Old Clothes, Still In Use

I have two T-shirts which I’ve had since elementary school which I still wear often. (My T-shirt size has not changed since I was 10 years old).

Well, one t-shirt is currently in my mend pile. I’ve started the mending… which reveals that this shirt needs even more mending than I thought.

It doesn’t make financial sense to mend a cotton t-shirt when I could get another cotton T-shirt cheap. (Heck, I could probably persuade someone to give me a spare cotton T-shirt for free).

But it wouldn’t be this T-shirt. This is one of my favorites.

Despite all the bits of tear, it’s still wearable. I could put it on now and it’d be fine. Nobody would notice because the damage is only visible upon close inspection. I’m mending it because I know the little frayed bits could cause a tear if I don’t sew them up first.

Would a new T-shirt hold up so well to decades of use? I doubt it, except for the best-made new T-shirts. T-shirts of previous decades were of higher quality. This fixed-up T-shirt (after I’ve finished) might outlast than a cheap new T-shirt.

Or maybe that’s just what I tell myself.

It’s been a few days since I’ve worked on the T-shirt… lack of motivation. In some places, the cotton has thinned so much… that’s something I can’t fix. I can only mend the holes which rip through the thinned cotton.

Maybe I should remove this T-shirt from use permanently and keep it only as a memento.