America Feels The Heat

It seems to have finally hit America that our old comfortable life by the cabbana is not particularly going to cut it in this new world that is starting to feel a little like the world our Grandparents love to discuss after a greasy Thanksgiving dinner. Talk of paring down our purchasing habits is spreading across the airwaves like wild California fires. Some people have even gotten rid of their house boys.

If it takes a depression to get our asses moving then I'm happy we're headed towards this tough financial period as a nation. Personally I have already gone through my own personal depression and as I try to figure out how to deal with my credit card debt it is clear that we are far from out of the woods.

So. What to do? I'll start by saying that I do not cut coupons. Coupons, in case I didn't mention them on my extensive list of anxieties, make me anxious. I have coupon phobia. I hate them. It's why I didn't last for more than one shift at Safeway. I'm not kidding.

The first three customers came up clutching fistfuls of coupons for different products, or the same products bearing different bar codes which are only good with the matching coupon, and there were coupons that added value to other coupons but only if the weight of the product is the 11oz version, and then there were the coupons that canceled out some (but not all) of the competitor's deals, but some of those are only valid if you buy on Tuesdays and bring your dead mother with you for proof of age.

When the following two customers came up clutching their own enormous handfuls of coupons I was already planning my resignation. My palpitations were very bad that day. I believe that coupons kill people slowly over the years of paper cuts and a thick lust for saving 28 cents at a time. I think coupons are addictive like gambling. What I think is: if you want to give me a deal, just give me a god damn deal. I'm not your monkey.

So no coupons.

I have been reading a lot of great ideas on other people's blogs and it has got me thinking that one way to approach saving money is by making a grocery list, including the monthly household purchases you make, and look at it hard. Look at it like you're a serious Russian Author. (Yes, I mean: with a bottle of Vodka by your side. It's the only way.) I'm sure that if you need help picturing this I can do an informative self portrait by Sunday illustrating my point with my newly whacked out eyebrows.*

The next thing to do is figure out what you can start making yourself for cheaper. Here are a number of common grocery list items that can be made for cheaper than you can usually buy them:

toothpaste
shampoo
lip balm
toilet paper
menstrual pads
air freshener
sponges
Clorox wipes
ricotta
canned beans
herbs

Those are just some examples. Now find out if you can make any of these things on your own to help the environment and or your budget. I cheated, I only put down things that I know can be produced at home for cheaper. I know you're thinking "Impossible!" C'mon. Play. Imagine.

Toothpaste: using baking soda and salt is how people were caring for their teeth long before Crest and its ilk came along. Personally, I love the toothpaste I use (Tom's Of Maine which is now Tom's of Crest). I loathe the sensation of baking soda in my mouth. However. My toothpaste costs me between $3.98 a tube and $4.98 a tube. Which lasts roughly two weeks with two of us using the same kind. Baking soda is sold bulk at my cheap store for 5o cents a pound. A POUND. A pound of baking soda could clean a whole hell of a lot of teeth. So I have been trying to brave up to make the change.

Shampoo: baking soda made into a paste. You can read about it here. Baking soda bulk is really cheap (see above) and apparently it performs a whole lot of great household tasks. Plus it's nontoxic which you can't actually say of most shampoos. Even the ones that claim to be natural.

Lip balm: You can buy a bar of bees wax, get some sweet almond oil, and make a hell of a lot more lip balm than you can buy for the same price. At some point I'll be organized enough to cost it all out officially for you. Because you have to make so much at once generally, this is a great project to do with friends and split the cost. Or, make a bunch and store them in a very cool dry place and they will keep for a long time.

Toilet Paper: Don't use any. Yep. Don't use any at all. Instead make yourself cloth wipes. I know that people (like me) generally can't grasp this concept all at once. It requires some serious thought. I have two good friends who do not use toilet paper any more and only have it in their homes as a kindness to less advanced guests like myself. I have to say that if I can get my whole household in better order so that I feel some sense of calm I might be able to do this. Read all about how it's done here. Maybe it seems wild but it's not. How long have we all been using toilet paper? Not that long actually.

Menstrual pads: Another item that can be made from cloth. Wash them. Use them again. I may not be ready for cloth wipes but I am ready for cloth pads. Every month I buy some and it isn't exactly the cost that bothers me but the waste. Although, why not save the $4.00 every month? I have been meaning to do this for a while and what keeps getting in my way is the general chaos of my sewing room and house. This is one I plan to tackle before my next cycle.

Air Freshener: Dudes...it's called OPEN THE WINDOWS. Even if you live in a frigid region you should open your windows for brief periods of time to let in fresh air. It is what we need most of all to keep a house fresh. But if you insist on using a spritzer- make it out of water and essential oils. Shake it up and spray. Don't use that creepy bottled crap because a) it smells super creepy and b) the ingredients are going to contribute to your death.

Sponges: This is a weakness of mine. I love sponges. I am very particular about them too. I love the Scotch brand yellow ones with the scrubbie on the back. But this is still a cost. And I don't use them until they are black with grime. The obvious answer is to use dish clothes. They last longer, can be washed in the washer, and you can make them yourself. I'm not ready for this but I could eliminate it from my shopping list and I will... as soon as I get over my fixation.

Clorox wipes: These are evil incarnate. Yes, I have lambasted them. They are squares of synthetic material soaked in toxic chemicals. Don't wipe your house or children with them. Unless you wish to do them damage. You don't need wipes. Clean dish clothes are just as good for wiping down surfaces and children. Or plain wash cloths. Just stop buying these. Waste of money.

Ricotta: I no longer buy it. For a 15 oz container of it I have to pay at least $4.00. But I can buy good quality local milk for $2.69. It takes little effort or time to make ricotta. And when I make it myself it tastes better.

Canned beans: Buy bulk dried beans. They are easy to fix. Busy? Find a crock pot at the thrift store and put your beans in there while you're at work (on low, with lots of water) and when you get home they'll be ready for you to use. A can of beans generally costs at least 50 cents (usually more for me). You can buy beans bulk for the same price per pound and get four times the amount of beans for the price. Without using a single coupon.

Herbs: I do buy spices when I need them but I rarely buy herbs anymore. I grow them. And then I dry them. It costs me about $2.69 for each thyme plant and I usually grow four or five of them and use it fresh when I need it and dry the rest twice a year. The plants generally last a few years in my climate. I also grow rosemary, sage, tarragon, oregano, and marjoram.

There is so much we can do ourselves. I'm getting inspired by all the gloom out there to make change and I really hope it makes everyone else stop and think too. It isn't about "doing without" so much as it's about taking better care of ourselves for less money. Most of the solutions to spending less are also solutions to wasting and polluting less. What would life without luxuries be? I agree. But what meaning is there to luxury if we have it all the time?

I'm not proposing to make my life more difficult or unfun, the truth is, doing these things for ourselves and making these kinds of changes are mostly fun. Some of you won't believe me unless you try it for yourself. Obviously I'm going to write here about things I try. It's what I do. And if I try something and it's a disaster, I promise not to sugar coat it for you. The magazine (Roost) will also have lots of great information in it on making some of the things I've mentioned here because I have several amazing contributors.

Let's all reinvent ourselves as amazing capable tough people able to get through rough times with a sense of humor and with our teeth still in our mouths.

Well, it's time to get in my jammies and watch some CSI.







*I get my hair cut and my brows waxed about four times a year and I have been meticulously letting my eyebrows get wider because a few years ago they were waxed to thin by a pencil-brow whore. My trauma was severe. I do not look nice with thin brows. I only like them to be cleaned up so they are less HAIRY. Well, today they have been made super thin and it is humiliating to think that people will think I think my brows look great. Ironically, I generally get a crappy haircut and today my haircut was pretty good.

How I Don't Love Remodeling Work

and other true facts

The priming is under way at last. Philip kindly volunteered to start it last night. I didn't TSP or sand the paneling so it was kind of slick. He couldn't use the roller for it so he used brush strokes to create a kind of slight texture to make the paint adhere better. I hope to get it completely primed today and then start painting this afternoon or tomorrow. There is a tremendous pressure to get it done. I had to turn down a project for a friend because she would need it much sooner than I will have my studio ready and I can't do a new project with all of my supplies scattered and packed around the garage. That was work I could have gotten paid to do. Money, which I need. Much too stressful.

Some executive decisions have been reached:

1) I am covering the floor with carpet tiles that Lisa E. has left over from her last house. It seems there will be plenty to do the job, they are free, and they come up as easily as they go down so that when I can afford a more permanent solution like wood floors I won't have to undo glue or tacking. It's a reddish orange which I actually quite like, though I don't think it would be to many other people's taste.

2) I am not going to change the hardware on my built in desk right away because I couldn't find anything I like at Lowe's that fits the screw holes that are already there and I'm not willing to fill in holes and make new ones just yet. The hardware is brass which I want to call vomit-metal in my more childish moments. I hate brass. I REALLY HATE BRASS. I'm a chrome girl. Or wrought iron. Or in my trendier moments I sometimes enjoy a brushed nickel finish.

3) I'm not going to fix the particle board sub-flooring where it has dry rot because it isn't soft, the damage is right by the sliding door, and the piece that is affected can be easily replaced by a professional when we are ready to replace the flooring. Every detail that can be shaved off the time it will take to move into that room is vital. Angela (from Cottage Magpie) will be very disappointed in me I know, she's an agent of precision and solid remodeling practices. Which I totally admire.

4) I've come to realize with absolute certainty that I derive no enjoyment what-so-ever from doing remodeling work myself. Even painting rooms I find completely tedious to the point of constantly fantasizing that I can afford to pay professionals to do it. I feel a lot of guilt around this realization. As a Do-It-Yourself advocate, I should relish doing it all myself. While I am proud that I can build a chicken coop from scratch*, use a circular saw, a power drill, and can rip up carpet like a pro...I don't like doing it. Is this a crime? It feels like a crime.


I still have no extra freezer or fridge. It is beginning to sound like a joke. Right now I have my one and only completely stuffed with beets because Bernard's farm had beets at the farmer's market for only .79 cents a pound. I only spent five or six dollars and have a fridge full of beets. Enough for one or two batches of pickles. I've been wanting to do this project for a couple of years now. It calls for sugar and I'm just hoping I'll like it. I think all the pickled beets I've previously enjoyed have been made with sugar. I'm going to go check right now....

Yes they do. Generally speaking I loathe sweet pickled items which is why I'm desperate to find a recipe for canning marinated three bean salad with either no sugar (and no green peppers) or just a token of sugar. I wish I had a mandolin for this project so I could slice my beets using the fancy ruffly cutter. Ah well.

It's exciting to watch the larder fill up. Not that I have a "larder". I should have said pantry. But doesn't larder sound kind of cool? I think that's kind of literal. The place where you keep your lard. Gross. As a non-meat eating individual (no, not fish or chicken either which I consider to be meat as they are the flesh of animals. I eat eggs and milk products, but I don't eat the flesh of any animals.) I think the idea of lard is really pretty awful. However, if I did eat meat it would make total sense to use the lard for cooking too. But when I think about lard I inevitably think about how I could just scoop some right out of my own belly to fry up some chitlins. Ha. Are you fully disgusted now?

*Actually, I really did enjoy building the coop from scratch. The one we have now is much nicer looking and came as a kit, but our first coop I did all by myself and I have to say it was funky. But FUNCTIONAL. Yes, I enjoyed doing that project.

The Hot Hot Future

Peppers from the summer harvest. The flash on my camera made them look like cheap garish vegetables, rather than the complex cayennes they really are.

Remember summer tomatoes? I'm still hoping for more snow here in McMinnville, so it's not as though I'm pining for the summer yet. As I recall it, it was pretty miserably hot here and I wore a lot of heat rashes in July. That's not a look that inspires admiration. Or comfort. Still, I've been thinking a lot about produce lately, how there isn't much to choose from around here, and in plotting to never buy any vegetables ever again I was trolling through pictures from the summer garden; getting hungry. I went to Roth's recently, the posh grocery store, just to have a break from the miserable health food store. Here's what I have to choose from:

Safeway: a place that is contributing mightily to the destruction of our local economy, global warming, chemical poisoning, and the spread of the corporate disease. We buy most of Max's food at Safeway because he was sent to us from the devil and will only eat Ritz Bitz and Goldfish.* I avoid buying produce there as much as possible, mostly on principle, but also because I bought broccoli there this past year that, when steamed, smelled really wrong. It had a strong foul chemical aroma.

Harvest Fresh: Their prices aren't all that bad. Not great, but I have made immense efforts to support them since they aren't corporate, they sell "good quality" products, and they support lots of local farmers. I want to give the owners a swift kick in the butt though for trying to sell produce way past it's prime, for not controlling the aggressive unappetising clouds of fruit flies always hovering over the produce, and for not staying on top of general expiration dates. Oh yes, and their mediocre food makes me upset too because there's no excuse for it.

Roth's: This is where you go when you have annoying stacks of greenbacks burning holes in your pockets. Or when you just get so tired of your other choices you break down and go there against your better judgement. I will ask you this: what grocery store doesn't carry swiss chard in the winter? Oh yes, and: who can afford to spend $2.99 per pound for "heirloom" oranges? I'm sure the Donald wouldn't blink twice at that price. But only because he has probably never gone to the grocery store in his entire life. (That alone deserves my scorn.)

There's the fourth, secret, choice: GROW ALL MY OWN FOOD.

Because all this spare time and acreage I've got is really bringing me down.**

Seriously, this has been on my mind a lot this past week. Partly that's because this is the time to plan the garden. But also because I feel like the only way any of us can eat produce that's healthy, tasty, and not prohibitively priced is to grow it ourselves. There's something wrong with farmers using chemicals they won't let their own family touch. That's right, there's at least one commercial farmer out there who isn't buying the whole "pesticides are harmless" crap the chemical companies are trying to shove down our throats, but who, none the less, is using them to grow commercial crops. There's one farmer out there who won't let his family eat the food he grows for the rest of us. He has an untreated patch of potatoes for his own family. There is something so morally wrong with him being willing to feed the rest of us this poison when he isn't willing to give it to himself, his wife, or his children.

I'm not actually trying to bust the farmer's balls. I mean, someone should, but right now I'm trying to focus on what I can do for myself. All good change starts not from pointing fingers at others but pointing them at ourselves and asking what the hell we can do about it. I have my own hens, so I have eggs whose origin and content I am in complete control of. I give my girls lots of good scraps and I keep them pretty clean, and they are pretty happy for a bunch of fluffy birds. Some people don't think this makes a difference. But it does. Oh yes, it does. It just isn't a difference that's going to make you richer.

I can grow some of my own produce too. Which I do, every single year. If I had the time I would grow a lot more. And once I'd used up my yard, I would, if I could afford it, either buy more land or rent more. There is no more powerful thing you can do for yourself than to grow some of your own food. Go ahead, doubt me. Remember the victory gardens everyone was growing during World War II? Millions of people were gardening because of food shortages. People were on rations. Do people think this couldn't happen again? What a bubble we live in.

All of these thoughts combined with all of the research I've been doing for the store have made some ideas sharpen. I've become focused on how to make Dustpan Alley not only become successful, different from our competition, but also a company that reflects what's truly important to me, to us, and if not to you, then what should be important to you. Sustainability, high quality lives, environmental awareness, and self sufficiency.

By self sufficiency, I don't mean that we all need to become creepy cult-like woods dwelling self righteous people who don't participate in culture, and make our own tools as well as grow our own wheat. I mean, more power to you if you embrace that level of self sufficiency. Just don't stock-pile weapons and ammunition please. By self sufficiency I mean we all need to have more independence. Most of us can't grow all of our own food. But as I've mentioned before, everyone can grow some fresh herbs. Almost everyone can grow a tomato plant or two, some lettuce. I mean that it's empowering to make things for ourselves.

Most people have to work a lot of hours away from home just to pay the bills. Even when you do this you can learn to cook healthy food for yourself, you can learn to use some tools to build small things for your home and garden. You can sew things. You can fit so much in life that's fun and gives you a little more personal power than you had before. How can anyone not want that?

I suppose I'm preaching to the choir here. I want my store to have ready made gifts in it, because I'd be stupid not to have plenty of cool things for people to buy that don't require any assembly. But what I want more of is kits. Kits that help people get started learning new things such as how to make small useful items like key chains. Kits to get people started making their own natural body care products. Kits for making soap. These aren't original thoughts or kits. That doesn't mean there shouldn't be more of that out there. Who doesn't love kits?!

OK, I know, plenty of people don't care about kits. But they will when they see mine.

You can't see it from your screen, but my mind is rearranging itself. My mind is taking what we've already done and is starting to hone in on what might really work, distinguish us, and offer something truly valuable. A lot of my inspiration comes from my creative friends who all around me are making fantastic things. Beautiful knits, magical toys, incredible food. Not just my friends right around me, and the ones I left behind in California. But you. You who might be reading this right now.

Right around the new year I was asking some pretty important questions about my business. Not comfortable questions, but important. I'm coming up with answers now. That doesn't mean I'm going to have it all figured out any time soon. But my mission, my vision has become much more obvious and my path more clear. Even if at the end of the year our brick and mortar isn't paying enough of the bills to keep us floating, it won't necessarily mean the end of Dustpan Alley. My original vision for my company, thought up several years ago when I became a housewife, has gotten a little obscured. Yet all I had to do was some serious brainstorming to find out that I'm still building what I wanted to build, it just got complicated by opening an actual store and having to fill it.

I feel like I'm making almost no sense because my head is buzzing. I'm not on drugs. I'm not drunk. It's buzzing with ideas. Like I hit the idea jackpot and I need three more bodies so I can develop all of them simultaneously. In fact, I have to get back to organizing the projects and do more research. I guess if I didn't make sense today, you'll just have to wait and see what develops here. I will get that camera battery replaced so you can see some of the projects as they are taking shape.

*Mild exaggeration. He wasn't really sent by the devil.
**Total lie. Unfortunately.