If you have been hanging out around here very long you probably have started to realize that I am not to fond of throwing things away. I don't like buying new either. My preference is to make things last just as long as possible. I love this saying....
This week we (Jonathan that is - at my direction) were able to give new life to an old broom and that made me pretty happy so I thought I would share it with you. At our house now with all sweepable flowers we have decided it works best to have a broom available upstairs and downstairs. So we did buy a new broom so that we would have two. Shortly after doing that the handle on our old broom broke.
Our broom was truly pretty old but it was still working so I was sad that the handle had broken. Jonathan thought that he could make a new handle though. So that is what he did. He got a small tree/piece of brush from outside and carved it down and made it the right size and then attached it to the brush part. It works just great.
Maybe we can get a few more years out of this broom. I was using recently and thought about how much more I enjoy using this broom that has been fixed up and has a handmade handle than I do using one that I went out and just purchased. I truly love handmade things and I also truly love getting the full use out of something and not being wasteful. I find this sort of activity very satisfying.
Do you like to fix things up or repurpose things?
My grandpa and dad both REALLY lived/live that philosophy and so I have just grown up that way. Mark's family is of the "if it's kind of used, buy a new one!" philosophy. Annabeth is being trained up my way and it makes him crazy when she says things like, "You can just glue that back together" or "We already have one, we don't need another one!" It makes this frugal mama proud! - I always love reading all of your ideas and I love that your children hold those same goals in their lives.
ReplyDeleteThat sounds a bit like the dynamics in our family. :-) Fun to hear your story!
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