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Ethical Dressing
Jul. 30th, 2009 12:22 amRob and I have just sorted through piles of the children's clothes. I went through their wardrobes earlier and weeded it down to a reasonable number of current-use things and then Rob and I sorted through everything not already filed away and it's now all sorted by age, in boxes.
This is because buying ethically produced children's clothing is hideously expensive, so we've decided to re-use, buy secondhand, or get in vast sackfuls from friends with older children, wherever possible, saving the clothing budget for shoes (almost certainly unethically produced) and special dressy clothes for occasions. Oh, and coats. And emergency socks, pants and trousers when someone is caught short in the town centre. And so on. But the re-using policy requires a vast amount of storage. I'm not sure what our best method for that is, yet. I think we're using one 48-litre box per year, approx; the increased size in older children's clothes is balanced by how much less wet and mucky they get.
Sadly, girls' pants being what they are, most of those are unhandmedownable. The elastic gives way after a few washes, really. We have boys' pants which were used for a full year with better elastic than girls' ones in use only one month. Knicker elastic has a lot to answer for.
I tried to buy fair trade and unisex pants recently but all three websites where I placed orders were out of stock in any sizes useful to me. So we went to John Lewis who at least have a policy about being ethical, whatever they actually do in real life. They fall apart less than Primark or M&S pants, but they do still fall apart. Perhaps I need to investigate Mothercare.
This is because buying ethically produced children's clothing is hideously expensive, so we've decided to re-use, buy secondhand, or get in vast sackfuls from friends with older children, wherever possible, saving the clothing budget for shoes (almost certainly unethically produced) and special dressy clothes for occasions. Oh, and coats. And emergency socks, pants and trousers when someone is caught short in the town centre. And so on. But the re-using policy requires a vast amount of storage. I'm not sure what our best method for that is, yet. I think we're using one 48-litre box per year, approx; the increased size in older children's clothes is balanced by how much less wet and mucky they get.
Sadly, girls' pants being what they are, most of those are unhandmedownable. The elastic gives way after a few washes, really. We have boys' pants which were used for a full year with better elastic than girls' ones in use only one month. Knicker elastic has a lot to answer for.
I tried to buy fair trade and unisex pants recently but all three websites where I placed orders were out of stock in any sizes useful to me. So we went to John Lewis who at least have a policy about being ethical, whatever they actually do in real life. They fall apart less than Primark or M&S pants, but they do still fall apart. Perhaps I need to investigate Mothercare.