using less

USING LESS

Using less.  Sounds un-’Murican, doesn’t it?  But didn’t it used to be this way as a matter of course?  I mean, I’m way too young to remember per se, although I imagine there were certain habits my parents practiced I’m not remembering, or misremembering as being related to lack of consumerism or credit.  But weren’t less well off folks used to using everything less so that it lasted longer and it didn’t need to be replaced?

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You kept your leather shoes polished and cared for so that at most they needed a new sole once every great while.  You only wore your best clothes to church.  The kids went barefoot all summer so they didn’t go through shoes as often.  The mythical grandma that only drove her car once a week on Sunday ( I mean, every myth is first based on reality, right? ).  To this day, when I see someone has folded over the corner on a page in a book I mentally condemn them to the hottest corner of Hell. 

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Today, though, the unspoken, unthinkable norm is to waste the crap out of everything.  Don’t take care of that computer, it won’t be supported after five years.  I’m paying so much on the car I might as well get all the use out of it I can.  I’ll just get another one down at China-Mart.  It’s only money, I’ll get more in two weeks.  It’s fun, let’s go shopping!  All these attitudes are normal, and grumpy old men who are still wearing the same disco era suit after almost fifty years are to be pitied and frowned over.

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Now, I’m not saying that this is completely the fault of consumers.  Shoddy made goods are NOT a free market response by companies ran by fair and just men only trying to provide for their families.  Hey, dumb ass, that stereotype was obsolete before VHS tapes were.  Big Box Stores, asset stripping using Other Peoples Money, the take over of the economy by the central bank-the only thing left is corporate evil.  I’ll remind you that Wal-Mart prices increased as the quality was sacrificed.  That was the derivatives market biting the bankers on the ass, not poor old free market Walton’s responding to customer demand.

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But, consumers WERE responsible for the evil companies being able to get away with that crap, because people were already wasteful and greedy.  We were already driving longer commutes prior to the car companies introducing the Gremlin.  That wasn’t exactly the “car crazy” crap like today, it was White Flight, but I would submit for your consideration that the mindset of consumption for its own sake had already taken hold.  Toffler wasn’t writing about The Throw Away Society because he just made that crap up-it was an observable phenomenon.   But it wasn’t a continuation of throw away items as he envisioned ( from throw away plates and cups as in a fast food joint, throw away clothes were a linear move ), but a “planned obsolescence” of every single thing from cars to homes to appliances.

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They started making parts designed to break back in the Fifties or Sixties.  Crap cars came immediately after the first Oil Embargo.  2008 onward Quality Dive isn’t exactly new.  The only thing new was the extreme contraction in time that failure was now built in for.  Shoe laces breaking after a month, rather than a year.  A dozen uses rather than a hundred.  Thirty year roof shingles that wouldn’t make it to ten.  Of course, shingles were themselves a throw away item on a throw away home.  If we hadn’t been programmed from birth to consume and discard ( diapers ), we never would have thought to buy a throw away home, valuing appearance over function.

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So, can we consume less in a throw away society?  Of course.  Nobody is forcing you to buy disposable diapers.  They still sell cloth diapers.  The only thing you must do is front the $200 investment, rather than settle for a $20 box of disposables.  Folks honestly with a straight face explain that they don’t have time to clean cloth, that it is more sanitary to use disposables.  Have these people every actually changed a diaper?  The kid just exploded a diarrhea bomb.  There is NOTHING sanitary about cleaning that mess.  It is no more  gross scrapping turds off a cloth diaper.  And every disposable you buy is another bit of time earning a paycheck.  A cloth diaper pays for itself in, literally, two weeks.

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It is more a change in mentality.  Nothing too strenuous in the doing.  You just seek to not waste, and to use everything less.  Don’t shop every day, using the car.  Two hundred thousand miles on a car should last a lifetime, not the length of the loan.  Shop once a week, or ideally once a month.  Don’t wash your clothes so often.  Never dry them in a machine.  Try to get them to last longer.  I buy my shirts at a thrift store, then I’m still wearing them as they get holes in them and the collars wear out on the crease.  I just rip the collar off.  If I’m going out into the world I put a newer shirt on for that hour.  Once home, the old shirt goes on.  Along with sweats.  You don’t need to change those every single week ( dependent on sloppy eating habits of course ).

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Does the cloth napkin smell?  Then don’t put it in the wash.  And why are you getting that cloth napkin so nasty?  Lick your finger clean before wiping with the napkin.  Why did you just throw away that toothpick?  Lick it off and use it again, until it splinters into unusable fragments.  This is all a combination of using things more, but also using them as little as possible.  You can’t reuse toilet paper, unfortunately, but you can make your own bidet. 

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One wipe for solids, the next batch of clean TP soaked ( the sink is right there, most of the time you don’t even have to get up ) and then applied.  Yes, your fingers might touch nasties.  The TP disintegrates on contact.  But your next dry paper wipe works much better at removing wet than dry.  You always clean your hands thoroughly anyway, right?  Do this, than actually install a bidet attachment to your regular toilet.  Gross to plan, talk about and do, but you are saving a lot of TP.  To dry the front after using the bidet, girls, just use baby cloth diapers cut into smaller squares and wipe the water off and have a canister to hold until wash day ( I’d imagine nobody is going to want to reuse that cloth, even if it is just water residue-the fish smell might offend visitors ).

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Of course, that deviates from the focus.  Again we talk of non-disposables rather than Using Less.  Do you leave your shoes on inside your home?  Just taking them off every time you enter means you use the shoes less and wear out the carpet less.  And you are letting your feet breath.  Cooking two nights worth of meat means you use an appliance half the time.  Some folks cook once a week and freeze all the meals.  I’m only opposed to this as it means I cannot buy as much meat on sale, but it is a solid plan for using the kitchen equipment a fraction of the time.  Just like mom used to bake bread once a week.  Once you start thinking along these lines, it is easy to see how you can use most of what you own, poor quality or not, much less.  Lasting longer towards the apocalypse is always a good thing.

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