Mending for Earth Day and Every Day

fixed sheet

Affiliate links may be included for your convenience. View our privacy and affiliates policy for details.

We have this sheet on our bed. I call it the cat blanket even though it’s clearly not a blanket.

The sole purpose is to keep the cat’s hair, muddy paw prints and whatever else off the sheets we actually sleep on. It’s on the bed all day and off at night.

Some months ago, it started ripping. It’s an old sheet, demoted from use as an actual sheet long ago. ripped sheet mending

It would probably make sense to just replace it with another sheet, but that seemed silly.

So it just sat there, developing a bigger and bigger tear. Sort of defeats the purpose of protecting the bed, right?

Today I decided to finally do something about it. fixed sheet

With the sewing machine and about five minutes I sewed up the tear. It’s not perfect; you can see that it’s been mended and it doesn’t lie exactly flat, but this sheet is clearly not about aesthetics anyway.

What Needs Mending?

There’s a lesson in here about procrastination, of course; I could have mended the rip when it was small and it would look better now than it does.

But the deeper point is that often there’s a really easy fix when we think something is broken or ruined or messed up.

The girl is always saying things are broken when, say, a wheel pops off a car or something like that. I say “it’s not broken if we can fix it.”

And she gets into that spirit, too, saying that I can fix things when they get torn or a seam rips out. I have a pair of her pants I need to turn into cutoffs right now because she ripped the knee out of one leg. (And another pair I need to try to dye because she got them all mud-stained.)

[Tweet “It’s not broken if we can fix it. A mantra for Earth Day and beyond.”]

The point is that we need to think about things before we just throw them away. If it’s “broken” can it be fixed? If not, could part of it be used again?

I certainly don’t want to advocate hoarding a bunch of messed up stuff if you won’t use it the way it is and can’t be relied on to fix it promptly. If you know that’s you, hit up Freecycle or give the thing to someone who can and will fix it.

But if you can get in the mindset and the habit of using what you have, fixing or repurposing what needs it and only discarding things thoughtfully, your home and the world will be a better place.

Have you mended, repurposed or upcycled anything recently? I’d love to hear about it!


(Visited 276 times, 1 visits today)

You may also like

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.