Nothing to Spend, No Place to Spend It: Between the Bookends

I just finished reading Fashionopolis, by Dana Thomas, a look at the not-so-great history of the fashion industry, its current problems, and some bright lights of both old and new technologies that could make a difference to the future of our planet. In the book, one of the people interviewed referred to production issues as "bookends": that is, the twin problems of where things such as fabrics come from and how they're processed; and where they eventually end up. If you're involved in that industry, or a similar one (as a company owner, as a designer, whatever), you have to address both those questions. Where are your materials coming from? Are they wastefully produced, or sourced in a way that hurts people or the planet? And will they eventually languish in a landfill or pollute the oceans? As consumers, where do we fit into that picture? How responsible are we for keeping things responsible? Should every pair of socks, pack of markers, and jar of coffee inspire another round of shame?

I'm not going to write about clothes this week (stay tuned for that later). But I have one thought that might be useful during a time when a) we might not be buying a lot of new things, for whatever reasons, and b) we might also not be disposing of things quite as fast. I'm not assuming anything: this might not be your experience at all. If your time is very much not your own right now (say if you're trying to work from home and take care of kids or other people at the same time, or if you're working outside the home and still have to juggle things like childcare and laundry amidst other worries), you are now thoroughly sick of hearing how this is the time to be "cozy," clean out your closets, and read all the books you haven't had time for. You might feel like the harassed mother in Ramona and Her Father whose hopes of getting treated to a burger out are suddenly downgraded to what's in the fridge: leftover cauliflower and last weekend's roast. Not much scope for creativity there (although I've always thought she might have been able to make a pretty good soup with the cauliflower). If so, please just work on getting through it, and I hope things go smoother soon. And use whatever tools you can to help: slow cooker or instant pot, grocery deliveries, a special bag of quiet toys for conference calls...

But for some of us, this is a chance to focus not on the bookend questions (though they're important), but on the midlife existence of the stuff we already have.

We might be short on certain supplies. We may not be able to get everything we want, much less to go anywhere we want to get it. We may be using an older thing that we had hoped to replace. However, most of us have. Did you ever do the old two-pennies-for-every-light-bulb fundraiser at church or at school? The point of that wasn't just to raise pennies, but to remind us: by and large, we have. You know the gratitude drill, I don't have to spell it out.

To use Marie Kondo's inner-life-of-things philosophy, this is the time to wake up the lonely, neglected pieces of our material world already in our homes: the things we've already sourced (so that cost has already been paid), and those that, in the dump-it-all-off world that existed even a month ago, might have already been on their way to oblivion. But as my thrift-store-volunteer t-shirt says, you can't throw it away: there is no away. And at this point you can't even take whatever it is to the thrift store: ours, at least, is closed for the duration.

So leave the bookends aside for the time being, and concentrate on what's on the shelf or otherwise already in your life, especially things that could help somebody else. Although I draw the line at virus amigurumi, there is definitely a use in some areas for donations of homemade face masks, if you have a sewing machine, elastic, and suitable fabric. And this should be obvious, but the need for all the other sorts of loving-others crafts and giving hasn't ended: preemies still need hats, kids in crisis still need teddies, people in care homes still need lap robes. In my area, the Mennonite Central Committee Material Resources group packs overseas relief and school kits in home-sewn drawstring bags (instructions are on their website). At this time, they're only working with previously-donated items, but sooner or later they're going to be back in business and needing more. I assume it's the same with the other places that ask for handmade items.

Some people are sending homemade cards and calligraphy by mail. Photographers are taking family pictures from across the street. Any care you can show by mail (when it can get through) is welcome.

And that's as far as I can go, because I don't know what's between your bookends. But whatever you can find: give it a chance.

Nothing to Spend, No Place to Spend It: Toads, Butterflies, and Notebooks

Before all This Stuff broke loose, I was trying to do a couple of new things. I had splurged on a spiral-bound notebook divided into blank, lined, and dot-paper sections, to try out bullet journaling. (One of the only dot-paper books I could find at Walmart.)  I even had some flowered washi tape to make things pretty. But when things started getting closed and cancelled, my "weekly" and "daily" notes went up in smoke. "Do Laundry" did not seem to merit the same use of paper as "CM Study Night." Scheduling "Work on Computer" every day also seemed pointless.

I was also trying to begin a Hundred Days of Keeping notebooking routine (started by Laurie Bestvater). I made a few entries, including this one from Freedom of Simplicity, by Richard J. Foster, which quoted Dietrich Bonhoeffer (I'll transcribe it below):

"To be simple is to fix one's eye solely on the simple truth of God at a time when all concepts are being confused, distorted, and turned upside down."

Well, Dietrich Bonhoeffer knew something about times like that. But I didn't know then how true it would be for this year.

I also didn't know how hard it was going to be to keep up all those new notebook entries. (My hundred days turned out to be about six.) I had about as much success concentrating on that as the Butterfly did praying in Prayers from the Ark:

"Where was I?

O yes! Lord,

I had something to tell you:

Amen."

What turned out to be more valuable for me was going through older entries on the same themes: simplicity, trust, faithfulness. Some of them I've posted on this blog over the years.

"'I take courage,' Aeneas said. 'Here too there are tears for things, and hearts are touched by the fate of all that is mortal.'" Edith Hamilton, Mythology

"Then there is what we may call the Courage of our Capacity--the courage which assures us that we can do the particular work which comes in our way, and will not lend an ear to this craven fear which reminds us of failures in the past and unfitness in the present." Charlotte Mason, Ourselves

"The tragedy is not that things are broken. The tragedy is that they are not mended again..." Alan Paton, Cry the Beloved Country

And this reminder:

"We do not stir. It is a hard lesson...Of course YOU know how to keep still, for you are children. And so perhaps you do not need to take lessons of teacher Toad. But I do, for I am grown up...with a world of things to do, a great many of which I do not need to do at all--if only I would let the toad teach me all he knows." Dallas Lore Sharp, The Spring of the Year

The toad is patient, still; the butterfly is simple, even foolish. Bonhoeffer's "simple Truth" is what they both know best.

 So, although I am keeping busy with the projects I've been working on (plus a couple of new ideas), and although I do have a work routine (Wake up. Do the getting-up things. Start working.), I am excusing myself from needing to document the fact that I'm planning to do it and that I did it. Instead, I've been playing with other sorts of looser, less time-sensitive "Journaling" pages. Places I want to go someday. Books to read. A page of spice mixes in my Enquire Within notebook (that's the household stuff). Things like that.

And one day I will have appointments and errands to X-off again.

Nothing to Spend, No Place to Spend It: Look, and look again (Archives post)

First posted May 2016, slightly edited

Sometimes we forget that one reason for decluttering is so we can appreciate the things we do keep.

What books do you already have on the shelf? Have you read the ones you downloaded to your Kindle app last year, or the year before? I just finished one of my long-time Kindle-sitters, at 10,000 feet, because the crossword puzzle book I'd brought was excruciatingly boring, and the airplane WiFi wasn't free. Of course looking out the window at the clouds is free, but I wasn't right by a window, and where I could sort of see out, people kept closing the shades. So, the downloaded books came in handy.

What do you have in your jewelry box? I have a necklace with a green pendant that Mr. Fixit gave me some time ago. I cleaned out my box this spring, got rid of the non-keepers, put a few special but unwearable things away, and that left the things I liked but hadn't been wearing, like the green necklace. So now it's where I can grab it easily and put it on.

What do you have hidden in your china cupboard? A pottery dish? Candles? Fancy bowls? We are paper napkin users, by and large, although we do have a stash of homemade cloth napkins we use as well. Sometimes the stack of paper napkins sits right on the kitchen table, which is not attractive. Sometimes they sit in a basket, which is better. Today I pulled out a vintage tin box and slipped the napkins into that, just for a change. Better to use things than to hide them away.

I just finished reading a book that my daughter loaned me. In the story, one character had a special celebration, and two other people decided to commemorate it by giving him a trading card of his favourite Japanese baseball player, Yutaka Enatsu This was not easy to accomplish, because the man already owned most of the early Enatsu cards, but for reasons too complicated to explain here he lived largely in the past, and might not be able to handle it if he found out that Enatsu was later traded to another team. The searchers did, through a few strokes of luck, come up with a card that fit the bill, and the giving and the receiving was everything they hoped for. One little coloured piece of cardboard, but chosen with love, and treasured.

Enjoy your small treasures for the smiles they give.

Nothing to Spend, No Place to Spend It: Make a List

If you've read By the Shores of Silver Lake, do you remember Laura's discovery of the pantry full of food in the surveyor's house which her family had just rented? During her later Long Winter, I wonder if she mentally went back to that satisfyingly well-stocked house, or even to their earlier log cabin full of smoked meat and pumpkins, and if she wished she could bring some of that into their blizzard-barricaded, nothing-to-eat-but-bread predicament?

About the only constant right now is change, sometimes by the day, sometimes by the hour. Things become more restricted, less restricted. Businesses and borders shut down, re-open. Opportunities come and go.

Our resources may also be tremendously different. Some people have lots of stuff (food, entertainment, medicine, tools, company, spaces to play) on hand, or can easily access more, and have the money to do so. Others are coming up short, one way or another. Some live where it's already possible to plant vegetable gardens; others are in a different climate. As Amy Dacyczyn wrote, suggestions from personal experience are most useful if someone else can take them and make them work in different circumstances. Or if you can take a strategy you used at another time, and change it to make it work now. Things we've learned in one setting can be our best allies when we're faced with new challenges.

So rather than focusing on the missed opportunities or the missing items, make a list of the things you do have at your disposal. It might be longer than you think. In remembering your own previous hard times, you might even notice that you have things now that you were desperately wishing for then; or easier circumstances in some other respect. Like, maybe, electricity or hot water: maybe you went through an ice storm, cooked on a camp stove or a barbecue, tried to keep your food safe in a cooler, and went to bed early to save batteries or lamp fuel. And when it was over, you felt so happy to hear the furnace come on, and so privileged to flip a switch and turn on a light.

Or during your last crisis, whatever it was, your washer or your car was out of service, but this time you're good.

Or you have improved online opportunities now: maybe during the last crisis you weathered, you were on dial-up, but now you have unlimited service.

Or maybe during the last time you were very short of cash, you had a houseful of small people to feed, herd, diaper, teach; but now you have a smaller group and things don't have to stretch quite as far. (Not that you don't love your people, but we're just talking about practical needs here.) Or your children are older now, and can help out more.

Maybe you have a particular skill now that you didn't  before. Maybe, without thinking that you were doing anything special to prepare for close-downs and disappearances, you became a great bread baker, or home haircutter. Or you finished a diploma  in something which, you suddenly realize, might be in demand now or in the near future.

So all that is to say that, first, if you've survived past troubles, you know there are ways to make it through the Long Winters and the worst of other times. List your assets, and not just the things you happen to own, but anything helpful around you (like dog-walking trails) that you can access without putting yourself or others at risk.

And list skills you have that might either make you some income (if yours has disappeared temporarily or indefinitely); or which might be a way to make the world a better place right now. Maybe you already have a YouTube channel or do podcasts: use those platforms the best that you can. Musicians are creating free online concerts and singing on balconies. People are sidewalk-chalking and posting art in their windows. Authors are doing online readings.

Just, please, don't post pictures of crocheted amigurumi coronavirus. Because that's nasty.

Nothing to Spend, No Place to Spend It: Revisiting the Tightwad Gazette (Archives post)

First posted 2011, edited slightly

When I first knew Mr. Fixit, I was sort of a tightwad wanna-be; or perhaps a frequently-misbehaving tightwad.  By the time we got married, necessity made us both more than ready to tighten things up more than they had been; late-night courting pizzas had been fun, but a new house (even a small one) and a Squirreling soon on the way meant a different reality.  Plus the whole economy was in a bad spot during those years.  As I've said before, wedding rings were cheap; broccoli was expensive.

So all that is to say that, from our earliest Treehouse days, we tried to be careful with money; we had other books about frugality and quite a few broke-and-or-frugal friends to learn from; but I don't remember exactly when or how I first heard about The Tightwad Gazette. Amy Dacyczyn started the newsletter in May 1990. The first book was published in 1992, but I bought it used sometime later, maybe in 1993 or '94.  The second book came out in 1995, and I got it with "four free books for joining" from a book club (I still had some things to learn).  At that point we started subscribing to the newsletter, and almost right away heard that it would be winding up in 1996.

Bummer.

But we did get several months' worth of newsletters, and then bought the third book when it came out at the end of the year.  Brand new, $17.95.  I knew it would be worth it.

So knowing all that, I guess our most intense apprenticeship with Amy would have been through the early to mid '90's.  I took the handles off a small pot, trying to make it fit inside our pressure cooker to make rice and beans (I gave up on that--pot and cooker were just the wrong shape). I tried a whole lot of things, especially food-related, from the books:  gelatin, popsicles, coffee mixes, chili, breadcrumb cookies, practicing "how to avoid feeling deprived," home haircutting (Mr. Fixit was the first to try that here); buying grains and beans from a co-op; juice-lid toys; the "snowball principle"; the "combining frugal strategies" principle; frugal-baby ideas; newspaper Easter bonnets; and egg-carton crowns.  (I passed on the dryer-lint Halloween mask.)  We didn't try everything (have never been dumpster diving either), but we learned one main principle:  nothing is too weird to try if it means you stay afloat.  And another one:   that a lot of "radical tightwad" ideas are just the "normal" of a couple of generations ago--less stuff, more time and so on.

If fixing, scrounging and occasionally doing without things meant that we could pay off our house, have me stay home with the kids (and eventually homeschool them), and stay out of credit-card debt--then, as Amy says in the intro to her first book, we weren't too frugal. 

It wasn't until years later that I realized, via Google, how many people out there had issues with certain frugal practices and Dacyczyn parenting points.  Given the number of critics who are STILL trashing Amy on message boards for powdered milk and making her kids clean their plates, it's no wonder that their family went into a more private lifestyle after the newsletter ended.   I still admire her, though, and am still learning through her books (I keep them with our cookbooks); Amy stuck her neck out, did the math instead of just saying "this should save you money," and took the risk of being called extremist. 

Maybe it's fifteen years since we connected, maybe it's more; it doesn't matter exactly.  The Dacyczyns' risk gave us more confidence to live the way we wanted, and to keep working on that over the years.  And for that, we thank them, and the Gazette.