In Praise of Borrowing

When I was in my early teens, sharing clothes was pretty normal. It was exciting when my best friend Topaz got a bag of clothes handed down from her older, trendy neighbour, because I knew she'd give me what she didn't want and probably let me borrow the rest if I pleaded enough. My mum and I used to borrow each other's clothes too. Sometimes we even gave them back.

Nowadays, it's not so common to borrow a mate's dress to wear to a party. But for me, on my shopping ban, having a community of friends and relatives I could call on to help out was heartwarming and uplifting, not to mention it saved me a pretty penny or two.

When our electric whisk spluttered and died halfway through Dai making our son's first birthday cake, I called my friend Rose - she lived five minutes away, was a fellow mum so likely to be awake at such a silly time on a Sunday morning, and given her perfect house and propensity for holding coffee mornings, I felt sure she had a set of beaters we could borrow. And she came up trumps, saving us from a two-hour wait for the shops to open so we could have the cake ready in time for the party. (And she even said we could keep the beaters! What a woman.)

My friend Topaz lent me a pair of smart shoes for an evening out, and we now have an agreement whereby we share the shoes - mostly they live with me, unless called upon by Topaz for an occasion, thus saving us both from needing to buy any more nude wedding-guest shoes for quite some time.

When lockdown started, I asked Alice, a hardcore movie buff, if she could lend me some family-friendly DVDs to get me and the Spud through those long afternoons. She dropped off a stack of DVDs on her way to work - along with her Disney+ password.

At first I felt awkward and a bit weird asking for stuff, until I realised that it opened a door for people to ask me for things in return. This year I have lent and borrowed items from irons and plungers to books and hairdressing scissors, and therefore we have all saved a) money and b) resources, because rather than having one of everything each, we are sharing what we have.

I'm pleased to say as well that, as well as sharing, my friends and I do a lot of swapping. Maternity wear, baby clothes and toys have done the rounds from mum to mum in our group, saving us each a small fortune. And when we have a clear out (or just an item of clothing we're sick of looking at), we have developed the habit of rehoming the clothes with a friend rather than plonking them straight into the charity shop. 

Sometimes this has come in extremely helpful - just before my planned clothing swap in January 2020, my friend Ana was living in a camper van, which was stolen from a supermarket car park with all her possessions inside. Under my stairs at the time was a huge stash of clothes - spare items from all I had been given by Topaz, Bel and Alice, plus bags of things that had been given to me for the swap party. After making sure no one minded, I was able to go through it all and sort out an emergency stop-gap wardrobe for Ana. 

I've noted before that the generosity of friends had helped me out of a tight spot during my ban, and I really feel now that being able to help each other out - and ask for help (and nick each other's old clothes) - has brought us closer, and created a feeling of community. With the added bonus of being kinder to the environment. Happy days! It's not exactly ground-breaking, but I was so out of the habit of asking for what I needed (when I could just buy it) that people's willingness to share came as a lovely surprise.