2021 Fashion On The Ration Challenge

Baileys_Babe

Laura_Elsewhere said:

Liverpool_Anne said:

 According to my chiropodist, my main problem is boney feet, apparently, most people have a layer of fat on the soles of their feet for padding.

I have to say (having a Master's degree in Osteology and aspects of anatomy/pathology), if someone actually hadn't got this layer of fat padding on their feet it would be as unusual as not having an entire arm, and you wouldn't just have sore feet, you would not be able to walk at all normally, from infancy onwards. It can atrophy a bit as you go into old age, but any notable atrophy is usually accompanied by ulceration and other major foot pathologies, or is related to repeated steroid injections, etc. It's a mixture of fat and connective tissue, known as a fascia. 

Maybe they over-simplified their explanation? 

What's much more common in Western feet is that by middle age (which in evolutionary biology terms is your mid-late 30s!) your feet spread at the forefoot, at the same time lowering the arch's natural spring - if those become extreme enough then you have bunions and fallen arches, but it's very very common for people to have the very early stages of them without it developing further. 
What that means is that your gait alters, the way your foot interacts with the ground when you walk - think of a child's footprint when they walk across a surface with bare feet - there's the outside of the foot from heel forwards, and then the ball of the foot (often not quite across the full width, the area behind the big toe barely in contact) and the toe-tips. Have a look sometime at the average adult's, and a lot more of the inside of the foot behind the big toe is in contact. If the metatarsals are spreading out at the forefoot, plus the foot is rolling a little inwards in terms of pressure then what you get is weight pressing on an area it's not evolved to be pressing on, and that can cause pain. 

Sorry, I'll switch my professional head off again now!  

Thank you @Laura_Elsewhere that was interesting and could explain how my feet have become flatter and wider. Evolution + weight gain + pregnancy in my mid/late 30's. I doubt if my hypermobility nor a twisted spine help 😂

Laura_Elsewhere

maryb said:

I worry a bit about microfibres from artificial thermal fabrics but having said that, I bought a Guppyfriend washing bag which is supposed to trap them.  But I have never seen any lint inside it after a lot of use.  I wonder if the fabrics they used in the test which supposedly showed fibres being shed, were cheap and flimsy or if I keep and wear my clothes so long they have all stopped shedding

I think the microfibres are barely visible - nothing like so big as a human hair, I believe. 

This article form Patagonia (who are doing huge amounts about it) has the caption under the photo saying "Fibers captured on a 20 micron filter. A micron (or micrometer) equals one millionth of a meter (a centimeter is one hundredth of a meter). The fibers were captured by filtering washing machine effluent after washing a Patagonia jacket. The scale in the photo indicates the length of 1,000 microns"
So the fibres in this photo are only a single millimetre or so in length, many shorter, and correspondingly incredibly fine in width - the scale-bar, 1000 microns is one millimetre long. 
https://eu.patagonia.com/gb/en/stories/an-update-on-microfiber-pollution/story-31370.html

Nonnadiluca

With the guppy bags, filters etc, I understand that they stop the microfibres entering the oceans via the washing machine, but what happens to the fibres that have been caught? Do they go to landfill? They still exist don't they? I'm probably being a bit thick, but does anyone know?

Laura_Elsewhere

You're not being thick at all, direct opposite - yes, that's precisely the problem. 

The best option is to wear and wash only natural fibres - they still shed microfibres (more so with modern methods of processing for mass-production).
Failing that, wash things only when they must be washed: obviously undies, bedding, towels, all those things need washed often and thoroughly, but lots of things don't need washing every time - trousers and skirts never used to be washed, and the fleece jackets that everyone loves could be washed very much less often. Hang clothes up to air - inside-out on a hanger, ideally - and mist with a fine-spray of vodka (add a few drops of essential oils if you want; I like rosemary) to kill bacteria - it's what opera companies do with the unwashable costumes worn for hours every night under very hot stage lights. 


Use spot-cleaning on splashes or marks - often simply soaking the item in a bowl of water overnight will take out a mark, and comaratively few fibres will be shed by a quick rinse in a second bowlfull of water, compared to even a quick wash.

Sew dress-shields into armpits of dresses to avoid washing, but also tops. Wear a cotton or linen vest or camisole or t-shirt under a blouse so the blouse can be worn 2 or 3 times, changing the more-washable undergarment instead. 

There are so many ways we can reduce laundry altogether - WITHOUT ending up in smelly stained clothing!

Liverpool_Anne

Nonnadiluca that question has been running through my head for a good while. It says on the instructions dispose of in residual waste which looks a lot like your normal rubbish bin,  which, as you say goes into landfill. This will in turn eventually get into the ground water and so eventually into the oceans. I can't see how it helps except to delay the problem. Maybe by then we will have found a way to properly recycle all plastics. I just don't know, so if anyone has an answer I'd love to know what it is. Obviously going forward we need to use as much natural fibre and materials as we can but even the wash bag is made of nylon which will eventually start to break down with use and meanwhile we have fabrics that we can't really dispose of because that would be a waste.

maryb

Natural fibres every time for me where possible - but it often isn't possible.  I looked all over for a pure wool winter coat and could not find one other than an Austrian Loden coat - which I would love but it cost £500!!!  Everything has at least 20% polyester. And I get really cross at expensive labels selling knitwear that costs and arm and a leg but is part acrylic

Nonnadiluca

Thanks for your thoughts; it seems like many things sold to us as a 'fix' really aren't - as you say LA, it just delays the problem. I agree with you Laura, most clothes are washed far too frequently when it's just not necessary and natural fibres are definitely best, though as you say Maryb, it's almost impossible to find new clothing without an amount of synthetic fibre content. I have found that if you search for ' pure wool' online, virtually everything that comes up is anything but!
On another note, does anyone else buy things way in advance of when they're needed? I have, in the bottom of my wardrobe, my next pair of walking boots bought in the sale last January and still not worn. I dog walk in the forest every day, whatever the weather, so I know I will wear my current ones out at some point and the thought of paying full price makes me come out in a rash! My current dog walking coat hung in the wardrobe for over a year too: it was reduced from over £70 to £18 in the local country store, and is waterproof, windproof with a fur lined hood and body. It seemed rude not to buy it! I do this with loads of stuff, it makes complete sense to me but DD thinks I'm barmy!!

PollyWollyDoodle

No, I don't do this @Nonnadiluca but I can see the sense if you know you're going to need something.

I think the problem is that you can drive yourself mad trying to be ecologically sensitive - it's not easy being green!  Like many people I invested in microfibre cleaning cloths because of the promise that you would use fewer chemicals; my fleece was, I'm pretty sure, advertised as being 'made from recycled bottles'.  I hear what you say about synthetics, but don't forget that cotton production requires enormous volume of water and is often grown using pesticides.  It's very hard to get it right. I think it would be more wasteful to throw out the fleeces that I already own, but as @Laura_Elsewhere says, I wash  outer clothing far less often than I used to.   It's washing that wears clothes out, not wearing them!

Clothing, like food, is now regarded as cheap and disposable; I wonder how many people shopping at the discount clothing chains consider the actual cost of the items. I won't buy cheap, I buy second-hand where I possibly can, and I don't buy for the sake of it, so my wardrobe is gradually reducing. This challenge is a great help in achieving that (do I really want it?  Can I spare the coupons? )  I would love to think that any new clothes I buy would only be ethically produced, but I don't have unlimited funds. It really needs change at a high level to alter some of these things, but I still think that individual action counts.

maddiemay

@Nonnadiluca Yes both my OH and I buy certain things when we see them at the right price. We have always lived 25-30 miles from large towns. Shopping for specific items like walking boots, good waterproofs, camping gear and cycling clothes could be a pain when frequent unsuccessful journeys were made looking for something specialist so we would mostly keep our Christmas and birthday money tucked away ready to pounce, as you did with your bargain coat.  My favoured walking boots were starting to wear at the heels and OH nudged me to begin looking for their direct replacement, after a few weeks I found a Timberland stockist on line with the very ones well discounted, OH kindly offered to buy them for me and they are waiting in the wardrobe for the better weather, he laughs at me 'cos I wouldn't start wearing them this very wet winter.

Laura_Elsewhere

Nonnadiluca said:

On another note, does anyone else buy things way in advance of when they're needed? I have, in the bottom of my wardrobe, my next pair of walking boots bought in the sale last January and still not worn. I dog walk in the forest every day, whatever the weather, so I know I will wear my current ones out at some point and the thought of paying full price makes me come out in a rash! My current dog walking coat hung in the wardrobe for over a year too: it was reduced from over £70 to £18 in the local country store, and is waterproof, windproof with a fur lined hood and body. It seemed rude not to buy it! I do this with loads of stuff, it makes complete sense to me but DD thinks I'm barmy!!

That's how we buy a lot of our food... anything less-perishable (!) with a longer shelf-life, we keep an eye open online, checking prices most weeks between supermarkets and then go and buy a whole lot at once, so we never ever pay more than 2/3 of the normal price for eg Branston Pickle or Magnum ice-creams, etc. Nearly all branded stuff is on offer at one or other supermarket in a rotation, so we just wait til we spot one of the big reductions and buy half a dozen of whatever it is. When we're down to the last couple of things, we start keeping an eye open again to re-stock. And that's with an absolutely tiny flat but we manage to keep good stocks and save money. 

But clothes-wise, yes - I just grew up with an automatic thing - don't even know where it came from - that you never buy sandals in summer or a raincoat in autumn... you buy summer things in he autumn, and you buy winter things in he spring, etc... when hey're all on offer, reduced or people are getting rid of unwanted presents or mistake-buys...