swapping spree

who knew so much fun could emerge from a pile of crap?!

yesterday, we rounded up 10 of our ladyfriends and each arrived at erin's place armed with a bag of unwanted clothes. i'm moving next month, so it felt extremely proactive to mine the depths of my drawers (not those drawers, for anyone reading this in 19th century victorian england) well in advance of my packing frenzy. it felt sort of like getting all your christmas shopping done in august.

i'm generally pretty good about recycling clothes i don't want, so i was surprised that i still filled two cloth shopping bags with shirts and skirts and shoes and such. the trick was to get ruthless. if i couldn't remember the last time i wore it, it went into the bag. two very similar shirts? one had to walk the plank. ARRR!! SPONTANEOUS PIRATE INTERLUDE.

after a deeeeeliiiiicious breakfast of erin's homemade crepes - the kind of breakfast filled with warm weekend sunshine, laughter and more coffee - the kind that makes you look around and wonder how you managed to find a whole roomful of such beautiful and hilarious gals - we got down to the business of the clothing swap! we dumped all our bags out on the floor, and everyone was free to try on and take whatever appealed.

it was an amazingly democratic experience - it felt like what didn't work for one person naturally worked for someone else, and we managed to send the majority of clothes home with new owners. the rest we donated to goodwill.

i scored a whole bunch of rockin' stuff without spending 0.1 of a penny on any of it! i'm coming to really love the feeling of breathing new life into something that was headed into a landfill. slowly, it's becoming more gratifying than ploppin' down $50 for something new. once you start to approach each day with that goal, it becomes a bit of a mission, a challenge in a world that really doesn't reward it.

on the table

i have taken on an important project of importance. it's very exciting and a little daunting. but mostly, i'm looking forward to learning.

i'm going to make a harvest table for our new loft!

i'm very lucky to have an uncle-in-law who lives on a commune in orillia, is an amazing teacher and mentor, is heaps of fun to hang out with, and is great with woodworking. his community has a couple of barns and a bunch of wood lying about. so we're going to salvage some of it and he's going to teach me how to choose the type of wood, plane it, finish it, attach legs, AND WHAT HAVE YOU!

there are several beautiful things about this: a) i get to learn how to make a frikkin' table, g) i get to spend three or four weekends outside in the trees, 5) the table in our loft will be meaningful, will have a story, and 9) it's going to become a great memory of time spent with gord.

...which brings me to a recent realization. buying stuff often robs us of the chance to connect with people. i could go into ikea for half an hour, look at hundreds of tables, pick one, buy it and leave, all without interacting with anyone (especially now that they have those infuriating self-check-out machines). but when you choose to make something yourself, especially when you need to ask someone to help you learn how, you turn the acquisition of stuff into a social opportunity, one that builds community.

fostering community is so important - we need to be accountable to people other than ourselves.