Secondhand Nation

What Would Granny Do?: Reviving the Lost Arts of the Past to Preserve Our Future

Figure 1:  Old Tyme Washing!  I'm not going this far.  But you get the idea.

Forget Jesus or Joan Jett or Scooby Doo. 

When it comes to being green, ask yourself W.hat W.ould G.ranny D.o?

The Daily Green has a great article that will both connect you to your roots and get you thinking sustainably, called 7 Lost Household Arts.  I'm somewhat of a hater when it comes to facile articles full of "tips" but this one was very well done.

Doing it granny style has been on my mind since my boyfriend Micheal Pollan advised in The Omnivore's Dilemma:

"Don't eat anything that your grandmother wouldn't recognize as food." 

In my case, it would be my great-grandmother.  My grandmother was a candy freak who couldn't boil water and who regularly bought us cupboards full of sugar cereal and shopped for groceries at Wal-Greens.

I'm happy to say that I scored a book on root cellaring from my library and am going to see if I can manage a plan to save some of my farmer's market bounty this summer.  Aside from the wood stove, I'm smug enough to report that I'm progressing well on the other five (although our rain barrel cracked over the winter - duh - empty it out before it thaws, I'm an idiot).

Grandmotherly inspiration is a good guideline for green living.  Although, I don't plan on wearing dresses, can't sew and feel no affinity for the whole patriarchy thing, I'm rather eager to recover these lost skills, as with food and fuel costs soaring, it feels a bit too close to Civilization Collapse for comfort. 

Image:  Zelina & Florence Richards, 12 and 13 years old doing the family wash. Lewis W. Hine. See 4409. Location: Nicholas County, Kentucky, Library of Congress Digital Collection, LOT 7475, v. 2, no. 4414.

 

Locavores Delight: Farmer's Markets in the St. Paul/Minneapolis area

Here are two great features from that dead tree behemoth, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, that will come in handy while you try to hit local farmer's markets during our cruelly short produce season:

Interactive Map of Farmer's Markets

Day-by-Day List of Farmer's Markets

Yes, I am partial to my local readers, but aren't we supposed to be doing everything locally these days?

For those folks who don't live in glorious MN, I'll throw you a bone, too.

Local Harvest

Secondhand Sighs: Sales of Yesteryear

Man, I pine for those days when I had but my hot-off-the-press, highly worthless college diploma and just a few boxes of books and dishes to my name!  Whee!  I was 21, with a pickup truck that I could fill up with my worldly possessions and jet about the world, looking for cheap rents and even cheaper thrills.

I recall with fondness my first post-college apartment situation.   My friend Heather and I both had crappy jobs - she managed an unstable group home of raucous, mentally challenged young men, while I passed deathless, substance-free hours in a cube farm for a Large Boring Financial Company - and our weekends were given to long drawn-out breakfasts full of cigarettes and newspapers and trawling for the unusual, whether we found it in bars, restaurants, in the sack with various No Good Men, or, our most reliable outlet, thrift stores.

While we had received some mercy donations from family and friends - a couch, a bed, a chipped formica table in that awful faux bois that seems to be coming back - much time was spent haunting the Salvation Army, hunting for various random items that, we, New Women in the World, did not currently own.

Cookie sheets.  Book shelves.  Objets d' art.  Ceramic fruit bowls.  Ice cream spades.

I remember most especially one of those warm June days where we garage saled aimlessly and stumbled upon one of those sales you think so fondly of later, in frosty, backlit tones and pricing that tends to decrease with each recall.

It was held in the alley, using the garage and the backyard of an older home in Minneapolis.  There was the usual household stuff, with not a whiff of children's junk or plastic.  The couple running it were older and greyer than Heather and I, but certainly not pitiable or depressing.  In fact, I remember thinking they were dashing and snappy, for people their age.  This probably had much to do with my own youth as well as the merchandise they sold.

It appeared this couple was divesting themselves of all their entertainment ware.  Underneath a pergola trailed with a flowering vine (okay, it might have been a carport, but my nostalgia makes everything seem like Tennesse Williams) I recall many types of corks and wine and bottle openers.  Several glass pickle and relish dishes, an array of specialty silverware like shrimp forks and sugar cube tongs, and all sorts of liquor and wine glassware.  Wine goblets, brandy snifters, champagne flutes.  Glasses for margaritas, martinis, high balls, aperitifs and shots.  Ashtrays, pipes, serving trays, crystal decanters.  These people had LIVED. Or at least accumulated like folks who had lived. 

Though I was just graduating from cans of Busch Light Draft, I decided to buy a copper band that looked like cuff bracelet for gauging directly the temperature of wine.  They apparently are still sold, but I haven't been able to find the particular one that I had, which was copper and had grape vines twining along the number scale. 

This never-used item accompanied me on several moves until I decided that it seemed highly unlikely that a) this item would continue to work or b) its reading would give me information I was educated enough to do anything about. 

Still, I remember this wine cuff, now long gone, in someone else's drawer, perhaps languishing on a thrift store shelf, reminding me, in a hazy soft focus, of how garage sales can be so romantic and full of promise. 

Get Yer Sale On: Rummage Sales in the Minneapolis/St. Paul Area

The Minneapolis Star Tribune has a pdf link to many community and church rummage sales here.

I'm thinking of going to many of them this year, as it's hard to justify wasting time and gas navigating around to random sales. 

(Short Rambling Aside:  Any sale that's in my neighborhood, on local cross streets or accessible by bicycle?  Fair game, baby!  I'm just saying that plotting a course with the classified section is not my future, yanno?)

So any locals, if you go?  Keep your hands off any of the following:

Stainless steel pressure cookers (from modern era)

Blue / Green retro couches (not overstuffed icky kind)

Coconut or lava Hawaiiana tchotkes

French bread pans

Oaxacan tin work

Local y Deliciosa: El Burrito Mercado

I am all about local food.  I love food and I love having power over big companies that are trying to get my food dollar.

That's why I was thrilled that my local Cub Foods has started carrying Authentic Chips and Salsa from the premiere Latino grocery store and restaurant, El Burrito Mercado. 

The chips are crunchy and thick, with just a hint of salt.  The ingredients involve the following:

Stone ground corn, white corn, corn oil, salt, trace of calcium hydroxide.

Wow.  A corn chip that's mostly corn.  Flabbergasting how something that simple is also highly delicious.

The mild salsa isn't that tomato-y mush that most Midwesterners seem to slobber for; it's a spicy blend of peppers and tomatillos - and yes, tomatoes - that has real punch.  Perfect for chips or dousing your hashbrowns and eggs.

Hooray for Cub Foods!  They are my favorite local food provider, with great emphasis on Minnesota Grown products.

For more information on what's good in Minnesota, check out the Minnesota Grown page from the Minnesota Department of Agriculture.

To find out about what's good locally where you live, go to Local Harvest.

The Church Rummage Sale Blues

Figure 1:  Sign for another church rummage sale, not the one I discuss in this post.  No need to be snotty, I suppose.

Last year, I was singing the praises of the church rummage sale.  Sadly, this year's cherry-popper sale has me a bit bereft. 

It started when my neighbor John tipped me off to a rummage sale his church was holding. 

Sweet, I thought.  My daughter would be at preschool and the church was just a few blocks north of her school.  I envisioned spending my morning blissfully pawing through tons of under-priced merchandise, sans begging child, lavishly pausing to finger old baking tins or rifle through piles of folded linens.  The church was also selling plants, and though I hit the Friends School of Minnesota's Annual Plant Sale already, who can resist a cheap bedding plant?

So I'm all charged up about this sale.  Holding off on other purchases just in case there's a cheaper deal to be had.

I had such a great experience a few weeks back at a local rummage sale held by the boosters of a high school marching band so I was inflating this other church sale in my head.

(That sale had yielded coconut and seashell windchimes, Oaxacan tinwork Christmas decorations and a lovely set of rubbermaid teaspoons, among other things. Tingles!)

As I walked from the parking lot (great looking annuals!  but not at prices that mattered! and I hate annuals anyway!) into the church, I was greeted by a slough of elderly white guys, welcoming me and pointing out the way to the sale room.

I was also assaulted by the cloying, barf-tastic smell of Manwich.  A tagboard sign highlighted in shaking, Sharpie pen strokes, "Sloppie Joe and chips, 1.00."

Agh.  It was the kind of odor that makes pregnant women gasp and hork into their purses. 

The sale was held in the cafeteria, making it convenient for shoppers to buy their things and then sit down at one of the chipped formica banquet tables and tuck into a plate of fresh-from-the-slow-cooker Manwich, a clutch of greasy Old Dutch potato chips and a cup of industrial decaf.   Around the tables and the kitchen serving area, more clusters of old people, some in wheelchairs or pushing walkers with tennis ball pads, milling about fussing with serving trays and the tackle box full of money.

My neighbor was nowhere to be seen and though he's retired, compared to the crew manning this sale, he was fucking Jack LaLanne.

The sale was okay.  Lots of clothes, which are generally a waste of time for me to flip through (how many gold-button women's blazers does a body need?) and lots of dirty, scuffed up plastic kids' toys and a whole array of baby items (bottles, wipe warmers, pacifers - yuk). 

There were lots of plastic blinds and Christmas ornaments (blecch) and scurvy-looking bed sheets and one of those Ye Olde pressure cookers that used to kill people way back when.  Stuff that belongs in the trash, really.   

I bought a cheesecake tin, a cake whip, a food mill and a linen dishtowel  for $1.70.  All things I needed and liked, but still.  The cashier was a friendly woman with an oxgen tank plugged into her nose, whom I was glad had a big button calculator at her disposal.

This spring in Minnesota has been highly disappointing already, in terms of weather.  Can't we get some good cheap stuff to offset the dreariness?

I'm trying to keep chipper, though the aroma of Manwich still clings to my noseholes.

Get Mobile and Stay Home

Figure 1: Boring. Beige.  Business Wear. 

One big reason I have resisted working in a traditional job is that I hate dressing up.  Especially if the word "appropriately" enters the conversation. 

Business casual, skirt suits, hosiery, shoes that clack?  I can't stand them.  I feel like I'm wearing a costume.

It's one of the many reasons I relish working from home.  And why I'm so glad to live in an age when wireless connectivity makes it possible for me to wear thrift store rags 7 days a week.

The Economist has a special report on The New Nomadism, and how people are increasingly leaving the traditional workplace and flying out on wings made of wi-fi. 

The report goes into great detail about how our gadgetry does threaten some social linkages that are important, but I could only think of the bright side when it comes to staying at home:

* eating your own home-cooked meal, from food sources you are aware of, that involves less packaging

* not driving (and at upwards of 3 bucks a gallon, the planet AND your wallet will breathe a sigh of relief)

* not sitting in traffic, which is a huge, boring time-waster

* taking refreshing breaks in your own garden or neighborhood

* being able to maintain home tasks like switching loads of laundry and or rising bread

* spending less on cubicle couture and wearing consignment rags or jammies to your heart's content

Some of us won't be able to work like this.  If you work in a restaurant, retail store or factory, you kinda gotta be there.  But for those of us in the knowledge-based industries, spending even one day at home reduces your consumption and stress level both.

Photo via Wikimedia Commons.

Reader Requests: Spring Fever Edition

It's hitting 30 degrees here in Minnesota.  Which means I'm infected with spring fever and am fitting to burn all my wretched foul weather gear in a witches' pyre on my front lawn. 

A couple of requests, though.  Send me an email or leave a comment about any of the following:

Seed Starters!  I'm extremely interested in hearing from people who are starting seeds indoors.  What's your process and methods?  What kinds of plants do you start indoors?  What equipment do you use, if any?  And what have been the results?

Home Yogurt Makers!  Bring it!  Which model do you use?  Do you use an appliance or a different set of equipment?  Any recipes you'd like to share?

Thrifters!  What's the best thing you've ever bought secondhand? Send me the story of the item and photos if you've got them.

Thanks in advance!

Thrift Store Employee Burnout, Part II: Coping

 

This is my fourth tour as a thrift store employee.  I have worked, on and off, for the same nonprofit store since 2001.  I have been a cashier and floor clerk, a supervisor, a donations processor and a specialty donations processor (books).

I have come to the store willingly three times, seeking work.  Except for my current tenure, when my help was solicited.  Their book pricer had quit and they found themselves swamped to the ceiling with books. 

Would I, could I, for 9 bucks a hour, for 10 hours a week, work for them again?

I ask you - what lover of books would turn this opportunity down, arising, as it did, during a particularly arid time in my writing career?  You get to paw through books, throw away all the brittle, yellowed Leon Uris and James Michener paperbacks, run your mitts over the latest and greatest volumes, come home every shift laden with books for everyone in the family. 

No customer service.  No cleaning the bathroom.  No counting cash.  Just you and the books and an unheated storage bin, sorting, pricing, and keeping a mental inventory of how many copies of the more popular and nauseating titles we have on hand (The Left Behind series, Jan Karon, everything Oprah ever breathed on).

What's not to love, huh?

This freelance shit has ruined me for working retail.  Much like thrift stores have ruined me for shopping retail.  I don't want to work 20 hours to make what I can make in two hours. 

Yes, I understand that writing isn't as reliable.  But I'm in the throes of planning my break-up, and this my friend, is the key to surviving any uncomfortable job situation you find yourself in:  plotting your eventual departure provides a deep and cozy nook for your sanity to rest while you total up all the financial mis-steps doing such work creates.

As a professional writer with a passion for thrift culture, I told myself this job was my hands-on research, my behind-the-scenes, first-hand reporting. 

Unfortunately, it has become, like most jobs, a boring commute and a piddly paycheck. 

So I'm telling myself that once I snag a copy of Sally Schneider's The Improvisational Cook, Hertzberg & Francois' Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day, and the latest Ian McEwan, On Chesil Beach (have I mentioned how much I adored Atonement?  It utterly destroys your soul, in a good way), I am so putting in my notice.

Reuseable Shopping Totes Now at My Target

FINALLY.

I dunno how long they've been available where you live, but I just found these charming little bags, tucked behind the dollar junk display at my local Target, so I picked up three of them.  Apparently they are being disseminated across the country from the West Coast, where they debuted in response to laws in California banning plastic bags.   

How long have I been bitching about this, here and in those customer surveys printed on the receipts?

Of course, my critique of Target won't stop.  I love shopping there too much to quit my petty carping.  Whether it's complaining about their phony "farm" or their lack of information regarding the origins of their "organic" fruit or how they stink up their store with a nasty Starbucks - like any good naggy spouse, I'll be there to grind them down with constant reminders of how they could improve, if they really really wanted to. 

That's really a good model for consumers.  Instead of an entitled, glossy-handbag-wielding princess, perhaps the face we present to Target should be more of a grouchy old wife, ready to poke the produce and sniff at the meat and clout them over the head with our pocketbooks if they try any funny stuff, like trying to take our money, which of course, they are.   

Deconstructing The Grocery Store

 

Figure 1: Grand Grocery Co, Lincoln Nebraska by John Vachon.  Source: Library of Congress.   

Thanks alot, Micheal Pollan.

As household errands go, I used to really enjoy a trip to grocery store.  Now my nerd ass can't even pick up a few groceries without internal dithering over the offerings of each aisle.

A few days ago, I visited my local Rainbow, which I normally don't visit (I prefer Cub Foods) but it is close to my daughter's preschool and gas ain't cheap.

I went in to pick up some fruit and cereal and spent 45 minutes contemplating the astonishing array of ludicrous food products that come boxed, packaged, canned and stacked, marketed to our hungry famine genes and sure to make us fat. 

Once you've read Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma:  A Natural History of Four Meals , every single motherfucking choice in the grocery store is freighted with politics.  (And Pollan's gone and written a new tome called In Defense of Food:  An Eater's Manifesto, which I tremble just thinking about.  Jesus, man!  Can't you let the ramparts of my fragile world stop shaking before you unleash more?) 

Oh, don't throw out that "Just Go to the Farmer's Market!" tagline to me.  I live in the heartland, where we grow corn that gets processed into fruit roll-ups and fattening syrupy fillers, where our farms are currently under 2 feet of snow.  Ain't nothing local to eat right about now, cepting twigs and dogshit supplied by my annoying neighbor's bug-eyed Basenji, who've we've renamed Silent But Deadly.

Among my ponderings:

• To buy bananas or to let growing leg-pain-having child suffer the liver-crushing wrath of ibuprofen every night, when bananas help relieve these torments of youth?  Those feminists were right.  The political truly is personal.  And it's waking me up every night screaming in pain.
• Frankenfood?  What the fuck is this?  Toaster strudels, Disney-embossed fruit leather, instant pasta bowls, pesto-flavored crackers - what would  my great-grandmothers think of all this shit?
• Why must everything be fortified with something else?  Breakfast cereal made from whole grains and enhanced with decaffeinated white tea extract - why not just drink white tea and boil up some oats?  Granola bars fortified with Omega-3 acids?  We've gone totally crazy with our ideas of what food should be and that's why Americans have no national cuisine to speak of.  Instead we're bereft amidst the legions of marketing campaigns for foods that don't taste good, don't resemble food and usually end up making us unhealthy.
• Dieting experts have been recommending recently that we shop around the perimeter of the grocery store, eating "whole foods" like vegetables, fruits, cheeses, meats and grains.  Shocking, isn't it?  That what keeps you fit are actual plant and animal products that are more resistant to the greedy clutches of marketing campaigns?  The majority of the store is dedicated to food products that are bad for you, that are packaged wastefully and that line the pockets of Big Ag. 

Figure 2:  Negro Grocery Store, Black Belt, Chicago, Illinois by  Edwin Rosskam.  Source:  Library of Congress.

I often think about Cargill when I grocery shop.  When I worked there, looking at the directory of departments was sickening.  For example, here are some department names: 

Sweeteners.  Sauces, Oils and Dressings.  Juice. Cocoa and Chocolate. Texturing Solutions. Animal Nutrition.  Meat Solutions. 

I don't know about you, but personally?  I have never had a problem that requires a "meat solution." 

Insert dirty penis joke, I know.  But really, the only "meat solutions" I can think of would involve avoiding BSE, E.coli, and the exploitation of workers.  None of which Cargill, with its global approach to food distribution, can fix for me.

And texturizing?  Ugh.  That just means, hey, let's stick some of our surplus corn product into your yogurt/cracker/ice cream and thus stretch it out further and change the mouthfeel so you'll slobber down larger quantities.  Saves us money while you get less and spend more!  Woo! 

What this means to me is that there is a huge refrigerated case full of yogurts I don't want to buy.  They are covered in Disney characters and packaged in non-recyclable plastic and filled to brimming with high fructose corn syrup, starches and other junk that has nothing to do with milk.  In fact, all I want is the plain yogurt, please, and that is the most expensive one, even when compared to the brands that brag "Enriched with Vitamin A" or "Live Acidopholus Cultures!" on the container.    

Figure 3:  New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.  Stairway with display of a sample of the foodstuff collected by one household Uptown from Red Cross food distribution in October.  Source:  Wikimedia Commons. 

So go live in California, some might say, where you can pick oranges off trees and live the good life.  Quitcher bitchin about grocery shopping!

I don't think there should be an end to refrigeration or survival in cold climes.  I just think it's a damn shame that 95% of that building we know as the grocery store is full of shit that makes us unhealthy, fat and/or sick. 

Food that we can afford, that is free of chemicals and unhealthy bullshit, is nothing less than a human right.  Bugger off, Big Ag, with your grandiose notions of "Nourishing Ideas. Nourishing People."  You're making a shit load of money because you're making us sick. 

Thrift Store Employee Burnout, Part I: Recognize the Signs

Figure 1:   Reject clothing, sorted and baled, no doubt, by overworked and underappreciated thrift store employees.

Thrift Store Employee Burnout (TSEB) claims millions of underachieving lives every year.*  It's a tragic cluster of symptoms that can cause individuals to engage in destructive behaviors like drinking head-achey pink wine or paying full retail prices.  In a series of hard-hitting, shocking posts, we'll examine the scourge that is TSEB and offer steps to recognize it, combat it and ultimately, overcome it.

Signs You Have Thrift Store Employee Burnout (TSEB)

1.  When you see bowls of potpourri set out as air freshener, you immediately sniff their contents.

2.  You have bought or seriously contemplated buying food in a discount dollar store.

3.  You can recite all the house brands of Wal-Mart (Ragged Glory, George, Metro 6) J.C. Penneys, (St. John's Bay, MixIt, Worthington) and Herbergers (Relativity, Studio Works).

4.  You have made or tried to make a skirt out of unsold neckties.

5.  Customers chomping on chicken wings while shopping or arguing with a sales clerk starts to seem like a brilliant way to multitask.

6.  The first thing you think when you see an old friend is a) would I recycle her entire outfit for rag scrap?  b)  could I put that purse at $9.99 even if it is a clearly fake Gucci knockoff?

7.  You dream about making garden furniture from broken cross country skis and bowling balls.

8.  You can predict, just by looking at the person who donated a bag of items, whether it will contain a)  fake flowers b) crappily-printed books about Jesus c) stained pillows embroidered with geese wearing sun bonnets   d)  a shaving cream warmer

9.  You are intimately familiar with all of Ron Popeil's products and their relative marketability

10.  You take Claritin every single day, even though you don't have allergies, and still sneeze every time you walk into work.

*Not actual "lives."  "Lives" here refers to joie de vivre, personal satisfaction, ability to find meaning in work and life, et cetera.      

Welcome to The Devil's Workshop, Now Exclusively Featuring Sustainably-Harvested Bamboo: The Perils of being a 'Lazy' Environmentalist

Figure 1:  "Thank god I didn't bother to recycle that dumb old plastic water bottle!  Think of all the time that would have taken me away from my main pursuit of concocting sustainable methods of being the hippest navel-gazer on the planet...!"

It's Wednesday and I'm feeling bitter as hell.  Perhaps it's the fact that we overslept and missed preschool.  Perhaps it's the lovely gray bullshit atmospheric aura that seems to hang around like a freeloading relative sleeping on your couch.  Perhaps it's because my blog is little, bitchy and fierce, all adjectives stemming from its intrinsic lack of cash-making and scene-stealing.

So, awash in all this dismality, I birth my irritation with a blog/book/phenom The Lazy Environmentalist.

I had heard tell of this book first from some green blogs, Treehugger, probably, and my first thought was, Great.  No matter that so much environmental degradation has come from our lust for convenience and easiness.  Let's just promote the idea that changing our habits for the greater good is yucky and hard and subscribe to the idea that we can fix things by buying some carbon credits or a sweater made by Tibetan monks from repurposed silk or, Cod forbid, by blogging.

There's something elitist about the New Green that bugs the hell out of me.  The insistence on having life exactly the same way, with the same conveniences and luxuries (which are truly the same thing in some instances) by just slapping some no-VOC paint on it and calling it Green, Sustainable, Eco-conscious, making it instantly Good.  If you've got enough money and style, you need not fuss your pretty little head about such mundanities, like basic materials recycling.  To quote Lazy Environmentalist founder Josh Dorfman,

"I won’t always place my empty water bottles in the recycling bin. Why?  Because, frankly, it’s a pain and there’s nothing fun about it."

In other words, let's do this green, earth-saving thing, but only as long as it's sexy and scintillating. 

What's that, you say?  It's made by Prada and a Swedish design team?  Fabulous.  I'll take three.  And hook me up with some carbon credits, while you're at it, Jeeves.

"No guilt trips," promises Dorman.  "Never any sacrifice." 

Yeah.  Because Maude knows that's what got us into this enormous ecological mess -all that sacrifice.

As demonstrated by many a mother, guilt is terrifically powerful and if it makes you recycle or use fewer resources, then I'm all for it.  I'm afraid the environmental situation requires folks to get past their personal feelings and buck the fuck up.  Toss your goddamned plastic water bottle (!) in the recycling, even if it doesn't happen to have a joystick that tickles your dick attached to it, and realize that nobody is blaming you for the situation of global warming.  It's been a long time coming, so the blame is rather diffused, anyway. 

Unfortunately, you are living in what the Chinese cliche lovers would call "interesting times."  So it's up to you to become a better planetary citizen - too bad, so sad!

Sorry, but you don't get to stay in a state of perpetual infancy anymore, even if it isn't your fault.  Thus, a bit of sacrifice, a loss of convenience and a decided lack of fun. Suck it up, First World Cry-Babies.  Because there's a whole lot more to unlearn. 

So chalk up my crotchety finger-wagging to the fact that, unlike some of my hip and sexy counterparts, I don't have a line of stylish sustainably-sourced furniture, a satellite radio talk show, a book deal, or even an income-generating blog.  But know this.  On the occasions that I deign to buy plastic, at least yours truly endeavors to summon every last bit of her human courage and triumphantly manages to toss it in the right disposal bin. 

Photo:  Idle Moments by M.B. Parkinson, New York, 1896.  LC-USZ62-83777

And now, for my favorite topic: LAUNDRY

Figure 1:  My frozen urchin of a clothespin bag. 

I hate most housework but I love love love doing the laundry. 

I love making my laundry soap, I love folding laundry, and I especially love hanging laundry.  If it's free, it's me, so using the sun for power makes me bubble like cheap champagne. 

But in the winter?  I confess to seeing a pic a long while back of a woman hanging laundry in a huge snow drift. Impressive eco chops, no?  So I dutifully  bought a pair of good winter boots at a thrift store and got ready to climb the drifts in search of free energy.

Figure 2: Not only do my clothes suffer from constant stain drippage, they also get subjected to polar temperatures. 

The main problem with outdoor laundry isn't that it's cold, or that navigating snow drifts is difficult, or that my neighbor's damn ugly bug-eyed dog keeps shitting in my lawn and the pristine blanket of white snow just makes that fact all the more clear. 

It's that you need a perfect combination of windy + sunny in order to get your clothing at all dry and that's not easy to get in Minnesota.

So, First thing.  Weather Is A Factor, Just Like In Summer Drying.  I can't believe I just typed that.  But for all our anencephalic or Martian readers, expect to become even more intimately connected with your local forecast than before.  Otherwise you are looking at frozen jeans and shirts stacked like arctic pancakes in your brittle plastic basket, which will thaw upon returning indoors.

Second thing?  You'll need something to set your basket on, lest it get encrusted with snow.  I usually keep a chair in my yard for this purpose anyway, as I hate bending over and what not.  Right now it's frozen in position.  NIIIIICE.

Figure 2:  Helpful chair that prevents bending over.  Which both saves your back and your neighbor's eyes if you have an unsightly ass.   In the case of my neighbor, I don't give a shit.  Stare all you want, pervo.  Just keep your shitting bug-eyed dog outta my yard. 

Finally, consider Domestic Blowback.  Not to be waved off is The Husband's potent dislike of line-dried clothing, which he generally grumbles about in balmier weather as being too crunchy and coarse.  This rachets up to a fierce hatred when his socks are brittle and icy. If you're dealing with hostile locals, consider using the dryer for their duds and save the Laura Ingalls Method for your clothing.

(As much propaganda as I've deluged him with, he's not buying my argument that stiff bath towels are better for skin exfoliation, which they are.   Hello, the coarse mitt used to scrub your bod after you heat up in the sauan in a traditional Turkish bath?  An air-dried towel works similarly.  Jeez.  I can't help knowing everything about everything.  It's a curse.)

For crappy winter weather (also known as "most of the time) I use an indoor drying rack.  I keep mine in my gacky furnace room, where it is warm and there's space to hog up that nobody else wants to occupy.

There endeth the reading.  Go forth and launder sustainably!

Refab Vocab

Eco-tistical:  adjective. Describes individuals who get intensely sanctimonious about environmentally-sound practices and behaviors.  As in:  "Thelma keeps rummaging through my trash pointing out all the things I could have recycled;  she's totally eco-tistical these days." 

Deep Thrifting: The Men's Department

Figure 1: All of these outfits available, somewhere, at a thrift store near you. 

Most thrift store men's departments are a no-man's-land of pleated dress pants, stained neckties and 80's style shaker sweaters worn by Bill Cosby circa 1985.

Unless you're in the market to look like Corey Haim at the peak of his career, you'll not be shopping for men's clothing in most thrifts. Still, there are gems to unearth, if you know what to look for.

Figure 2:  Corey Haim, not at the peak of his career.  Is it right to call what Corey Haim does a "career"?

First, check out the sweaters. Sure, you'll find mostly stuff that the Cos would approve, but if you are a knitter or needle-crafter, you'll want to look for thick-knit ones, in cottons, wools or good blends, that you can take apart for the yarn. Read about that here.

Second, head for the jeans. Sometimes thrift store pricers won't realize they are pricing women's jeans and you'll find some Levi's marked at significantly less than they would be in the women's area.

Third, HOODIES.  That's right, girls.  If you're not the midriff-skimming type, you'll find normal-sized hoodies over here in the men's department.  Thrift store employees tend to put big and bulky stuff in men's, when it could easily be unisex.  But that makes life terribly complicated and working in a thrift store is an endless parade of unquantifiable and uncategorizable merchandise as it stands.

Finally, look at the socks and ties.  Men's socks can come in bitchin' argyle styles, which are fun and the one exception to my No Used Socks rule.  And ties?  Well, try making a lightplate nice and fancy with this little ole project from Craft Magazine.   

Bad Books Nobody Wants, Part II

Here's another annotated list of books I hate that continually flood the thrift store I work at:

See, I Told You So and The Way Things Ought To Be by Rush Limbaugh. 

Here's the thing with political books written by media commentators:  by the time they reach print, they are untimely and out of step.  700 million new things have happened to reveal their snappy, house-of-cards analyses for the gum-flapping horseshit they are.  Also, Rush Limbaugh?  Can go fuck a roof rake.

Let's Roll:  Ordinary People, Extraordinary Courage by Lisa Beamer. 

This is the wife of Todd Beamer, the guy who probably helped over-take the terrorists on United Flight 93, which prevented the plane from crashing into its intended target.  Sure, this is a skin-tingling scenario to imagine and surely offers more than cold comfort to Lisa Beamer.  But seeing this book, over and over, I dunno.  It just annoys the shit out of me.  It reminds me that people will commodify and market almost anything - hero husbands, boil-in-a-bag pasta, their spiritual relationship with anal sex - which brings out the worst cynical hermitty characteristics of my personality. 

Seven From Heaven by Kenny and Bobbi McCaughey. 

First, I hate the word Heaven.  If the concept of heaven was rendered dramatically, it would be the gayest Broadway musical review ever, with Vegas showgirls, talking chimps and ending with a song-and-dance number culminating in an ejaculation of glitter confetti.  Ugh.  Second, there's the multiple births.  You know, I don't think having seven tiny, needy infants ALL AT ONCE is all that cute.  Clearly, I'm not gonna get all teary and sentimental about 7 eating-and-shitting machines.  Because I have one eating-and-shitting machine and I KNOW what I speak of.   Third, take a second and work up a profile in your head of what kind of individual bought this book.  If you're thinking the saggy-assed lady in the Christmas-applique sweatshirt with the home perm and the GOD IS PRO-LIFE sticker on her rusting mini-van, then bingo.

A Million Little Pieces by James Frey. 

You have to feel pretty bad for James Frey.  First, he's got that awful white-guy jheri curl.  Then Oprah goes and busts his nuts on daytime television.  And before I found out that his book was basically poppycock, I must admit the story fascinated me.  Though I feel for his fairy-tale-creating, lying ass, I am tired of seeing this book come in, since there is almost one in every box of books I go through.  I kept my copy, at least. Jesus, if you hated it so much, do me a favor and just set it on fire in your own home.

The Celestine Prophecy & The Tenth Insight by James Redfield.

I suppose by now you're getting a sense of what side of the self-help fence I fall onto.  I'm all for self-help, as in, helping yourself, whether it be to Asian buffets or just getting your closets organized.  But not so much for Self-Help Books.  Especially when they get all woo-woo and make all sorts of crazy leaping insights into "exotic" cultures.  That's right, Carlos Casteneda;  put down that peyote and look at me when I'm talking to you.    

Bad Books Nobody Wants

Recently, I went back to work in the secondary market as a book pricer/sorter.  This means twice a week, I go to a cold, dirty sorting bin in the back of a Nameless Thrift Store and toss away many, many shitty books.  Here's a few of my least favorites:

The Road Less Traveled by M. Scott Peck.  I don't think anyone's traveling this road anymore, and M. Scott Peck's dead.  What the hell is in this thing? 

How Could You Do That?!! "Doctor" Laura Schlesinger.  This woman could die tomorrow and her legacy of terrible advice will live on and on and on...

The Pill Book.  Ugh;  this fat mass market gem often shows up with giant tomes on vitamins and microwave cookbooks.

The Expectant Father.  This book is always in pristine condition.  Hmmm...

REACH OUT.  This is like a groovy, right on Bible with wavy-gravy font on the cover and pictures of chicks with ironed hair. 

The Book of Virtues by William J. Bennett.  This book is so huge and heavy you could use it as a murder weapon.  Funny how it's always getting donated, though;  I'm guessing the porn is staying home close by the fire.

Change Your Thoughts, Change Your Life by Dr. Wayne W. Dyer.  I dunno anything about this dude except that he has TOO MANY COPIES OF HIS ICKY WALKING ON THE BEACH BAREFOOT book.

What To Eat When You're Expecting.  This one is also often in perfect condition, the spine uncracked...

I plan to go on.  The crap that gets donated is astounding.  And I love it.

We Interrupt This Blog to Bring You...NOTHING

Oh, hey.

Yeah, hi.

So. 

What's new with you? 

Really?  That's cool.

Me?  Oh, not a whole lot. 

Uh, I'm buried under the weight and pressure of the many thousands of words I owe for National Novel Writing Month.  You know. 

Also, I've taken on two new freelance projects (that pay me, unlike certain personal blogs I could name) and a part time job at a thrift, being a book pricer and sorter (heaven!)

So, while I've got some posts and news to tell, I'll be seeing you in December. 

Keep on thriftin!

Tierra Y Libertad! (And, uh, candles with porny-sounding names! Right?)

Figure 1: No soy mentirosa, General Zapata;  es verdad, conoczo a Ud. muy bien y tengo muchisimo respeto por su defensa de la gente mexicana!

Remember my thrift spree a few days ago, where I bought my nephews a shit-ton of dress-up garb for a present from the Halloween merch?  (And why the fuck not?  Every little boy needs phony Superman muscles and a coal miner's light strap, right?)

Well, I bought a few things for Mama, too. 

One of the things was a promotional candle from Pink Taco, a Mexican restaurant chain from Los Angeles that Lindsay Lohan's old boyfriend owns.  It's a long, pink, glass-encased pillar candle, resembling those "milagro" relig candles that you can buy in the Latino food section of the grocery.

There was much hardy-har-har about the name when these restaurants opened - in case you're a moron, more info on that here - but it's a pretty popular place.  I was sorta surprised that the damn thing was only marked at 99 cents.

Anyhoo.  It was sitting on the checkout counter while the cashier rang me up and this old woman walked by and said, "Hey, that's Emiliano Zapata.  He's a Mexican hero, you know."

Sure enough, the candle has a pic of Zapata, and he's framed by the dirty words "Pink Taco" and other Mexican-y images. 

"Have you ever heard of him?" she asked me, fingering the candle.  I thought for a second she was going to try to take it from me.

"Oh, yes," I said.  Remember, I'm all about placating the crazies.

"Yes, he saved Mexico," she said, looking deeply at him in the candle.  I was getting freaked out that next she'd ask me what "pink taco" was.

"Have you ever seen Viva Zapata?" she asked. "Marlon Brando was in it."

"Yep, I've seen it," I said.  Which is true.  And Marlon Brando was totally way to fucken tall to play a Mexican at the turn of the century. 

But I wasn't going to say that to the lady, who was now getting herself a shopping cart.  After all, I'm the Hispanic Studies/Spanish major who was buying a 99 cent candle with the words "Pink Taco" on it.

Thrift stores may sell lotsa things but irony ain't one them.

Image via Wikimedia.