 By Jessica Kelly | Founder & CEO | THR3EFOLD When is the last time you had something fall apart in your wardrobe? What did you do with it? Did you try to get it fixed or toss it in the trash? It is estimated that US landfills take in 12.8 million tons of clothing per year, most of which, I assume, comes from clothing we feel can't be worn again by someone else. The problem is our modern society is completely uneducated about how many of these wear and tears can actually be mended to appear completely new again. Here are some amazing options for how to repair your clothes you thought were lost forever. 1 | Patch & Stitch Holes My biggest closet qualm is holes in the crotch of my jeans. My big thighs & booty are usually an asset, but my pants bear the weight (literally) of carrying them. So when those rips inevitably occur, I grab some scraps of old denim, cover the affected area from the inside and go to town on the sewing machine stitching them together. Same goes for rips in seams of shirts, most of which just need a simple, well placed whip stitch to be good as new. For the less Martha Stewart inclined, alterations shops can do this for you easy. 2 | Color Change As a New Yorker, I wear black on black on black proudly, but after many years of washes some items become less than desirable in color. For this, a simple dye bath in your kitchen sink with RIT Dye is the solution. You can even opt to give old colored clothes new life by dying them black! Alternatively, you may have some jeans you are just sick of, and that's ok, give them new life with a Clorox bath (follow instructions carefully). The Clorox can transform those faded dark jeans into a fun new pair of light denim you can then DIY distress to be trending on your next #instafashion post. Do you see how to repair your clothes can be so easy? 3 | Peeling Soles & Missing Heels Did you know shoes are put together by glue? And therefore can be put back together by glue. New York City specially tears through your shoes, like puts them through the ringer. But when your favorite boots start coming apart at the sole, or your favorite heels lose their heel cap, fret not, it is not the end. Cobblers can Reggie the sole, and recap the heels to be good as new! 4 | Stretch & Shrink Shoes Make an impulse purchase at a shoe sale you lived to regret later as you learned they don't fit and as a result kill your feet? Did you know cobblers can stretch and shrink your leather shoes to fit you?! Seriously cobblers are magical unicorns. This is especially great because most people have two slightly different sized feet, so when your right foot always gets blisters from those heels, go fix them! 5 | Total Overhaul Of course there's always the option of completely scrapping the piece as is, and creating something new. Pinterest offers a wealth of options to DIY your old t-shirts to tanks, blouses to new fun tops and jeans into skirts or even purses, but you can always team up with a local seamstress and rework your favorite piece into something fun, new, and special custom made for you. The basic thing to remember is nothing needs to be wasted, so give your old clothes some extra thought before you give up on them. And if you really have hit your limit, donate them to a textile recycling center so they can be repurposed into insulation, respun into fabric, and find a new life somewhere else. For more ideas on how to be a conscious consumer, subscribe to our emails!  Comments are closed.
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