On Functionality and False Morality

 

After listening to KC Davis being interviewed by Kim Hill on RNZ, I bought her book, 'How To Keep House While Drowning'. I bought it because something she said really resonated with so many areas of my life. I promptly put the washed laundry in the dryer. I somehow acquired the idea that using a dryer was somehow immoral so hardly ever used it - which I guess is why the first one lasted 35 years. Last week it was raining, I had lots of laundry, and I had really vicious tooth pain. Normally I'd drape it all over the house on clothes horses. Instead I told myself, 'you are sick and laundry is not a moral issue,' and threw load after load in the dryer! Line drying smells nicer, and is more eco-friendly, but when the choice is baskets full of wet mouldy washing or the dryer, the dryer wins the functionality race.

I've been sewing, making an awning for the camper. I've been planning and procrastinating for a couple of months. The old 'if it's worth doing it's worth doing properly,' except I have always heard 'properly' as 'perfectly'. Davis talks of functionality and it's a wonderful concept I've never thought of before in this way. I discarded my usual fears of mistakes, imperfections, money wastage etc and got to it. I stopped trying to make a pattern, stopped thinking of what fabric would be best to buy, stopped trying to find the energy to put up all of the random tents Mac has stored in the hope of finding enough tent fabric to use. I paused and thought about functionality: what exactly did I want to make? Something to cover the back window so that when the door was up to allow breeze in, the window was not allowing sun to stream through. Something that was light so it would move in the wind and not make the van too dark. Something that would offer a little privacy without blocking the world out completely.

A long time ago I was at the local dump shop, and spotted fabric priced at $1 a plastic supermarket bag full. The fabric was either the beginning or end of the dyeing process and had random colours where the various dyes had run out or not yet kicked in. I had metres and metres of it. I grabbed a couple of lengths and draped it over the van. I got sewing. I didn't worry about perfectly joined seams, or about perfect fit. I didn't trim the wonky bit where the fabric had been joined but imperfectly. I didn't worry about hems. I just sat and sewed kilometres of seams and overlocked edges. I made ties from strips, edges folded in so they wouldn't fray, but just sewn on the outside instead of all that wearying turning tubes inside out. It's functional. And actually, it is so lovely to sit inside the van, so very restful.

Well, it was restful except for the three times I whacked my shin on the towbar. So today I found some leftover pieces of brightly coloured cotton fabric from when all my handmade books had covers made from cotton fat quarters. I gathered some fat woolen rectangles that came as packaging in boxes of online orders plus a couple of pieces of leftover batting from some long forgotten project. I found some hand-twisted cord that I made from my favouritist scarf ever after it got beyond mending. Because every towbar deserves a comfortable rest between journeys, tucked up it a warm sleeping bag. I didn't change the thread in the overlocker or the sewing machine. I just sewed until my shins felt safe.

I have done so much, and didn't even stress when I lost, first my best fabric scissors, then my best pincushion. (They have since turned up.) It is amazing how much I can achieve when I let go of aiming for perfection and forget about the 'morality' of doing it exactly right and just thought about functionality.

While many people will be puzzled by my words, because this process was learned in childhood, for me it is a welcome revelation. And I am writing about it because I want to, and because my writing does not have to be perfect either, just functional.