Hello there! I’m Matty: your local internet funnyman, horrid necromancer, and metaphysical stunt double. They/Them pronouns. I am over 18, so if you don't feel comfortable with me following you please let me know - I’ll unfollow!
lots of people expressing disappointment that Zohran Mamdani is a Dear Evan Hansen fan. personally speaking I think it is good and healthy for the mayor of New York to have extremely basic taste in musical theatre. I don’t want someone in public office worrying about who sang “The Miller’s Son” the best. that’s my job.
The trouble with mending, and all the cute visible mending trends especially, is that mending is predicated on the idea that what you have is an essentially sturdy garment that has worn out in a high-wear area or gotten damaged/torn. Whereas what most of us are actually dealing with is cheaply made shit that has simply given out at the first sign of adversity. If you mend something that’s weak to begin with, it’s entirely likely that it will just tear at the edge of the mend, which will suddenly be the strongest part of the garment. Or if your shirt has worn through or ripped out at the seam, it’s just a crap shirt, and you can fix that seam, but another will give soon, and you have to make an honest assessment of whether the work you put in is worth it. My cheap Hanes white cotton socks blow out at the heels far faster than they ever used to, and fuck a bunch of that, but I’d never bother darning them. They’ll just blow out at the toes in a month.
I don’t have a solution to offer for this that doesn’t involve spending either more money or more time. It is still barely possible to buy quality clothing, but it costs more than most of us can afford. And you can still make your own clothing, but as the skills and tools become less common, it’s all the harder to learn. All I can say is look around, make a real assessment of your resources (like, say, Grandma still has a working machine and a stash of probably unfashionable but maybe cute fabric, or you think you can afford two pairs of good work pants a year and then keep them mended), and do your best.
Strategies to help alleviate this (not solve because that’s an industry+cultural wide problem, and like OP said it all takes at least more time if not also more money):
Have different nice clothes and clothes that you’re ok with getting worn down, it will extend the life of your nice clothes
Change out of your nice clothes when you get home
Get an iron and use it on your nice clothes between most wears and only wash every few wears or when there’s a stain or you got too sweaty (take care of your iron too, use filtered water in it)
When you wash your nice clothes, use cold water and then hang to dry. Hot water and dryers put a lot of wear on clothes
Get some wool dryer balls for when you use a dryer, it will speed up drying so you can also reduce the length of time clothes are in the dryer
This one’s hard: don’t overstuff the washer and dryer
Wear tank tops/undershirts. Thicker/higher quality clothing can be stiffer/more uncomfortable than cheap fabric so a tank can give you a buffer. It also helps keep your sweat off the clothes
Try going up a size when you buy new clothes, a lot of wear comes from clothes stretching/getting pulled around your body as you move rather than just the friction between you and the things around you
For socks: try loosening your shoes and cutting your toenails more often
Be mindful of how you take off your clothes, if you pull on the collar to take your shirt off, that’s where it’s going to start to rip
Be ok with small holes in your clothes. I agree it’s often a waste to repair but it doesn’t have to be trashed immediately
