m not going to talk about the disposable kind that sits right over your cervix (much like a diaphragm) because they’re wasteful and often leak; their only redeeming benefit is that they can be worn during sexual intercourse, but it’s not redeeming enough in my eyes. The other, more wondrous kind is bell-shaped and flexible, and either made out of latex or silicone. Menstrual cups have holes around the rim to create suction against the walls of the vagina so that the cup doesn’t fall out; unlike tampons or the disposable cup, these cups sit much further down, right at the entrance of the vagina. There is a stem that sits at the closed end to aid with removal if needed. Generally, cup brands have a smaller and larger size, and the volume of each cup varies by brand. Menstrual cups are made to last 10-15 years. I could potentially never have to replace mine! My cup cost £20 ($33US) – assuming that the average woman would have to buy, at most, 3 cups in her lifetime, that’s still only 3.3% the cost of what I predicted I’d spend with a lifetime of tampons and pads!

http://www.menstrualcups.org/ – This is an incredible resource, with extensive FAQs on cleaning, insertion, and cup brands, and a whackload of reviews. Highly recommended.

Please stop using conventional, disposable menstrual products. They’re not good for your body, they’re not good for the environment, and they’re really not good for your wallet. Do your research and find some better alternatives.

Creative Outlet. This is the ‘my eyes are bigger than my stomach’ situation – sometimes it is merely that people see clothing that they could not possibly afford to buy and feel their skills are such that they can reproduce the look for less. At other times, it is a case of people falling in love with fabric (whoever dies with the biggest stash wins) and are inspired from the fabric up. Another factor is actually practical: If you are someone who actually looks on a wardrobe as something that can be freshened up with the addition of certain more ‘on trend’ items (and by that I mean items in certain colors or prints or shapes) and you can’t find them in the stores (a situation your Aunty finds herself in many many times) in your size, or in a style that flatters you, sewing is an option. If you are the sort of person who would be wearing high end looks AND also have the skills to pull this off AND you value your time at $0.00, then you can definitely save money. As for stash-a-holics – as someone who not only has built her own ‘fabric edifice’ but inherited a stash from her mother and great aunties, Aunt Toby has to say, “I feel your pain, Sisters.”

Fit and Selection Issues: We discussed this in the first installment, but suffice it to say, a large majority of people who sew in 2009 are doing it because they are too something to fit into standard manufacturer’s fit sizing: too tall, too short, too round, too thin, low knees, high rearend, short arms, sloping shoulders, all the weight carried in the front, all the weight carried in the hips and thighs. Narrow shoulders with a big bust (Marilyn Monroe Syndrome). Wide shoulders and no bust. For everyone who ever stood under the merciless greenish yellow lighting of a try-on cubical, learning to fit and sew a decent shirt or dress will open the heavens to the glorious singing choir.

But let’s return to the ‘myth of the advantages of deep discount retail” and our illustration of the $30.00 dress (actually I got a catalog today from a mail order/on-line retailer which used to purvey $20.00 dresses – these dresses are now their $39.00 dresses. Such is the effect of rising expectations in China, where manufacturers having to pay their workers more – not appreciably more, but more nonetheless, thus giving them another excuse to increase their profit on each item). So, we are looking at the $30.00 dress, which frankly is mostly a fairly simple affair in cotton or nylon/rayon/polyester/cotton knit. It may have a zipper in it or may not. It may have a cheap lining in it; more times than not, it will not. It will be run through a ‘cover stitch’ machine which as you know, if you catch one of the threads and pull, you will end up with hems loose, seams popped and facings flipped out. This is a simple item to make – as long as the fitting has been done in the first place and the changes necessary to be made done on the pattern (or a muslin made and fitted), even someone with basic technical sewing skills can produce something that looks BETTER than what can be bought off the rack. And it will cost the same…or less.

The cost to make this sort of dress (unless it has a very full skirt, lots of pleats, fancy sleeves etc.), including fabric and a zipper would be something in the neighborhood of $20-$25.00.

Here is a nice simple dress, with or without sleeves, simple little dress

The amount of 60” wide fabric to make this dress is, depending on one’s size, 2-2.5 yards. I went to a couple of my favorite on-line fabric sites and the range of pricing can be anywhere from $4.00 a yard to $7.00 a yard, so let’s split the difference and go with $5.50. So the fabric is going to cost me about $12.00-$15.00, plus the thread and zipper, which will run another $3.00 together for a total of $15.00-$17.00. I’ll be able (because my local chain fabric store always has patterns on sale) to get the pattern for $4.50. And here is another secret to saving money with sewing: buy a pattern you like a LOT and make it multiple times. You get better at it and also it reduces the cost per use. But let’s say for the moment that you don’t. So this will cost you
$12.00 – 15.00 fabric
$3.00 zipper and thread
$4.50 pattern
Total: $19.50 – 22.50 plus your time

As long as you have the skills. This is the nut in this entire discussion. If you do not have the skills, you either have to acquire them (which is a joy in itself) OR you must pay for them. For what it will cost for you to get someone else to sew this for you, you may as well find a source of lessons, whether it is the local school district (some actually do have classes), a local fabric store (quilting lessons are usually easier to find than clothing sewing classes, but depending on where you are, this can vary – in larger cities this is easier to find). You can, if you are very very patient, make this dress with a needle and thread, but it might be better to find a good used sewing machine. These can be located everywhere – whether it is a school getting rid of their HomeEc sewing machines, or on Ebay, or a local sewing store , an estate sale or your local paper. Look for a good basic machine – the only stitches you will need are a straight stitch, a zigzag, and a stretch stitch. Those will carry you through sewing anything short of sail canvas and industrial work. If you feel uncomfortable looking for a machine, find a sewing machine repair shop and ask them to keep an eye out for a good basic machine for you.

Now, looking at the illustration above, you may be asking yourself, “Well, I’m still not saving as much money as I’d like – why shouldn’t I still go to the ‘naughty retailer’ and buy the dress for $30.00? Making this is going to take several hours – I’d rather use my time …blogging in my pjs in my basement.”

For those of you saying that to yourselves at this point, Aunt Toby says, “Go in peace…and keep rolling the bottom hems of your slacks and wearing your tops over the waistbands of your skirts and pants because the waistband does not fit..” I can’t fight that sort of argument.

But for those who are intrigued by the idea of this, Aunt Toby says, “Come closer – we will continue this conversation tomorrow…in the meantime, dream…dream of the perfect white blouse..that buttons nicely all the way down the front and does not gape right in the middle of your chest…”

(photo at the top is courtesy of …. ME — that is a shirt I made recently for the ever-stalwart DH, who deserves as many custom shirts as Aunt Toby can push through her trusty Kenmore sewing machine)

I am told time and again that I am wasting time and money making clothing when I ‘can buy it at deep discount at Wal-Mart, Target, Kohls, H&M’ etc. I am not going to get into an ‘ethical clothing’ discussion here. Your Aunty is going to stick to bottom line issues, which deal with ‘true cost’ of an item – what it costs from the time you acquire it until you pitch it into the rag bag, the bag for the charity, give it away, etc. Studies have shown that most clothing purchased from deep discount retailers (much of which has a high petroleum content) are actually worn very little and then thrown away. In the UK, which has a well developed ‘charity shop’ retail sector, this sort of clothing can never be resold and ends up in bales going to Third World Countries. In the US, a lot of it ends up in landfills. So, if we go to a deep discounter and buy a dress or a pair of pants for $30.00 (and let’s not get into the whole “I saw jeans at WalMart for $15.00 thing, ok? This is by way of illustration) and wear it twice, whereupon it falls apart in the washer or dryer, then the per wearing cost of that item was $15.00 a time.

So, let’s say you avoid shopping at the ‘naughty retailers’ and always try to get quality. There are plenty of places to buy clothing, but one of the almost universal problems that people have, unless they are of a certain shape and size, in terms of buying clothing is finding clothing that fits. When clothing does not fit well, people do not wear it often and it oftentimes ends up at the back of the closet or off to the Salvation Army. Again, another high cost per wearing.

We won’t get into the issue of ‘fashion’ or even ‘likeability’ – just ‘do the buttons gap in the front’ or ‘can I raise my arms over my head’ or ‘is it too tight when I sit down?” I do not care what size or shape anyone is – for all the petite, missy, plus, women’s whatever out there in retail-land, finding things that a) you want to wear, b) that actually fit and c)that you can afford is almost an impossibility. For those of us, ahem, of a certain age, the memory of clothing available in sizes such as: Child, Pre-Teen, Teen, Junior, Junior-Petite, Petite, Missy, Women’s, Half-sizes, and Plus sizes is but one indicator of what has happened in manufactured clothing. Child, Pre-Teen, Teen, Juniors and Junior Petites have been amalgamated into Child and Junior. Either you are 8 years old, or you are Britney Spears. Either you are 15 years old…or you are ready for the boneyard. And the loss of fitting opportunities has gone along with that because people change dramatically between the ages of 15, 20, 30, 40 and so on. So, finding things in styles that you want, that will fit you, and at a price point that you can afford is the Holy Grail of clothing. No matter how little or how much you are willing to spend or can afford to spend, the vast majority of us are faced with stuff that is not going to fit, which produces a situation which most of us are very familiar with: people who wear clothing to fit their largest measurement and then it is either too long in length, the shoulders are falling off, the sleeves are too long and so on. People are not looking or feeling their best in retail clothing. The answer to this many times is to have alterations done. If you have THAT set of skills, then you are home free. If you do not, the cost of them for most of us can be equal or more than sewing the item from scratch ourselves.

So, what can we do? That couple at the beginning had a goal of a sweater. The goal in clothing(besides coverage, warmth, protection from the elements, etc. – for the moment, we will not discuss ‘fashion’ or ‘managing perceptions through clothing’) is to be able to obtain clothing people are going to like and that they will actually wear – a lot. When you are able to do that, then you will not only save money up front but also all the way along the lifetime of the garment as it gets worn over and over again. It is a commitment and investment of time to do so but the alternative is a waste of money and time. Aunt Toby is going into this (and I am biased – I admit it) with the philosophy that the US retail clothing sector has nothing to offer those of us who are not built like the companies’ fit models and I also resent things falling apart in the washing machine. Being able to build fit and quality into a garment from the ground up, to me is an answer that works. It might not work for everyone, but I do think it works. So, what are the key areas to being able to do this?

1) What do you know how to do already? Producing clothing that looks good AND fits well takes two different sets of skills: fitting and sewing. There are millions of unfinished and finished but unworn items in bags on the floor at the back of closets all across America because the item did not fit or the item did not fit comfortably. Being able to fit a pattern to yourself or a family member is crucial to being able to turn out clothing that looks good and feels good. This goes double if you have kids that are entering their teen years and you want to sew for them or teach them how to sew. So, if you know how to put clothing together from your home ec class or 4H in high school but are not sure about fitting, then you need to buy a book, find a class, etc. As far as Aunt Toby is concerned, anything else you do in the technical sewing area is totally wasted if you do not know how to fit because all your work will end up wadded up in a bag at the bottom of a drawer or the back of the closet. Especially when you are sewing for or with teenagers (who have all sorts of body consciousness issues) you need to be able do this or guide them to do it themselves. If all you are able to do ultimately is produce a prom gown that your daughter loves, you will have saved a boatload of money. I devoted a lot of time and effort learning fit so that I could do this for my two daughters and probably over the six or eight formals I made for them, I saved several thousand dollars and the girls had gowns that passed the ‘twirl in front of the mirror and with smile on the face’ test.
2) What sorts of clothing are you interested in making? If you are the sort of person who needs more formal business clothing, it is definitely worth the trouble to take a couple of tailoring classes so that you can get jackets looking correctly. A skirt or pair of slacks does not require nearly the amount of fitting or technical expertise that a jacket does. If you can learn to make a solid tailored jacket with chest pieces, shoulder pads, under collars, bound buttonholes etc., then you will be able to make coats as well. These items are a major expense when bought ‘off the peg’ – it’s worthwhile learning how to do this. Some people feel that learning to make really expensive clothing items such as this is the only reason to learn how to sew.
3) Alterations? What if what you want to do is just to alter ready-to-wear? Doing alterations well is an entirely separate set of skills because what the sewer is doing is basically taking the clothing apart in the areas that need altering and grading in the alterations. Learning what to do and why and for what reasons (sloping shoulders, large bust on a narrow chest, large rearend, and so on) is an almost completely separate set of skills and experience. Most alterations folks come to it from a tailoring background anyway, so I’d recommend taking classes.

So, here is your homework: Think about the issue of clothing for you and your family. What are your needs now and for the next five years. Would being able to fit, sew, or alter clothing that your family will wear a lot be something that you’d be interested in doing? Would you like to gain a skill that you can share with your children? Let’s not get into the details now of “I don’t have” or “how do we do..” Just think about it as an family expense issue.

(Dressmaker’s form photo courtesy of misswired)

Please notice what the two ladies, out in some extremely cold and windy weather, are wearing and how they look. It was 27 that day and with the wind, the wind chill factor was 7 degrees F. Except for a couple of breaks, they were exposed to the weather for hours.

Mrs. Biden is wearing a wool coat and high boots. And underneath that coat is the dress that Cidell wrote about in the link above. This dress, as you will notice from the picture in the link, has little tiny sleeves. Yes, it is made from wool (but it is men’s wool suiting – not exactly a heavy fabric at all) and considering the price, is probably lined, but undoubtedly with the standard polyester or acetate dress lining which is thin, slippery, and frankly, not warm at all. Mrs. Biden is also a very thin person; she is not exactly carrying around her own “insulation.”

Mrs. Obama’s outfit has frankly become quite famous – for its color, its cut, the bow on the front and so on. What is interesting about it, though, is what it is made of:
Michelle Obama’s Dress

“Ms. Toledo, who has been making clothes in New York for 25 years, said the coat and dress were made of Swiss wool lace, backed with netting for warmth and lined in French silk.”

So, what Michelle’s dress had going for it in terms of warmth was: multiple layers of wool, silk (another wonderful insulative fiber), and from appearances, probably some other insulative interlining of some sort. It would not surprise me if both the coat and the dress had the thinnest weight of 3M’s Thinsulate™. She also was wearing a silk cardigan over the dress and underneath the coat. Michelle is also not as thin a person as Jill Biden, so she has some insulation of her own.

Mrs. Obama looked much happier and much warmer in her clothing than Jill Biden did. And if you saw any of the coverage of the balls, Mrs. Biden looked smashing in her strapless red dress, but she also looked, to me, tired and not particularly well.

I think she had, as my dear departed old Mum would say, “caught a chill.”

One of the ways to save money, frankly, is to keep yourself healthy. Eat well, get plenty of rest, drink lots of water, get fresh air and some exercise, don’t keep your living space so warm that it dries out your nose…and for heaven’s sake, dress for the weather and the temperature. Just look at those photographs of Mrs. Biden and Mrs. Obama – Mrs. Biden’s dress was stylish and fashionable to be sure, but it had no coverage for her arms and she had nothing between those arms and the outside except for that red wool coat…which looks to be a standard fashion lined wool coat. I’m sure the cold wind went right up her sleeves, hit her bare arms and chilled her terribly. I’m sure her memory of that day, one of the most important of her and her husband’s lives, is not her happiness or the pageantry or anything else. What I think she’s remembering is how cold and miserable she felt.