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As I was getting ready for the day when we were in Virginia recently, I was wishing I had some white thread to make a repair. Ray and Connor were making a morning run to a grocery store, so I asked Ray to see if they had any. The grocery store didn’t, so the two of them kindly went into an everything’s-a-dollar store to see what they could find there.

My sweet husband came back with a cute little pink sewing kit that had needles, buttons, three or four colors of thread, a tiny pair of scissors, straight pins, and safety pins — all for $1. I thought I was in business.

Don’t tell Ray, but I didn’t actually get around to using the kit until we were in Missouri seeing Toby and his family over the weekend. I pulled out the scissors — oh, they were cute little things — but when I tried to use them they felt more like Jello® than anything you could use to cut. When I tried to thread the needle, the thread was so ragged and thick, I had a hard time getting it into the eye of the needle. When I did, the thread split. Part of it went into the needle and part of it wadded up outside the eye. I threw the needle, thread, and scissors away then.

When we got back home, I took out the straight pins, safety pins, and buttons and threw the kit and the rest of the innards into the trash. Yesterday morning I realized that there was a blog post in that little sewing kit, so I pulled it out just long enough for a quick photo shoot in the sewing room, before I threw it back in the trash.

Two Jars of Mother's Buttons, One Basket of Wool Yarn I Hope to Use Someday, a Pretty Book from My Friend Olive, and the $1 Sewing Kit
Still Life with $1 Sewing Kit

The right tools help people be successful and the wrong ones can make people give up. This is true for children as well as adults. I’ll let sewing machines and colored pencils illustrate the point.

Sewing Machines — Many a budding seamstress has given up because she was learning to sew on a poorly-made sewing machine. When I was in the market for a sewing machine in 1988, I asked a friend who had a degree in Home Ec what to buy. She said to call the Home Ec department at the local university and see what they used. I called and they said they had sold their sewing machines. This was 1988, for crying out loud. Women in Home Ec weren’t learning how to be workers at home, but workers somewhere else, I guess. My friend recommended a Bernina® or a Viking®. She really liked her Bernina®, but advised that I purchase a Viking® since our town had a Viking® dealer where I could get service done and not a Bernina® one. I bought a close-out Viking® for a reduced price. I have been sewing on it now for 27 years.

Colored Pencils — When I was in school, we used colored pencils to color maps. I hated them. The only kind I ever knew about had lead that was so hard you almost ripped the paper trying to get any color at all and then the color was very faint. When I was in college, I was introduced to Prismacolor® colored pencils. They are not inexpensive, but you can purchase a set of 10 for about $10 and then replace the individual colors you use the most for just a dollar apiece. I’d choose a set of ten vivid colors that blend well and seem almost to flow onto the paper over a set of forty washed out colors any day. One of the Prismacolor® pencils I bought in college stayed in my art supplies for about twenty years.

I have certainly bought my share of cheap stuff, I do like a good sale, and I was always looking for a way to stretch a dollar like a rubber band when we were rearing our children. Still, I have learned over the years that quality matters and that many times pursuing quality is actually the most economical way to go in the long run.

I encourage you to keep “Mama’s Toolbox” supplied with quality tools for your children to use. Good tools sharpen their skills.

Do you see a man skilled in his work?
He will stand before kings; He will not stand before obscure men.
Proverbs 22:29

 

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2 Comments

  1. Oh my goodness. colored pencils! I have learned this lesson, too. Someone suggested I buy the boys “watercolor pencils” and I will never go back. Nothing discourages like tools that don’t work and nothing inspires like tools that do. We bought each of our four sons a nice, open-top canvas toolboxes, the ones with the handle that feels good in your hand and all the pockets. Each birthday and Christmas we purchase additional tools for their boxes and keep them all on shelves in the basement where the boys can access them but they’re still kept nicely cared for. They love using their own tools and will have a nice quality set to take with them to their own homes. They get so excited about having real, quality tools! It’s amazing. We purchased a box, level and tape measure for our pastor’s son when he turned 3 (we teach the 2 year olds at church and this little one just loves my husband). We are told he still carries his real tool box all around the house and yard 🙂 I feel like our money is going toward things that will be appreciated for the rest of these boys’ lives and we’ve planted a good idea in their brains, too.

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