Project Update: April

So I bought something new, and wrecked my plan for the year.


April Fools!


In all seriousness, I have completed the first quarter of my plan to buy nothing new and can report that I have stuck to my guns and avoided purchasing anything brand new. Has it been easy? Most of the time. But there of course have been some instances when I really, really wished that I could head down to whatever store I wanted and buy something I knew they would have, and then be done thinking about it. In most cases I have been able to find what I've needed at a thrift store, or by talking to my friends and families and negotiating a loan or finally convincing myself that I don't actually need to own the particular item. I'm a big fan of renting sport equipment, so there was no panic when my friends and I went skiing in January. My friend Patience heard that I could use a car rack for my bike and offered me her old rack to use indefinitely since she's had little use for it since selling her car. I thought I needed a cycling jersey and then reminded myself that clothing has nothing to do with skill, so I'll be happy wearing that old collared golf tournament shirt I got as a family hand-me-down.

So, what has been the hardest thing to deal with not being able to buy new? Pants. As many thrift stores as I have been to, and trips made to Second Glance, my favorite womens consignment shop, I have not been able to locate a single pair of work pants that fit and don't look ridiculously out of style for someone my age. Multiple hours have been spent on my great pant crusade, but with no luck. I figure that by the time I find pants, it'll be time to move on to shorts and skirts and at least I have those covered. Hopefully it will warm up around here sometime soon so I can transition out of the same three pairs of pants I have in current rotation. I should say, two pairs of pants and one torture device since the third pair are too small in the waist and I have to wear a belt to cover the fact that I cannot actually button them. I'm sure this will make for a hilarious story some day....

The other main area that has required some creative thinking is gift giving, particularly for the children in my family. How do you explain your plan to purchase nothing new to a two year old on their birthday? You don't. Instead you make them a sock monkey out of a pair of socks from Goodwill.

                                                              Monkey See, Monkey Do.

My friends and family have been pretty cool about me showing up with second hand gifts for them, or things I've crafted or baked. The baked goods are probably preferred. Now that my free time isn't spent perusing the internet for good deals on assorted crap, or window shopping in town as a social event or a way to kill time, I've had a lot more time to research recipes online and read cookbooks. I have conquered bread. It has been helpful to have some roommates and a gentleman who are well established bread bakers to show me new techniques and tips. I've been baking a great round artisan loaf in my dutch oven and it might be my favorite bread of all time. Sometimes I add things like kalamata olives. Yes! Olive bread! I can safely say that I probably would never have started baking bread if I hadn't decided to pay attention to what I buy for this year. The bread I bake needs flour, yeast, salt and water. I haven't priced it out, but I'd say that it is probably costing me about 50 cents a loaf, given the bake time in the oven. It is making me re-think the $6  I used to spend on good, locally baked fresh bread. And it has made me want to see what other food items I can learn to make. Starting in May I will be enrolled in a canning and food preservation course through the state extension service which should provide me with another window with which to explore American consumer life.

I can't wait!

Clean Up Your Act!

Santa Clara, California has had a tradition for the past 50 years of "Clean Up Week". It's basically a month stretching from March to April when residents can put anything they don't want in front of their house to be taken to the dump. I should say, residents can put out anything they don't want EXCEPT for hazardous waste or live ammunition, which is unfortunate, because as a second hand scrounger, I sometimes wonder what to get for the person who has everything.

Having a sister that lives in Santa Clara means that I have witnessed clean up week in all it's glory. And by glory, I mean I have cruised around her neighborhood looking for gems in piles of broken furniture, construction refuse, clothing, kid toys, old food, tree trimmings, etc. And boy, have I seen some amazing items. Last year I scored some 1970s vintage Tupperware (fire orange with the ribbed lid that actually burps) and my RockSteady found an awesome cycling jersey with a cow on it, cycling and smart wool socks, and part of a Yakima bike rack. Along with that awesomeness, people last year seemed to be all about dumping off their obsolete metal Christmas tree stands. Who needs a metal stand when you've moved on to a fake tree?  This year I hoped to see similar visions of tree stands, and I brought my camera with the intention of sculpting the tree stands into the shape of a Christmas tree to use as my 2010 holiday greeting. But alas, everyone seemed to have dumped their stands last year. The closest I got was a fake Christmas tree in strewn pieces. What I found this year were toilets. Hundreds and hundreds of toilets. Apparently I missed the great crapper revolution of 2009 that had everyone ousting their old porcelain for something new. Since the flush toilet exterior design hasn't really changed for the past 100 years making it doubtful that the "look" of the toilet was wrecking the overall bathroom aesthetic, I wonder the reason why these poor thrones were discarded to the curb? Was everyone making the move to water saving toilets at the same time?  (Sidenote: when I was researching the history of the modern toilet, I found this.)

As usual I was amazed by what people were getting rid of. How do these Santa Clarans have so much stuff? Even houses that had huge piles in front of them last year, had big piles this year! I'm sure this isn't limited to Santa Clara. It's all a reflection of our consumer driven disposable lifestyle where we can use what we want and discard it to a little bin that is put out once a week and then taken away for us never to be bothered with again. Luckily, I can happily report that all of the Clean Up Week stuff does not end up in the landfill. There are various people driving around the city all month looking for anything thing that could be partially reused. I saw trucks carrying ovens, refrigerators, kitchen tables, desk chairs, dog kennels, fencing, unused lumber and a whole mess of other things. Several computer recycling firms scour the neighborhoods looking for computers to recycle (they get a rebate from the government) so I'm pretty confident that few electronics make it into the garbage system. My bro-in-law put out some bark chips from under a soon to be disassembled play set and people came and scooped it up to use in their yards. A successful reuse scenario! While on a bike ride I saw a women blissfully loading a slightly worn, but still beautiful desk and dresser (1930s era) into her car with the blessing of the man who had just set it on the curb. My friend Caitlin and I noticed some fresh clippings from a fruit tree and we collected about 10 pounds of amazingly fragrant lemons while the owner encouraged us to take more. If I had a car with me, I could have loaded up some great wooden furniture that I'd probably have for the rest of my life.

The main beef that a few neighbors seem to have with the idea of Clean Up Week is that sometimes their piles get scattered as people search for "treasures". This potential scenario leads my sister's neighbor to spray his pile with water from the hose, which is a total asshole move! If he's so worried about people rooting through sensitive paperwork, maybe it shouldn't be on the curb. And really, the only scattering I saw done was by kids (including the said neighbor's sons) who wanted to root through their neighbors stuff and jump on the mattresses and assorted couches on the curb. I saw a group of young boys kick around a Buddha garden sculpture until it's head fell off. Well boys, I hope you get an introduction to my friend karma real soon.

What treasures did I bring back, you ask? Lemons and avocados scrounged from the trees lining my sister's house and a soft bicycle case for hauling a bike on an airplane to pass along to the RockSteady for upcoming races. I contemplated a plastic storage container large enough to hold a pie, but then I remembered that it's easier for me to attach a square box to my bike rack instead of a round container. It was a good reminder to use my logic to to tell myself that I don't need something just because it is free!

                                                                                      

 When life gives you freshly trimmed lemon branches, make lemonade!

Choices! Choices! Choices!

This week I was perusing the Chronicle of Higher Education and came across an article about the psychology behind choice. Sheena Iyengar, a social psychologist who teaches in the business department at Columbia has just come out with a book called The Art of Choosing, in which she breaks down the reasons why, and how, our brains make choice. Iyengar made a name for herself in the social psychology field due to something called the Jam Study, in which she set up a tasting station in a grocery store that switched between offering customers half a dozen and two dozen samples of jam. While the display with 24 jams attracted more customers, the display with only six options resulted in more sales. The hypothesis is that too many choices deter people from making a decision. It was not the first time that the idea of too many choices were examined by psychologists - in the 1950s, a psychologist named George A. Miller identified that the human brain can really only handle around seven bits of information at a time. Some of the most interesting findings indicate that while people crave choice, they are overwhelmed to the point of inaction when they are faced with more than a fistful of options.

Popular cultural inundates people with choices. It's the consumer drive of America! I can only assume that the desire for more choices over the past 50 years was tied to the Cold War and the assumption that only Communist nations would limit product options for its citizens, so the U.S. had to overcompensate. Well comrades, I am going to admit to feeling a little overwhelmed by options. Have you purchased toothpaste lately? How many versions of whitening/tarter control/fresh-cool-winter mint/cavity protection does a person really need? For those of you that love the options, tell me the last time you played the toothpaste field! Last month? Last year? Several years ago? And do you alternate between paste and gel, or brands? My guess is that you have found a toothpaste you like and you pretty much buy that toothpaste each time. I happen to be a paste fan. Gel makes me feel like I'm brushing my teeth with candy. And I purchase the same brand of toothpaste each time, not so much because I love the brand, but because it was what I grew up using and it works just fine. By automatically setting myself up to look for that brand and style, I don't have to stand and contemplate my toothpaste needs in the store aisle. I've provided myself with limited options to help me through the selection process.  I bet many of you have done the same. I don't really consider myself to be brand loyal to my toothpaste. Instead I'm loyal to the idea of quick decision making. Sidenote: I am not a Crest Kid.

Now, as a white American woman, born in a middle class household, I've grown up with options in almost every aspect of my life, from where I wanted to go to school to where I wanted to live. While we like to assume that everyone in America has a "right" to choice, the truth is that these options are a privilege that is unavailable to many people in this country due to their lack of consumer power. Options are only important if you've got the money to make the choice known. I wonder how some of these studies take into consideration the fact that many people have yet to even be in a position to have more than a handful of options?  In other words, why sample jam if you've got no bread to put it on?

Trash the dress? What the F**K?

My friend Leanne showed me some wedding photos that a friend posted online. They were "Trash The Dress" photos, a series of post wedding photos in which the bride wears her wedding dress while participating in messy activities with the goal of wrecking the dress for future use. I had never heard of such a thing, but apparently it is getting very popular. Post wedding, brides will wear their dress mountain biking, wading in the ocean, playing in mud puddles, walking through garbage dumps, painting like Jackson Pollock or posing in abandoned buildings. Apparently, the photos taken during Trash the Dress sessions look artistic. If you say so.

If you check out the Wikipedia link to the title of my post, you'll read the closing sentences used to describe the meaning behind "Trash the Dress":

It may be done as an additional shoot after the wedding, almost as a declaration that the wedding is done and the dress will not be used again. It is seen as an alternative to storing the dress away, never to be seen again.

 Is this how you want to remember your big day? Maybe if you are marrying Satan.

Hmmmm. Dare I suggest a better alternative? This is about the most wasteful thing you could do with a wedding dress. And wedding dresses cost a lot of dough. Even people that I normally consider rational beings somehow manage to shell out close to a grand for a wedding dress. Society seems to dictate that the norm is to break the bank for a dress to go along with the wedding ceremony and reception. And really, I have no beef if people want to spend that kind of money on a dress - I just wish they would consider alternatives to using it once and trashing it. To me, setting your dress up to be disposable is a strong indicator about how you feel about the rest of your marriage.

A surprising amount of resources go into wedding dresses. They take yards and yards of fabric. How much fabric? Well that depends on the dress. All I know is that I used a little over two yards of cotton fabric to make a kitchen apron. And wedding dresses are usually way more complex than aprons. Common wedding dress fabrics include silk, lace, satin, brocade, organza, velvet, etc. Some of these fabrics, like silk and lace, can be very labor intensive to process. The common synthetic fabrics often are manufactured using toxic chemicals which pollute the environment and endanger the lives of the poor workers around the world that make them. Let's not forget about thread, beading, embroidery, crystals, feathers and all other sorts of decorative accents that are common to most dresses. Whether your dress was made in a sweat shop in Asia, or by a seamstress in your home town, it probably took a lot of time and sewing skills to create.

If you stop and think about the resources and money that went into your wedding dress, why would you ever want to trash it? Like lots of other wasteful habits, I think there is a pretty strong link to conspicuous consumption. Brides buy very expensive dresses to indicate their excitement for their marriage and the importance of their wedding ceremony to others, just like a big ol' diamond ring indicates the grooms love for his bride when it is sparkling on her finger for the world to see. An expensive dress proves that brides have the financial resources to fund such an extravagant purchase. Some may argue that a wedding dress is not an extravagance, it's a necessity. But when your wedding dress purchase could fund half a years rent for many people, or a years worth of food, it seems a bit over the top. And then, if you take your expensive dress and destroy it after one use, you're telling the rest of the world that you have enough money and power to make what ever you want into a disposable item. I still notice that many wedding announcements in newspapers feature detailed descriptions of the wedding dress, including the designer and fabric and a photo of the happy couple. This emphasis on the dress and other parts of the ceremony and honeymoon (another indicator of apparent access to resources) just plays into the American fixation on consumption and who has what.

So what do you do when you've got an expensive wedding dress hanging in your closet? Well, the first alternative is to rent your dress instead of buy it in the first place. My good friend "Rasta P" is getting hitched this summer and she decided to rent a dress. She got to go try on dresses at a rental shop, and once she chose her dress, it was fitted to her and reserved for her use until her wedding day in August. After the wedding, the dress will be cleaned and put back into rotation for use by another bride. The rental of her dress is going to cost a few hundred dollars. She isn't phased by the idea of not having the dress in her closet for the rest of her life. Another friend of mine purchased her wedding dress with the idea that she would have it altered after the wedding into a cocktail dress. She was strategic in choosing a style of dress that would be alterable - she chose a strapless long column dress that could be hemmed at the knee after the wedding. Smart move!

I think people need to get more creative when thinking about uses for wedding dresses beyond trashing them for some seemingly cool looking photographs. The sentimental folks could use the fabric for other things like quilts, or remove the beading and make jewelry to wear and hand down to relatives or friends. Make a fancy outfit for that first puppy. Or baby. The non-sentimental folks seem like they'd have all sorts of cool ways to see their dress used again. Donate it to Brides Against Breast Cancer and let the dress be sold  to help fund the final wishes of people with terminal breast cancer. Check out the I Do Foundation to donate not just your dress, but your left over reception food to local charities. Contact local theater troops and donate your dress to their costume department. Let your best friend or relative use the dress for their own wedding. There are so many options for dress reuse or recycling that don't involve destroying the dress for the sake of destroying it. Besides, Trash the Dress photos might seem bold and artistic, but do you know what is more cutting edge? Nudity.

Climbing Toward Consumption?

This morning my gent pointed out a newly arrived Patagonia catalog lying on his kitchen table. Patagonia decided to use old photos of rock climbers from 1970s California throughout the catalog to give it a sort of nostalgic feel. The photos are quite striking and taken from a new Patagonia book The Stone Masters: California Rock Climbers in the Seventies.

Interestingly, what I found even more striking about the catalog was that the climbers photographed do not appear to be wearing any type of special climbing clothing. Sure, they've got climbing boots on, but the shirts, tank tops and pants appear to be cotton. Maybe a cotton/poly blend for some of them. No climber, male or female, is wearing any cloth that looks like it was created by scientists. None of it would feature a descriptor of "dri fit", "nano", "technical", "wicking performance" or "appropriate for high-output activities". Instead, the 70s climbers look like they one day decided to bid suburbia adios while wearing jeans, a Hanes t-shirt and an old flannel, and hit the road carrying a knapsack containing a sandwich and an extra pair of tighty whiteys. I find it interesting that when reading the bios of the climbers, they never mention how any sort of specialized clothing made a difference in their ability to conquer new routes. What's ironic is that a lot of them speak about being broke! I doubt any of them could have bought the $75 rock climbing t-shirts and shorts that Patagonia advertises in the catalog. If anything, seeing how these climbers operated just a few decades ago made me even less interested in acquiring more specialized gear. They were focused on becoming stronger and smarter climbers. I wonder what it is that makes people think they need certain items to be good at anything? Even if you've got the best gear, at some point you've got to prove that you know what you're doing. Your $150 hoodie isn't going to be able to coach you around that crack.

In general, I find most clothing highly amusing. What people decide to wear is very telling, especially when they wear a certain brand, or have a logo or message on their clothing or accessories. Toward the back of the Patagonia catalog was a $25 baseball cap featuring the words "Live Simply" and an embroidered acoustic guitar. I found this to be hilarious! Call me a doubter, but I don't envision anyone who is committed to simple living spending over two bucks, let alone twenty, to purchase a new baseball cap that advertises their simple living philosophies. But perhaps I am putting too much stock into the hats. Maybe Patagonia thinks that just getting the message out there will inspire people. Will anyone see that message and think, "oh man, I really need to start living simply. That's it. I'm getting rid of my cars, replacing my lawn with native plants and giving up foods that came from more than 100 miles away"? I honestly don't know.

For a large company, Patagonia does some pretty cool things so I don't really want to bash it. I've got some toasty warm Patagonia long underwear that I bought three years ago and will probably have for the rest of my life. It's a company that has a strong history with rock climbing, and a solid mission of environmental protection which is put into practice through their efforts to use recycled fibers and also allow customers to recycle their products back to them. In the late 1990s they moved to use only organic cotton in their products. Their belief in Corporate Social Responsibility also sets them apart and is a good model to be used by other corporations. However, can any corporation really be considered "responsible" if they are driven by the desire to get people to consume their products? Is the true nature of business (to make a profit) compatible with respect for the environment and human kind, things that I deem necessary to show responsibility? Maybe? Is it different for companies that create food for consumption instead of non-edible goods? I need to do some more thinking!