Hi, friends. It's been a while. A cluster of happenings in my life — big work gigs, my kids starting full-time public school, and of course my insatiable urge to trade stuff on Buy Nothing — sucked away any time or energy for this here humble substack about everyday thrifting in late-stage capitalism.
Today I was comforted by Cheryl Strayed's take on striving to find "balance" in life. Real talk:
"...there is no recipe. There are only the many maddening, impossible, hilariously haphazard days, punctuated by the few when the dashes and dobs of this and that combine to make something one could call balance. Embracing that occasional magic, instead of striving for the impossible every day, has been liberating to me."
So, forward. I want to return to a weekly newsletter. It gives me a thrill to make good on a commitment to myself to get this out every week. Even if no one else cares, even if I’m worried I’ll have nothing to say.
Speaking of balance, you’d be pressed to find it in the chaos and contradictions of my consumer habits — “hilariously haphazard,” was it?
The other week I blew $90.58 at Whole Foods on a cartful of aspirational items intended to cure my daughter’s chronic constipation. Armed with the fear and knowledge I gleaned from two intense hours discussing poop in a Facebook mom group, I was ready to try anything — and drop bank doing it. In my brief research, I learned that a) a weekly poop the size of a “full-grown potato,” to quote one mom, is not unusual, b) suggested cures include everything from belly massage to popcorn, and c) the anti-Miralax faction is so staunchly outspoken that several people messaged me privately because they didn’t want to be publicly scolded in Mom Village Milwaukee for admitting that Miralax worked just fine for their kid.
Among the items I bought: fancy French prunes in a glass jar, organic apple juice, cherry-flavored Magnesium Fizz powder, aloe juice, raspberry kefir, and children’s probiotic tablets that promise to serve your child 3 billion live cultures.
Who is she?
Is this woman shopping the Whole Foods’ supplements aisles the same person who gets excited about scoring a Buy Nothing pantry clean-out box, scraps aluminum cans, wears almost exclusively secondhand clothing and will never turn down dumpstered food?
The other day I was walking down an alley in my neighborhood and found an unopened, sealed Modelo Especial bottle that had been lost or abandoned in a gravel lot. Of course I took that beer home and drank it. It tasted great.
That’s me, too, late at night ordering expensive Aveda candles, or going on — gasp — Amazon.
Most of my more extravagant or planet-unfriendly purchases are made in an altered state (wine), a state of desperation (will my child ever poop again?), or while traveling (which can be its own altered state of perception).
But sometimes it just comes down to: I’m too busy or exhausted to be dogmatic about my “secondhand only” rules, or I just want instant gratification to make me feel better because our world is falling apart at the seams.
That gratification could come in the form of a surprise bottle of beer in the alley or a $45 candle, depending on the day.
One of the biggest influences on my spending habits is money, of course. The only reason I can confidently go on a minor Whole Foods shopping spree is because I am massively thrifty elsewhere — but also because I hold a certain degree of privilege, time and flexible spending money to begin with.
I don’t know if I can fully explain these contradictions in consumption, but it’s important to air them out. The more I think about it, using the term “contradictions” is a judgement that isn’t wholly deserved. Our society is obsessed with all-or-nothing, black-and-white living, and that’s not how real life works. Life is messy, and it’s OK.
My ability to embrace the mess grows as I get older. I also see with more clarity what I can and can’t influence.
I keep coming back to this Culture Study thread on buying things, and this comment (one of many insightful contributions):
I spent so much time in my college years obsessed with ethical purchasing only to realize too late how futile that effort is, and so another thing I've found joy in with secondhand buying is the feeling of freedom from being at least one degree removed from The Big Market in the Sky. I still think we're wrong to spend too much time as individuals trying to optimize along some ethical axis that can't really exist within capitalism, but it helps take the edge off some of that immediate anxiety more quickly.
This week’s Buy Nothing scores
I’m consciously uncoupling (lol) from my Buy Nothing obsession, which I’ll get into next week. It’s a slow process.
This week I gave away:
a composter
a box of (vintage?) plastic connector toys
a small yard sale’s worth of random household crap posted as a curb alert, much of which I originally got off Buy Nothing (sigh): clothes, a handheld fabric steamer, an old Igloo cooler, kids’ games, etc.
an L-shaped keyboard stand
a freestanding bird feeder, slightly greasy from when I smeared coconut oil on the pole to keep off squirrels (didn’t stop those feisty bastards!)
two twin bed frames that were abandoned in our garage by the previous owner
two baby cribs and lots of crib bedding
baby gate extensions
an electric kettle (hands down my favorite appliance, but I already have one I’m using)
And I got:
8 cans of beer (a BN member who lives around the corner and gave me beer last year messaged to ask if I wanted more. He didn’t want to go to the trouble of posting it. Alcohol postings always get a ton of attention, which is overwhelming to sort through. I took the cans off his hands right away.)
A pair of chunky-heeled Esprit mary jane shoes (which I promptly gave away because I realized, wow, I lived through the chunky shoe trend the first time around and don’t need to relive it)
A memory foam pillow
4 pallets to build a compost bin
bath bombs
See you back here next week! Stay adventurous and keep on thrifting.