Get out your sharp scissors

All right, so maybe I am not the first person in the world to think of this, and its not rocket science, but I thought I would share how I get a little more wear out of my kids clothes.

If your kids are anything like mine, they grow like weeds, and I can't usually get an item of clothing to fit from one winter to the next. (speaking of respectable-out-in-public-clothing here, not the feral play/yard clothes!) This is great for our niece, who scores the bags of hand me down clothes, but bad for my pocket!

However, with a sharp pair of scissors I can turn a winter t-shirt into a summer one, and at the end of summer the shirt can go into the pile to be passed along.

Needed:

1. t-shirts with the "underneath" long sleeves - i.e. those with the appearance of having a short sleeved shirt over the top of a long sleeved one, but are in fact all in one.  This works equally as well with boys and girls shirts.

2. Sharp scissors that have been hidden from the kids in a high high place. Turn inside out, and carefully snip the long sleeve away from the shirt at the seam.

I do mine as close as possible so there isn't any bulk of fabric left around the armhole.  And t-shirt material doesn't fray, so I can snip with gay abandon!

Result: three perfectly acceptable short sleeved t-shirts that did not see a lot of wear over winter, but will surely get a lot of summer use, what with the Christmas parties and trips to town and the like over the Christmas holidays. And no need to go shopping for t-shirts!

Mind you, my niece might be a little short of long sleeved shirts in the hand me down bag, but her mum can deal with that!

Righto, back to the clothes purging I go. Turfing out all of the I-don't-like-that's and the it's-too-tight's that have been lurking around annoying me in the girls room.

I should do the same to my own cupboards. Sigh. I think I would find there would be LOTS of space once I finished that job, but that is another, depressing tale for another day!