Did That Time Hold Value?

Winter of Care and Repair Week 6 Summary: Redefining the value of time spent freely

Years ago, my commute home led me past a thrift shop. It was just a few minutes from my house, right off the freeway, with convenient parallel parking that became too easy to habitually drift into as I slowed off the freeway ramp. I had at that time an upcycled sewing business and needed to source wool garments - or so frequent stops were justified. I wouldn’t always leave with a purchase, but I liked to wander through the aisles, letting a hand brush a rack of garments to feel for that gentle rasp of wool or the crisp shush of linen, hefting pottery pieces, scanning shelves of brick-a-brack for anything made of real wood. One day while browsing books, it struck me that I already had a teetering stack of secondhand books at home, just waiting for me to pick them up “when I had time.” In fact, I also had a mountainous pile of previously thrifted garments waiting to be reworked into something for my business. NOW was the time to create something new from something existing, to read the books I’d already bought because I wanted to read them - it was not the time to be buying more. After that, my car would still drift occasionally into an open parking space in front of the thrift shop, but more often than not it would carry me home to my waiting books and sewing room filled with the things I had already chosen to bring home.

Digging deeper into this particular behavior, I see that it wasn’t merely a matter of shopping or not, but a matter of what type of activity I was naturally drawn towards at the time of day. At the end of a workday, browsing the thrift shop was a bit of a mental reset. After eight hours spent alternating between driving, hanging out with toddlers and their families (ok, providing intervention), and typing reports - rinse and repeat that sequence three to six times per day - I realized that zoning out while wandering amidst colorful homegoods was a way I liked to wind down, a moment respite and reset before the transition to home. But because that consumerism ran deep (and I had a business to source for!), it was a little too easy to bring extra stuff home more often than necessary. And I know that it was too often, because that upcycling pile, that book tower, were growing faster than I could work my way through them.

After my revelation amongst the books, I would usually head straight home, then putter around the house, sweeping up dog hair, tidying clutter, and resetting after the workday amidst my own colorful homegoods. Once I took a few minutes to reflect on what I was doing and why I was doing it, I could more easily make a choice about whether I wanted to stop to browse or head home and do my unwinding there. I also realized that replacing the mindless browse of the thrift shop with jumping into a sewing project, or sitting down with a book the moment I got home wasn’t quite the right fit. At that time in my day I preferred to be doing something with minimal mental load that also involved a bit of incidental movement: both tidying and browsing fit the bill, but so could standing in the kitchen and eating chips out of the bag while scrolling my phone (I did that plenty, too).

It’s easy to be borne along by the momentum of day-to-day obligations, the subconsciously percolating To-Do list, the high productivity expectations to do it all and maximize your day. We feel burned out and just want to rest, then feel equally guilty by not being “productive.” In my chat with Zoe of Check Your Thread before the start of this Winter of Care and Repair, we discussed the social pressures of productivity that infiltrate our creative mental spaces as well as every other aspect of our lives. We bemoaned how annoyed we get at ourselves for feeling really busy, then coming out of a social media scrolling daze and realizing 20 minutes or more had just passed, and subsequently beating ourselves up for not using that time more wisely. In a prior conversation on her podcast, Zoe had noted that “if you have time to scroll, you have time to sew,” and that phrase is now lodged into my psyche and I use it frequently to jolt myself out of a scrolling haze.

While I still think this holds true in many cases, as a result of our recent conversation, I’ve shifted to asking myself “is this time holding value for me?” That value might be judged differently from moment to moment, depending on my energy level, my whims, where I am, what time of day it is, any number of other factors. But ultimately, the question exists to decouple myself from measuring success with the metrics of productivity - tick boxes and accomplishments - and instead basing it simply on if I did what I wanted to with those free moments during my day. That might include making a few stitches on an ongoing repair, half-heartedly moving fabric piles around my sewing room, laying on the couch with the pets, walking the long way home from errands to windowshop, or, indeed, scrolling social media. The point is to think purposefully about how I’m spending my time - not to maximize it, but just to ensure that, to the best of my abilities, I’m consciously choosing how those minutes pass.

So, I may also propose that you ask that question of yourself if you’re beating yourself up for not “being more productive” or accomplishing that you think you should based on someone else’s metrics of success. Did that time hold value? Did I - enjoy - zone out - flow - have fun - slow down - mellow out - do what I WANTED TO DO? And if you can answer “yes” to any of those questions, then hurray! The accomplishment is having passed some time in a way that is meaningful to you in that moment, and that is what it’s all about.

This topic has been on my mind this week because phase one of my intensive Spanish course wrapped up on Tuesday, and I went from studying and cramming to having more freedom to choose how I pass my days. I’m still away from home, still slogging through various other challenges, still emailing and calling representatives and generally feeling all the bad feels for what’s going on in my home country of the US, but I’ve also been trying to be kind to myself. I’ve made a mini aim that I will see the ocean every day while I’m staying a five minute walk away from it, and I’ve managed to do that so far, even if it means going out in the rain, or watching the weather and popping outside for a few minutes when the winds die down. I attended another fun virtual mending meet up with the Check Your Thread Patreon members. I’m taking naps. I’m scrolling a lot, to be honest, but I’ve also finished two books and am halfway through a third. I’ve made good progress on a really challenging sweater repair, and started working on my “Stitch Your Brain” project, which is my first truly intuitive bit of stitching and is quite enjoyable. I’m tying up details for the “Stitch It, Don’t Ditch It” book tour my co-author, Mary, and I are doing in England during the second half of February. I’m spending a lot of hours chatting on the phone with my husband, because he’s my best favorite person and it’s no fun to be away from him and our pets. I’m making and eating lots of soup, and buying a tiny loaf of fresh bread each day from the bakery at the end of the block. I’m still doing a bit of daily Spanish, in preparation for phase two to begin on Monday. I’m checking in once in a while and asking “Is this time holding value?” Sometimes the answer is yes, sometimes no, and sometimes I recalibrate.

This concludes Week Six of Winter of Care and Repair 2025! The halfway mark is on Tuesday, February 2, the cross-quarter day of Imbolc. Can you believe it? Here’s this week’s summary of cares and repairs:

• Patched a pair of lightweight socks, heels this time, and added some additional darning over multiple days

• Completed mending two large holes on the front of a sweater, through a combination of knitting, duplicate stitch/Swiss darning, and vibes. I’ve been putting off learning complicated Swiss darning repairs of knit patterns, but think I managed to do this! I’ll do a separate post with all the details when the massive hole on the back is finished, but I have to say I’m really pleased to have figured out the front

• Hemmed in the sides of three pairs of underwear that inexplicably lost their elasticity. Unfortunately, taking them in didn’t resolve the fit issue, so this one gets chalked up as a lesson learned, and the decommissioned underwear will turn into stuffing for a pet bed or something

• Cleaned the horrifying dusty and moldy filter in the heating unit in my vacation apartment

• Tightened the wobbly handles of a sautee pan and cook pot in same apartment

• Went running once and picked up trash along the beach twice

• Wrote a little bit, most days

Left to right: stormy ocean after the 6th tropical storm of the month swept through Spain, sock patch prepped, nighttime ocean+city vibes, sweater before ends woven in, front of sweater mended, finally sunny enough to dry laundry, the horrifying state of the heater wall unit, more stormy ocean