Avoiding the dry cleaner

I've managed to avoid the dry cleaner for over 4 years. Mostly I wear casual clothes, and I have started to hand wash some things that were previously marked dry cleaning recommended.

But, I have a confession to make. My jacket, pictured above, has not been cleaned in over 6 years because I needed to mend the lining in the sleeve first. We wear jackets infrequently in Florida, and I would remember the lining each time I would put this on, but promptly forget until the next time. And the tear in the lining wasn't getting any better by itself.

I believe I have mentioned in the past how much I don't look forward to mending by hand. Never mind I have enough hand sewing needles to last 4 more lifetimes, I just don't like to do it. But I did it anyway, and finally took the thing in for a cleaning. Ten bucks, why am I not surprised? Anyway, it's good to get that one little nagging job off my list.

What's next?

20 or more packages of hand sewing needles

So, I'm in my sewing room, yay! And I am looking for a particular hook and eye style I know I have in that big box of notions.

I wasn't there to organize, only find what I wanted, but I kept running into these packages of hand sewing needles. So I started to pull them out so they could be put in a plastic bag. Containerized, if you will. I found over 20 packages of hand sewing needles. What?!?

Some of them are so old I remember using them in high school. I graduated 40 years ago, BTW. They've got some rust on them now so I'll dump them after I finish writing this. But they aren't the oldest needles there, oh no. There are needles in there that I inherited from Mimi, and one package I either got from Nanny or my original mother.

I have no idea why there are so many packages of needles. I spent most of the 90's trying to avoid hand sewing, LOL. And I sewed a lot in the 90's.

I found duplicates of many sewing notions that have me scratching my head. For example, I must have 5 seam gauges. OK, but why do I have 4 different rotary cutters? Several seam rippers, and enough Perfect Waist for at least 15 waistbands. Lot's of thread and elastic, but that didn't surprise me.

The biggest surprise was the Windows startup disk from my (former) laptop at work. Who put that there and why didn't I notice it until now? Did I mention it was a big box?