How many articles of clothing do you own that are laying about the house patiently waiting for you to find the time to sew a missing button back on them? If you're like me, you set the button in one safe place and the clothing in another, fully intending to come back to them as soon as you have a free moment to tend to them. Well, you know as well as I do that free moment will never materialize. After you get tired of looking at the stack of neglected clothing you may decide to just discard it as I have occasionally been guilty of doing, or if the clothes happen to be one of your children's, they will outgrow them as quickly as you can say "I'll get to it later."

Then when I finally get around to setting all my button-less clothing in order, I have to go hunt for the buttons again. "Who's got the button?", I ask my husband and daughter. "We don't know mom, you had it last," they reply.

So today I sat down once again, clothing and buttons in hand. As I sewed on the first button I noticed that all of the other buttons were also ready to meet the ends of their useful lives. "Why not sew them all back on again," I said to myself, "and save myself some work later down the road." What an amazing concept! So I tacked all the buttons back on the two shirts that I hadn't been able to wear for about two months now. What took me so long to get around to sewing the buttons back on? Procrastination, of course. I also discovered that embroidery thread I already had on hand allowed me to perfectly match the color of anything that needed mending, and it was stronger than ordinary thread. Total cost of repair - $0. Total savings - the price of two shirts I would have eventually replaced, and an immeasurable amount of time I would have spent thinking about how I really should get around to sewing those buttons back on.

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Originally published at Suite 101. Rachel Paxton is a freelance writer and mom who is the author of What's for Dinner?, an e-cookbook containing more than 250 quick easy dinner ideas. For recipes, tips to organize your home, home decorating, crafts, holiday hints, and more, visit Creative Homemaking at http://www.creativehomemaking.com.

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