Recycling Clothes
Two adjacent windows filled a small upstairs bedroom of a standard British semi-detached house with much-needed brightness of a summer afternoon. The solid oak mezzanine stairs cast harsh shadows – which cut the light into rectangular pieces – scattered around all surfaces but the mounted door on the opposite side of the wall of the adjacent windows. The wooden door floated right in the middle of the bedroom wall. "What an odd design" – thought everyone who visited the room. The peculiarly placed door hid something unexpected, something that would fill any Millenial with a sense of horror and despair. In life, there are many doors we are encouraged to open, but there are some doors which should remain closed and forgotten until we must open them again. This was such a door, a dreaded door behind which lay a pile of hoarded clothes: a wardrobe. However, this wardrobe was dreaded more than the rest thanks to its' incredibly inconvenient location and layout. That's right today was the faithful day I decided to clean out my depressing wardrobe.
Over the years, I have accumulated quite the wardrobe – from my "preppy" secondary school looks, through my baby bat years to my adult goth/hippie vibes. It's an eclectic mix to say the least. The clothes were kept throughout all these years because I always told myself that I would make use of them, then never have. I guess I don't like waste and I am quite sentimental with the items I purchase; however, it got to the point where I couldn't find the clothes I wanted to wear, so it was time to finally clean out the dreaded wardrobe.
I did use the Marie Kondo method of "does it spark joy?" but this is the only similarity to our approaches. I also kept clothes which I frequently wear and are the most practical with a few exceptions for party clothes since I don't want to purchase new ones and thus create even more waste. Where we differ is the disposal of unwanted clothes. I threw away only completely unwearable clothes. The rest of the clothes are going to be sold at a local car boot sale, and the better quality clothes are going to be sold online. Cotton fabrics were turned into rags to wash the house floors so that I can get the most use out of them as possible. Finally, the clothes which I won't be able to sell I will first try to give away for free and only then donate the rest. This is because charity shops already get a huge amount of clothes that they cannot sell, which means that a lot of donated clothes end up in a landfill anyway. It's always better to try and re-home your clothes yourself first before resulting to donations. I used to volunteer at a charity shop, and the number of clothes that we received was overwhelming, and a lot were unwearable. More carefully selected clothing that can be sold and is neatly folded will help out the volunteers a lot.
We live in interesting times. Some have nothing; some have too much. On one spectrum, too little can cause stress; on the other, clutter can cause anxiety. Sadly, we had to witness the rise of minimalism in the western world because people in developed countries have too much stuff thanks to the booming consumerism culture. We accumulate so much stuff that we even designated times of the year, like spring cleaning, to get rid of stuff so that we can make room for more pointless stuff. What's worse is that this behaviour is normalized in our society.
Like many others, I am joining a growing movement which refuses to take part in this any longer. Going forward, I will critically think about the items that I purchase and only purchase what I need. When it comes to fashion, the wellbeing of the people who make our clothes needs to be taken into account as should be the materials used to create a garment. There are many great ways to avoid fast fashion, such as buying second hand, borrowing clothes, buying from sustainable and ethical brands (if you have the means) and finally simply not buying clothes which we don't need. Wearing our clothes for longer, and fixing them when they rip also helps to reduce the amount of textile waste. Upcycling old clothes or repurposing clothes that are no longer wearable is also a great way to go. Bottom line is to NEVER use something once – make the most of the item you have purchased, be it an item of clothing or something else, and stretch it out for as long as you can. Down the line, adopting this form of consumer behaviour will also save you money which is always great!
If you would like to learn more about the impact of fast fashion, I highly recommend visiting the Fashion Revolution website and perhaps even signing their Fashion Manifesto, which calls for more sustainable fashion industry. The True Cost (2015) by Andrew Morgan is also a great source of information on the exploitative nature of the fast fashion industry.