Giving.
The best part of getting your financial mess straightened.
When I was broke, I could barely help myself, let alone anyone else.
Enter Laura Graham, now age 17, who started 1Closet.
This non-profit takes and distributes gently used teen clothes for foster kids who typically only have $200/year to buy any clothes.
It pulls at my heart strings.
As a teen of freshly divorced parents (they were suffering too), I could not afford many new clothes.
In my junior year-picture as the “new kid at school”, I am wearing a lavender sweater from the Moscow,ID thrift shop.
I came to know that place well.
I also became familiar with the feeling of lack. The popular girls of my new school were clad in the latest fashions of 1984 and I just wanted to disappear into the walls.
In prior years, I babysat or cleaned houses for school clothes and usually earned about $200 to spend. That’s $478 of buying power today and A LOT of school clothes. (In addition, I was a cheerleader, so I had a uniform to wear 2x week in fall and winter to stretch my clothes).
If you don’t know about buying power, then you didn’t live through the Carter years when house interest rates were 18% and a pair of basic jeans cost the equivalent of $135.00 and a shirt was the equivalent of $56 in today’s money.
For foster kids today, $200/year only buys about $84 equivalent in 1983 in clothes for the year. That isn’t much even in a thrift store.
http://www.1-closet.com/
donates current styles to local Bay Area community centers for low-income teens.
How can I help? You ask.
Well, how about googling “clothes for foster teens in (your city)”
So many sites came up for Houston. The need is out there.
So, when you get yourself sorted money wise, think of all the help you can give 🙂
Suzewannabe 