Last semester I learned how to sew.Maybe you’ve learned a new craft. Maybe you’ve retiled your own floor, knitted a scarf or grown a windowsill herb garden. Do-it-yourself, or DIY, is the new hip trend in just about everything. There are DIY toys for kids, gourmet cooking for foodies, waxing for the hairy. There’s a DIY kit, TV show or Web site for just about anything you could want. It makes sense. The economy is the worst it’s been in a long time. People are looking for money-saving options, and doing something or making something yourself instead of paying someone to do it for you is appealing — particularly if you’re out of work and have a lot of free time but not a lot of disposable income.Another motivator in the DIY movement is renewed focus on environmental responsibility. Many people are starting home improvement projects to cut energy costs as well as emissions and waste. Cooking is becoming cool again as people grow more conscious about where their food comes from and the real cost — both environmental and nutritional — of consuming prepared, packaged food.But perhaps as much as the economy or the environment, people are nostalgic for what they feel was a simpler time. Just as there is an instructable.com post for just about anything you could want to do yourself, there’s also a service you can pay to do the same thing. There are people who will buy and deliver groceries to your home, mow your yard and paint your fingernails for you. There are people who will write your school papers and people who will raise your children. There’s even a company in Baton Rouge you can pay to come to your house and remove the dog poop from your yard. Granted, some of those tasks aren’t the most fun to do, which is why people pay others to do them. But there’s only so much that you can pay others to do without eventually feeling helpless, a little neutered or just plain lazy. People want to feel like they’re in control of their own lives, and that can be difficult when you constantly hear about giant problems that affect you but you can’t personally fix, like the economy or the environment. Do-it-yourself projects are some folks’ answer. Reupholstering a piece of furniture is not easy, but taking something someone else created (and perhaps someone else abused) and endowing it with your style and your sweat makes it something new and different. It’s kind of empowering to know you spent valuable time repairing something old, creating something original. There’s a sense that “No one else has this. This is mine. I did something worthwhile.”I don’t necessarily feel like that when I complete a sewing project because I’m still pretty crappy at it. But I do feel like I accomplished something not every woman at the University can accomplish. I feel a little connected to my grandmother, a home economics teacher who made most of her own clothes and her children’s, like she would be proud of me. I feel kind of crafty and pleased with myself for creating something that didn’t exist before I had the idea to make it.And I feel a little more like a grown-up, because I accomplished something all by myself (or at least without too much guidance from my talented, patient sewing teacher).
Sara Boyd is a 23 year old general studies senior from Baton Rouge. Follow her on Twitter @TDR_sboyd.