We will make our kids pay for luxuries, unless it's birthday or Christmas, but we always allowed a certain amount per year for shoes and clothes. It was enough for necessities. We allowed one pair of shoes, chosen for school wear. Where possible we would make sure those shoes were dual purpose - sneakers were permitted for everyday wear, as long as they were completely black. Sometimes that meant colouring in the white or coloured bits with a black felt pen.
easy child 2/difficult child 2 has a favourite pair of shoes - they used to be her sister's old tap shoes. We took the taps off, painted the shoes black and she wore them to school for years until school finished. Now she wears those shoes to work. She also has a pair of sneakers which she can wear to work, but the old tap shoes feel best for her. She DOES have dressy shoes which she bought herself - they are fabulous but impractical - but she has been wearing this same pair of shoes for at least six years. Every so often we glue new soles on.
We noticed a couple of days ago that the side is breaking out of these shoes - they have finally worn too much. It will cost almost A$100 to get another pair, but I think that will be worth it. We have an old pair of boy's tap shoes we might swap with a dance teacher, for an old pair of girl's tap shoes (without the taps). Should be a fair exchange...
Perhaps it's having a household full of Aspies & Aspie-like mentality, but we managed to get by with the practical basics. The girls would want a small amount of "pretty stuff" but I could count on them to not wear out their clothes too fast; while the boys needed clothes patched and STILL needed new clothes more often than the girls, purely from wear. difficult child 1's school uniform was grey flannel trousers (very impractical for six year old boys) and I remember he would come home from school on the first day of having worn his new trousers, and he had worn through the knees already. I sewed on grey vinyl patches, then later more vinyl patches, until the fabric was so badly worn it would take no more patches.
difficult child 3 would chew his shirts and pull off buttons so I sewed tape inside the shirt and attached the buttons to that. I even reinforced his pockets with tape sewn on the inside of the shirt.
We lived for the op-shop. I don't think our budget would have survived their childhood if it hadn't been for the wonderful world of Second Hand.
The trouble with making my boys do chores for all the clothes they ruined - they would ruin clothes just doing the chores!
Marg
