Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without.
Yankee Proverb
The proverb came to mind not long ago as I read a newspaper article reporting that in this trying economy more people are having their clothing mended and shoes resoled, using the public library instead of buying on Amazon, and preparing more meals at home instead of eating out.
It came to mind again as I was wheeling the garbage can to the street. It was nearly full, despite the fact that only my wife and I live at home, and we recycle newspapers and magazines, aluminum and steel cans and cardboard. We save our plastic grocery bags for use by the food pantry.
What is it that we are throwing away? By far, the most substantial part of it is packaging. Everything seems to come in multiple layers of paper and plastic. Some of it is leftovers that got left over for too long. It is obvious that we are throwing out more than we’re wearing out.
Whether you call it frugality or conservation, it is unarguable that our footprint on this plant is much larger than that of the generations that went before us.
I’m sure that the generation my grandparents belonged to didn’t think of themselves as being eco-friendly, or as we say now, “green.” They thought they were simply being sensible.
Certainly industries used our air and our streams as convenient dumps and didn’t concern themselves with the consequences.
On a lesser level, not everything my grandparents did, such as burning household garbage in an empty oil drum and then burying what remained in an old borrow pit, was particularly earth friendly. But on the whole, they made far fewer demands on the planet’s resources than we do.
We buy paper towels by the case; my grandmother wiped the kitchen counter with a cloth from a 25-pound bag of flour.
Many in our generation and even more in the one following us buy bottled water. When my grandfather went to the field, he carried his drinking water in a gallon syrup jug, insulated with an empty 10-pound sugar sack.
Most of the food was grown in the garden and didn’t come shrink-wrapped in a Styrofoam tray. Meat purchased at the grocery store was wrapped in butcher paper instead of plastic. Far more items, from foodstuffs to hardware were sold unpackaged.
My grandfather’s old Studebaker pickup truck probably was not as efficient as the engines of today’s vehicles. But he drove fewer miles in a year than we do in a month.
The closets in my grandparents’ house were impossibly small, but the closets and a couple of chifforobes held everything they owned, and they did not feel compelled to buy new things before the old clothes wore out.
At our house, the clothes dryer runs a good deal of the time; I can’t remember the last house we lived in that had a clothesline. Although my grandmother eventually had an automatic washing machine, she never had a dryer and never felt the need for one.
I don’t hold those days up as the ideal. Times change and so do we. I’m pretty sure, though, that despite our consumption of a larger share of the planet’s bounty, we are not really any happier than they were.
Would we be more content if we owned less, if we used less? I don’t know. All that simplicity may be more attractive in the abstract.
Intellectually, I know we have all kinds of stuff that we don’t really need, but as long as we have a place to put it – even if we can’t remember where we put it, or sometimes even remember that we have it – simplifying will continue to be a challenge.
My efforts thus far have been limited. I’ve thinned my library of a fair number of books, taking them to the public library for use in one of the Friends of the Library’s periodic book sales. But I have to consider a book multiple times before I admit that I’m not going to read it again or use it for reference. I’ve gotten rid of bags of clothing that no longer fits, things that are too big instead of too small. I want to make it expensive to regain the weight I’ve lost.
It was easy enough for Thoreau to preach, “Simplify, simplify, simplify.”
And simplifying would make us greener.
It’s the doing that is difficult.
Contact the writer at billatthelake@gmail.com
