For the past 6 months I have been helping my dad clean up my grandmothers house, she passed away in September, to get ready to sell. In that time we gave away and donated many items to others to put to good use. But there were times that we had to make a trip to the local landfill to get rid of trash. I was appalled at the amount of good useful things that people were TOSSING into the landfill! As we unloaded our trailer of true trash, I was stepping over books and toys and next to us people were tossing perfectly good looking couches, and lamps everything else you could image! At that moment it solidified the fact that I want to be a ‘fixer’ not a ‘tosser’.

I’ve always had a hard time throwing things away (sorry to my parents and now to Jeremy who have had to deal with my ‘treasures’) but now I want to do everything I can to use the items I have, fix the items I have, so I don’t turn into the person tossing anything and everything. I feel like we have lost the art of being fixers in this society. SO many times my friends and I talk about our beloved children’s book “Big House in the Little Woods”, and how we loved the book as kids because it seemed like such a grand adventure—but now looking back as parents, how terrifying and also resourceful Ma and Pa were! (side note—the entire series by Laura Ingles Wilder is an amazing read at any age)

So from here on out, I am a fixer.

A few weeks ago we took a beach trip and the seam of one of our beach chairs came loose. So I grabbed my needle and thread and stitched right along the old seam, it took maybe 15 minutes with a simple running seam—and voila!—the chair was fixed!

I encourage you friends to become fixers with me. If you don’t know how to sew, let me know I’ll teach you! If you hot glue knobs back onto things—that’s great! Together maybe we can make a small dent in a world where we throw things away too quickly just to replace it with something else that will break as equally quickly as the thing we just tossed!