Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without.

I abide by that principle when it comes to food. I map out my weekly menu around the perishable items I find in my fridge that will inevitably get thrown out if I don't put them to use. In other areas of my life, I'm not quite as conservative with my resources. I definitely don't subscribe to the practice of hoarding virtually everything in case of emergency. In fact, I LOVE to get rid of stuff. I call it simplifying. Tim calls it obnoxious.

So when Tim brought me six pairs of his "work" jeans last week, hoping that I could repair them back to usefulness, I cringed. The last patch I mended had to be sewn by hand - and it took almost two hours. Despite the cuteness factor of the result, it was difficult for me to surrender to my more practical side and restore what had become obsolete.
Luckily Tim's pants are large enough to warrant the use of my machine, cutting the time significantly and voila! Two hours later, I successfully turned six pairs of jeans into five. Which, for the record, included four crotches and four knee patches. And yes, we had both had a good chuckle over the fact that four of the five pairs needed the crotches repaired...



And here's the pair I refashioned for Lily: