Hello world!

This is a post I intended to write in January of this year. As the new year started, an old friend and I decided to join forces on a new venture: Applying our creativity and love of design to clothing and other objects that had been abandoned to thrift stores, to our own closets, to other places. In so doing, we would create a New Purpose.

Beyond upcycling, recycling or repurposing still useful objects, we would create new objects out of old, and evangelize for the idea as well. We would take the ugliest polyester shirts off the thrift store racks, and turn them into beautiful, sleek laptop bags. We would take beautiful but outmoded objects and give them an entirely new function. By writing about it and sharing our ideas, we would not only encourage others’ creativity, but also do our part for the environment. And as two baby boomers, we would think of this as our encore careers. I’ll blog later about what we’ve done before.

Emboldened by our vision, we created our plan, completed our business paperwork and set off to a favorite thrift store, ARC Thrift, for our initial inventory. We madly created new designs, photographed them in my backyard, and set up our etsy account.

Then life intervened, and my youngest daughter, who had been convinced she was going to college in state had a change of heart and we had a rapid round of applications and school visits, followed by the usual senior year activities: deciding which school, prom, graduation, etc. With our last spring and summer together, my focus moved away from the new venture. Now, I’m back home as an empty nester, and life has intervened for my friend. So for right now, I’m going to put out some of our ideas through this blog, and when she can join me, it will be terrific.

Labor Day weekend, with the implication of a new school year starting, has always signified a start for me. This Labor Day weekend, it’s the start of New Purpose.

JV