I just made a discovery that changed my life for the better.
If you've read my blog before, you know that I have active young boys who love to play outside and who are very hard on my quilts. I'm sure you can imagine what they do to their clothes.
For years, I've been hearing stories of these moms who buy quality clothes on ebay or at the consignment shops and then resell them for the same amount once they're outgrown. I can't keep my own clothes that nice for six months or a year, let alone my children's clothes! (I'm also absolutely terrible at packing away outgrown clothes and then pulling back out at the right time.) Clothes are the last thing I want to lose sleep over and pretty close to the last thing my sons care about.
We pick up stuff at the thrift shops when we can, but there isn't a lot out there in their age range. My theory is that I'm not the only one whose boys destroy their clothes before outgrowing them. My daughter, on the other hand, found all of the cute clothes all the time, for dirt cheap. She still does.
The other problem is that, new or used, everything has a character on it. Thank God for Minecraft and Five Nights at Freddy's and zombies because my boys who don't care about clothes do have very strong opinions about Batman or Minions or whatever else is exciting everyone but them right now.
Now on to my fabulous discovery...
Did you know that the Dollar Tree sells t-shirts?
They sell t-shirts that will fit my younger sons. For a dollar. Last month I went through and picked up half a dozen...and then tucked them away for those days when we're going out and need something that isn't ripped or stained or stretched out of shape. I'm using the Dollar Tree shirts as their "good" shirts. This means they can wear the shirts they like every day and when we go out to an event we don't have to worry about offending someone with zombie or video game themed shirts. Or getting a favorite shirt stolen from the locker room at Swim N Gym, which happened a couple of months ago. Shoes and pants and underwear and glasses are easier (even if they're more expensive) to replace than that favorite shirt from our last vacation.
As long as the shirts fit and are a decent color, the boys are happy. I've got the idea that we could try freezer or bleach stenciling on them, but that hasn't happened yet. And they might as well wear them until I get around to it.
That's nice to know. Those make good cover-ups for painting. My four year old granddaughter lives with me and her DaDa (my son). She is hard on shoes, but not other clothes. She is death on toys. I think in the eighteen months that she has lived here, she has destroyed more toys than both of my children did in their entire childhoods. She does not seem to have any remorse when she destroys a toy. It does not phase her at all. She tore an entire stuffed animal apart except for the head. So, her had took the rest of her stuffed animals off of her bed. She put all the stuffing in a drawer in her bedroom to hide it. She did act sad at all that all her stuffed animals are gone. I don't if the fact that her mother (and basically all of her mother's family) hasn't been in her life for 18 months gives her a feeling of abandonment so she doesn't know how to deal with the loss of toys. Now, if she thinks she might be left at home by herself, she is terrified and I have no idea where she got that because we have never left her. If she has to get her shoes on and thinks we are going out to the car, she just freaks out. All that from a t-shirt and not taking care of them.
ReplyDeleteMy daughters do not like to have all the characters on their kids shirts so we often find t-shirts at Michaels. They are more than a dollar but there are no characters on them.
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