A No-Trash Party

We've had a couple of reasons to throw parties this year; our older son's adoption party was one of my favorite of these.  We had 40 people over for an afternoon lunch of lasagna, bread, fruit-kebobs, and cake.  We celebrated with kids and grown-ups; with people from our church and from our neighborhood and from our jobs.

At the end of the party, we had less than one kitchen bag of trash.  Okay, so the party wasn't entirely no trash, but it was close.  The trash was mostly from the food preparation, not from the eating.

We do this by having a stash of re-usable items.  I wrote yesterday about our cloth napkins; the picture on that post shows the basket we keep them in.  Here is a picture of some of our cups, plates, and flat-ware.

Mugs have several advantages.  For one thing, they seem to appear and multiply in our house like bunnies. They have handles, which make them easy for party-goers to carry, and they all look different (at least, our motley collection does), which helps people remember which mug is theirs.  But somehow, sort-of miraculously, most mugs are exactly the same height!  This helps a lot with storage: we store them on tea-towel-covered trays, so we can bring out a whole tray at once.  And the same-heighted-ness allows us to stack the trays, with the few odd-sized mugs on the top tray.

We put our party plates in a popcorn tin.  Say that three times fast!

Our small plates, purchased long ago at thrift stores, are roughly 6-8 inches in diameter.  They're not a matched set either, obviously.  We keep them in a metal canister that we got with a bunch of popcorn in it; the tin is decorative enough that we leave it in the dining room all the time.  But there's part of me that would like to take a large 5-gallon bucket (the kind that laundry detergent or paint comes in), decorate it, and use that.  The carrying handle would be awfully convenient.

The part of the flat-ware basket that our guests never see.  Shh!

Several years ago we got a large set of flatware that we don't much like for everyday use (they seem to have been made for very small people).  They're fine for parties, though.  We augment this with thrift-store purchased flatware (again, it doesn't all match.  Shoot.)  I couldn't find a nice container for the flatware, so I finally cut the handle off of a rectangular basket.  I made dividers out of cardboard and covered the inside of the basket, cardboard-and-all, with more tea towels.

The last step in hosting the low-trash party is to make signs (on pre-cyled paper, of course).  We direct people to the compost bin, recycling bin, a laundry basket, and buckets where they can places their dirty silverware, mugs, and plates.

As always, there's some clean-up at the end of the party, mostly with the dishwasher, but a little with the washing machine.  The garbage haulers might be surprised at how many, um . . . , beverages the grown-ups have consumed this week, but they won't strain their backs lifting our garbage cans!

Cloth napkins and table-top animals

As my younger step-daughter recently noted to me, cloth napkins tend to appear at two extremes:  at the homes of the wealthy, and at the homes of the frugal.

Our family has a stack of sturdy, colorful cloth napkins that we purchased about a decade ago; I don't know how much we paid for them, but they're still in great shape.  In return, we don't spend money on the napkins themselves any more.  We don't make runs to the store because we're out of napkins; we don't throw paper napkins into plastic trash bags after each meal.  That's nice.

People who aren't used to cloth napkins assume that they have to be laundered with every meal, which would be a bunch of extra work if it were true.

That's where napkin rings come in.  The idea is NOT to get a matching set of napkin rings that make every place setting look identical -- napkin rings aren't supposed to be table jewelry, in spite of what you might see in some restaurants.  Instead, each person in the family has his her own ring.  Our napkin rings, purchased over many years, are wooden animals (this allows me to get new napkin rings that still fit the "theme" even if they don't perfectly match.)  Guests who spend a lot of time at our home can get their own napkin rings, too -- it's become a way of welcoming them into our inner circle.

We wash a napkin when it starts to get visibly dirty -- our boys' napkins get washed a lot more often than their father's napkin, for example.  If you think about how often you throw away a paper napkin that was basically just crumpled or a little wet, you'll see that this gives you a lot of uses between washings.  So for us, the extra work involved is pretty minimal, and it's hard to imagine that the few napkins we wash each week raise our water or energy bill.

Outdoor showering, reflections

When I wrote a blog entry a few weeks ago on some friends of mine who turned off their hot water heater for the summer, I described how I was inspired to try showering outdoors using a black garden hose.  I didn't realize at the time that this would be an idea that would be offensive to some people -- my kids and I thought it was just such a kick, and we were so delighted, that we couldn't imagine that other people would take issue with the post.


Well, I was wrong, and other people did get turned off.  (No one has said so on this blog yet, but there are a couple of other really cool blog sites that have had vigorous discussions about my blog.  Pretty daunting, actually). 

http://www.early-retirement.org

http://community.thenest.com 

I didn't mean to cause offense.  How could I have missed this concern?  I think it is in part related to what Thorstein Veblen described  in his Theory of the Leisure Class (a great book, as long as you like long-winded 1900-era treatises on political and social economy, which I actually do).  Veblen is the person who came up with the phrase "conspicuous consumption" -- the idea that we purchase things partly (or largely) because they signal our wealth and status to other people.  People don't buy Ferraris instead of Volvos because they're inherently better at transporting us to work or the grocery store, he says -- people buy Ferraris to impress the neighbors.


In his book, Veblen also described "conspicuous leisure" -- a phrase that hasn't caught on as well as his other phrase.  The basic idea behind what he said is that it's impressive to purchase expensive things that keep us from doing manual labor or other work.  For example, high heeled shoes for women and silk ties for men both indicate that the wearer is not heading out to pick potatoes; equally expensive items that assist us in our work (like steel-toed boots) are "low class".


If I had said, "I sent my kids out back to play in the sprinkler" (a leisure, non-work activity), I could imagine that people might have worried about wasting water or other environmental issues, but they wouldn't have worried about my boys.  I don't think anyone would have written, 

How generous of her not to make her kids take hypothermia- inducing baths.

If I had said I wear my bathing suit out in the backyard to get a tan (another leisure activity), people might have worried about health risks, but I don't think anyone would write,

And it causes a lot of giggling and pointing amongst the neighbors...

this woman is definitely BSC. 

Oh, gosh, I don't even know what "BSC" means.  But I'm sure these people are right.  Adding soap to the mix changes this activity entirely from one that's fun into one that's low-class.  What I'm doing isn't normal, and I'm sure normal people are right when they write things like this:

 taking showers outside with a garden hose to save money is over the top 

Definitely whacked and kooky... 

Guilty as charged.  Oh, geez.

How much money does this actually save us, by the way?  Probably not a whole lot.  I went to a shower cost calculator and made a bunch of guestimations (do our usual showers last 10 minutes?  Will we move about 7 showers a week from indoor to outdoor?  For how many weeks?).  A rough estimate is about $45, or 300 kWh, for one summer.  If the boys and I did all of our showers outside, that number would be a bit higher.  But even weirder.

He's not dead.  He says, "Mom, I'm working on my tan."  Okay, honey.

We're going to keep doing some of our showers outside as long we enjoy it and the weather cooperates, of course (and we do think it's fun, strange as that sounds to many who read that post).  But I'll try to keep in mind that not everyone who winds up at this blog thinks quite like me.

Adventures in eating

My family and I are on the road, attending the big summer math meetings (woo-hoo!).  Of course, we packed a bunch of snacks for the road, and there's PB & J, fruit, and trail mix for quick lunches in the hotel room.  But we're here in Kentucky long enough that many of our meals will be in restaurants.

I try hard to go to only locally-owned restaurants.  This leads to what you might call "adventures in eating"; national chains are predictable, but you never know what you're going to get when you walk into a completely new restaurant.  I actually like that uncertainty!

Our first restaurant of the trip came while we were in the middle of West Virginia.  We drove past exits with Subway/McDonald's/Burger King signs and then completely different exits with McDonalds/Subway/Wendys signs.  We finally got hungry and left the highway at a Pizza Hut/McDonalds/Subway exit.  We drove about two blocks past those advertised places and came across a place I'd never seen before:  Biscuit World.

Now, that restaurant SOUNDS like West Virginia -- there's no Biscuit World in Pennsylvania.  And, I found out later, it really is based in West Virginia, although it's now a chain that has spread out of its home state into Southern Ohio and Eastern Kentucky.  Much of the menu that day was a choice between breaded-fried-meat with biscuits or breaded-fried-meat with potatoes.  We caused a bit of a stir when I asked what vegetables were available on the vegetable platter.  "We don't have a vegetable platter" the cashier said.  "It says right here on the whiteboard that you have a vegetable platter special for $4.99," we pointed out.  No one had ever ordered it, she said, so she conferred with her colleagues and they decided I could choose four vegetables from this list:  mashed potatoes, cole slaw, chunky potatoes, friench fries, pinto beans (but they were out of beans today), candied apples, mac –n –cheese, green beans, and corn.

We had a great lunch together (I declined the vegetable platter and got the scrambled eggs).  The biscuits were fantastic.

When we arrived in Lexington, an internet search for "locally owned restaurants" turned up Gumbo Ya Ya, a Cajun restaurant just two blocks from our hotel.  The boys had gumbo and jambalaya for the first time in their lives, and they're hooked.

For us, the first restaurant was a great adventure, but we probably wouldn't go back.  That's okay, now we know.  Cajun food itself was an adventure for the boys; both the food and the Gumbo Ya Ya restaurant are things we'd recommend to our friends anytime.  Success!

Where does/should the money go?

I've been thinking a long time about how to write about giving to charity.  I keep trying to, and then not finding a way do it without sounding all uppity and holier-than-thou.  So I bag the idea and go back to being kooky.


But serving others is important to me, so I'm going to try to write something about giving and serving on the next several Thursdays.  As I wrote in my very first post, 

Intentionally scrimping on ourselves is counter-cultural.  But I believe that we're happier if we spend our money on things that are bigger than us, things that are outside of us.  I want to be able to help a friend in need, or to donate to a cause I believe in, and to tithe to my church.

I've managed to hit the "counter-cultural" aspect in this blog a bunch of times so far. I've written about where my money doesn't go (not to new clothes, or breakfast cereal, for example).   I've gotten a lot of feedback; much of it is very supportive.  The critical feedback tends to fall along these lines: "If you have enough money to afford X, then you have a social or moral obligation to do so."  The X might be store-bought clothes, or oil-heated water, or toothpaste.  That is, normal American stuff.


I understand these comments, and I know that they are part of the social world I wander around in.  I don't take them lightly -- I think community is really important, and I don't blow off social conventions just because I think I'm better or smarter or something.  

But let's broaden this perspective a little.  Here are pictures of three people who won't ever comment on my blog.  Mbongeni Ncube is a 12 year old boy in Zimbabwe; Genet Tesema is a 13-year-old girl from Ethiopia.  They're two of the three kids that our family sponsors through World Vision.  Marie Louise is a Rwandan widow supporting 4 dependents who runs a business that employs 2 other people.  I loaned her business a small amount of money (a micro-loan) through Kiva.  

Marie Louise was born in 1977, and she is a widow with two children, 7 and 9; both are in school. Marie Louise takes care of four dependents these days. She employs two people from her community as helpers so that her business runs well. The hours of her daily activities are from 7 in the morning to 9 in the evening every day.

In this larger context, seen through their eyes, the ways that I am "obligated" to spend on myself blur a bit.  


And if I go a lot broader still -- if I try to look at my obligation as a Christian, my own self-purchases seem even less important.  I've had a hard time finding that Bible verse that says, "Blessed is he who spends his wealth on himself in a way that his neighbors think is right."  It's a lot easier find verses saying, "Deny yourself and follow Me".  I've even found a bunch of verses that say that the whole process is supposed to be joyful.  Hence, the kookiness of so much of the rest of this blog.


I know that I'm far from being a typical American consumer.  I'm even farther from selling all my possessions and giving the money to the poor.  But on the choice between these two paths, I know which way my head is supposed to turn.


So, it turns out it's harder than I thought not being uppity and ooh-look-at-me.  Drat.

Credit reports

Once a year, you're allowed to get your credit reports for free from the three major rating agencies.  Doing this is definitely not as much fun as making t-shirt bags or cooking eggs in a solar oven, but it's probably a good thing to do.  Or so they tell me.  It's about as much fun as changing the oil in my car, I think, and I do it with just about as much sense of thrill.  Well, actually, it's a bit more fun than that, because changing your oil doesn't walk you down memory lane, but credit reports remind you of old addresses and old names you had.  That is sort of fun.

Here's how to get your reports.  First, grab a stack of pre-cycled paper (that is, pre-used paper that's blank on one side).  Our own reports are about 10 pages per person, and you only get to see them on-line once, so you really will want to print them, even though it's a lot of paper.  Then give yourself a time window of about 15 or 20 minutes -- this was enough time for me to download and print reports for both me and my husband.

Go to AnnualCreditReport.com, and fill out the information about yourself.  Follow the instructions to print out all three reports.

What do you do with the reports once you've printed them out?  At your leisure, look through the reports to see if anything strikes you.  In the past, I've noticed old credit card accounts I'd forgotten to close, for example. I compare this year's report to last year's, just to make sure that nobody has used our personal information to open new accounts.  Contact the credit reporting agency to dispute any information that they have wrong (such as listing a car loan as unpaid if you've actually paid it off).  For me, this takes another 15 minutes to an hour, depending.

Once I've gone through the reports, making any notes on it of things I think are important, I shred and recycle the older reports.  I write the date I got the report on the front of the folder where I store the reports. Then I make a note on my next year's calendar (really, in my tickler file) to do this again one year from now.

Boring, but important.

Many Mentors

In my post on "Nannies first; Children Second", I wrote about the value of inter-generational friendships to our children.  These kinds of friendships are just as important for us as they are for our kids.  Grown-ups don't have nannies, but we do benefit from the advice and encouragement of other adults, and sometimes we just need someone to take care of us, too.

One of the best pieces of advice I got when I was starting out in my own career was: choose your own mentors.  I love making lists, so I took this advice to a bit of an extreme.  I made a page of all sorts of areas in my life where I might need advice, and wrote down the people I'd turn to.

I'm a math professor.  Professors do three kinds of things:  we teach, we do "service" (committee work and larger community service), and we do research.  The professional parts of my mentor list had a 3-by-3 grid covering each of those three areas.  In each of those areas, I chose three people I admired: someone within my department, someone at my college but outside of my department, and someone outside my college.  I'm guessing these general categories might apply to any professional person.

But I also chose personal mentors.  I chose mentors who I thought could provide advice and encouragement in these areas:

• how to parent my daughter (at the time I was a single mom, so I really appreciated outside help),
• how to do household repairs, 
• local (living in my city) matters,
• gardening, and
• someone I could call at 3 a.m.

After I made this very long list, I called or emailed each of the people I'd written down, and I told them of their new role in my life.  Some of these people I knew well; but for many of them, I quaked in my boots at the thought of bothering them.  Still, I let them know that they were on my list.  It seemed to me that each of these people was flattered (even the 3 a.m. person seemed to be cautiously honored by her new-found role).  Most people are flattered to be asked for advice -- I know that now that I'm an old-and-wise professor, I've had a lot of such requests, and each request has perked me up rather than ground me down.  I've always worked hard to make time to respond.

Over the years, I've learned I needed to add a sort of a "spiritual mentor" to the list.   One of my good friends is the one I go to when I just can't figure out how to forgive another person in my life -- letting that resentment eat at me just drags me down.

Thinking ahead of time of "who do I call when I need help?" took a huge amount of worry out of my life.  But the act of reaching out to these people was the best part of making this list.  I forged ties with people who had been my heroes then -- and most of those people have remained important parts of my life ever since, which has been a real blessing to me and my family.