Natural Cleaners & Elbow Grease

How many people do you know who are novelty cleaning product junkies? They're always proclaiming the virtues of the latest bleach pen, toilet disk or disposable cloth, as if germ killing really is akin to godliness. I swear, novelty cleaning product junkies are a subculture. Or a cult. Or maybe just family members.

Anyhoo, I ditched the toxic crap long ago in favor of vegetable-based cleansers and good ol' vinegar, baking soda and lemon. I use the veg-based goodies for laundry and dish washing detergent and the common kitchen ingredients for pretty much everything else. The veg-based cleaners are a bit more expensive, but by eliminating other products, I end up saving money in the long run.

Recently, I opted for a quick and dirty bottle of "regular" dish washing liquid, because it was the only kind the store offered. When I used it back at the casa, I was reminded of the frustration I felt when I first started using natural cleansers. They...um...(get ready for the blasphemy)...don't really work as well. I guess that's not entirely true. They actually require more elbow grease to work as effectively.

This is a theme that keeps popping up in my quest for a simpler, more frugal life: Elbow grease. Some things require absolutely no effort at all, like not shopping for crap I don't need to quell boredom. But a great many things require a bit more elbow grease. Walking instead of driving. Making a special trip to the farmer's market instead of just picking everything up at a major retailer. Finding sustainable, locally-made items instead of crap made by some anonymous child in a developing nation. Fixing a broken item instead of tossing it and buying a new one. On and on.

Ultimately, the extra elbow grease is worth it. I reduce my carbon footprint, refrain from adding toxic chemicals to water systems (and my lungs), and essentially help to create a healthier, happier world. I'm not convinced that worshipping at the altar of convenience has done anything to improve our lives. In fact, a great many things that claim to "save" us time end up detaching us from experiences (think nuking your frozen, chemical-based dinner instead of cooking a meal with friends using fresh ingredients) or robbing us from things that are essential to health and sanity (read emailing friends instead of spending face-to-face time).

I had to remind myself of this as I was scrubbing dishes, thinking Man! It is way easier to clean with this petroleum-based stuff! It only looks easier on the surface, because so much of the true cost of things are hidden from us, be it through careful marketing or our own denial.

Cheap & Vegtastic

In my quest to adhere to Meatless Mondays, thus saving Mama Earth a few carbon emissions and my wallet a few bucks, I've found a new favorite cooking show. As I've stated a few thousand times before, I don't have cable and am a huge fan and supporter (cough up the donations, people!) of public television. Others obsess over the Food Network. I obsess over PBS's Create. (It's a fabulous addition to the PBS family. Click through the site and find recipes, knitting patterns, etc.)

My new favorite show, Christina Cooks, is actually of the vegan variety. Fear not. I won't go into a sermon about the virtues of veganism. I'm a country kid at heart and can't manage the weird detachment from the natural world that manifests itself in pet-ifying all animals. (Yeah, I said it.) But I can dig me some lentil "meat"loaf. Talk about cheap and delicious!

Christina does use some ingredients that can be hard to find if you don't have a health foods store nearby (soy cheese, anyone?), but most of the recipes seem easy to modify based on what's available. Buying items in bulk while on sale, reducing meat consumption, using dried beans and getting 99.9% of my fruits and veggies from the farmers market is the least expensive route I've found to eating well on the cheap.

Getting from A to Z

Although I was raised by hippies and can be annoyingly laid back, I've still managed to morph myself into a planner. This is not to suggest that I am organized or always well prepared, particularly when traveling. But I loathe last minute events and adore making 5 and 10 year plans. And lists! Oh, sweet, glorious lists. How I love thee.

Over the weekend, I revisited my 5 year plan, using a visualization trick a friend taught me. Financial planning is pretty easy for me these days. It's just a matter of crunching the numbers and sticking to a plan. But I'm not on such solid ground with the intangibles, which is strange, because the intangibles are what it's all about.

For instance, I want to own a home one day. It's not because I'm deeply into architecture and want to stare at right angles all day. My desire for a home has to do with a sense of security, permanence and family. The house is tangible, but the emotional element can't be so easily grasped. Digging to the root of desires in this way has allowed me to focus on the multitude of ways in which I can cultivate the feelings I'm seeking.

This weekend's adventure involved writing down where I feel like I am currently and where I'd like to be. You can work from Now to Then or vice versa to to fill in the middle with the "how-to." The how-to rarely works out the way I think it will, but the steps are always helpful. As I was reading my current and future life status to a friend, she asked me why I wrote so poetically about the future and so dismissively about the present. I reread what I had written and realized she was right.

In my love of greener pastures, I neglected to acknowledge what is fabulous in the present. As I rewrote my little life script, I began to realize that the starting point of A was actually very close to Z. Many of the things I want I already have, and by becoming to attached to the picture of what it "should" look like, I neglected to celebrate how it chose to show up in my life. What a gift! I already have these things I think I need to wait 5 years to experience. Who knew?

Then a few other interesting tidbits started to fall. I realized that many of these future desires were actually within my grasp today, but I chose not to latch onto them. Instead of moving forward and taking action, I wait for the future life image to manifest before I jump in and start living the life I want.

Again, today's actions to manifest desires might not look like the fantasy future. I really want to travel the world, exploring new exotic locations and foods. Yet I haven't even bothered to visit many of the state parks in California or try the Ethiopian restaurant near work. But if I focus on the desire--to have new experiences and expand my understanding of the world--I can have that right here, right now.

Yes, it's absolutely insane that this bit of common sense has eluded me. But I'm slow and quite possibly completely insane. I think you know this by now. Gratitude is always something I must remind myself of and now it has a new friend in my tired brain: awareness. I suppose this is what folks call "mindful living," when we pay grateful attention to what is and what possibilities are right at our fingertips.

Meat Free Mondays

Y'all have probably already heard about this, but I'm always a day late. Thankfully, no longer a dollar short! (That joke will only make sense among my hillbilly brethren, bless you all.) But I just found out about this really interesting new movement to get folks to decrease their meat consumption to help slow climate change.

There is plenty of valid debate saying that no matter what we do, we're screwed when it comes to climate change. I tend to agree with these folks. However, I'm not willing to throw up my hands and say, "Sorry, Grandkids! I know we could have done something to make things not so unbelievably awful for you, but we just couldn't be arsed. Driving to the bathroom is just way too convenient. Your health, safety and very lives aren't nearly as important as my life o' convenience."

I'm a self-absorbed tool, sure. But not THAT much of a self-absorbed tool.

So, here's yet another thing we can do to help Mama Earth and our collective yet-to-be-born grandbabies that also helps our cash flow: Refrain from eating meat one day a week. Hello, Meat Free Mondays, complete with veg recipes, facts, figures and all other kinds of interesting info.

Once again, what's good for Mama is good for the wallet, particularly those of us who spend more for sustainably raised meats from small farms. My lunch and dinner tomorrow? Chipotle black beans with soy chorizo, bell peppers and roasted corn. So, so good and four meals cost less than $3 total.

Fear and Consumption

There's something very juvenile in the American sense of entitlement, and maybe we just have to get older as a country before we stop gorging on stuff.

Why are intelligent adults falling for this? Why are they buying everything their children tell them all the other kids have? Why are elementary school children carrying cell phones and being allowed to text for hours every day?

The above are comments on a previous topic from CRS and an anonymous soul. I just had to yank them out because they sing to me. I find myself a bit shocked when I see comparisons between my beloved United States and other rich nations. We consume like mindless drones with no regard to the consequences of such actions, where other developed nations consume at a slower pace and have a greater emphasis on personal and community development. (Think US vs. Denmark. And yes, I’d still rather live here, ‘cuz I like that little thing called diversity we have going on.)

When I ask parents why they feel their children “need’ cell phones, they always (and I do mean a-l-w-a-y-s) cite safety, as if the world is somehow less safe now than it was when we were children running all over creation without supervision or high tech gadgets. Statistically, we are no less safe today than we were 20 years ago. But you wouldn’t know that from watching the idiot box, whose sole purpose some days seems to be shoving fear down our throats. Murder, wrinkles, kidnapping, oh my! Better go buy something!

In my humble opinion, I think the vast majority of our mindless consumption stems from fear. Every parent fears for the safety of their children. It’s only natural. But it becomes absurd when crime shows and sensationalist infotainment lead you to believe that your child will be abducted by a stranger and her cell phone can magically locate her, thus saving your little one from certain harm.

Outside of the idiot box, crimes against children go a little something like this—relatives and friends of the family are the ones hurting our wee ones. It’s people we trust who damage us most frequently, and no violent person in our circle is going to allow us to make a quick phone call on the cell prior to inflicting harm. And all that crap you see on crime scene shows is just that…crap. Do you have any idea how well funded an agency would have to be to have the kind of sophisticated equipment shown in TV? Um, do you have any idea just how poorly funded most police districts are?

Virtually every product pitched to women is based in fear. Fear of aging, fear of not living up to our purpose as appealing objects, fear of being unwanted in love and careers because we don’t have the proper hair or body size. Again, in reality, the only folks with flawless skin or perfect bodies are those being airbrushed in print. Take a look around you. That fat lady with that shitty 80s hair style down in accounting has a great salary and her husband is so freaking adoring it makes you want to hurl. (Ok, maybe I'm the only one who hurls over PDAs.)

Bad skin, poorly-tailored clothes, and crooked teeth are all around us, firmly planted on people who smile and love and laugh despite the absurd, cultivated notion that that only the perfect shall inherit joy.

I suppose the quick and easy response is that we all just need to learn to have an internal locus of control. It’s a nice theory, but it negates the fact that we all want to feel safe, love and accepted. So, what’s it going to take for us to realize that the fear we so frequently feel is manufactured? How would we have to change the conversations we have with ourselves so that when we notice the first signs of aging, we don’t run out and spend money we don’t have on a product that can’t possibly halt the inevitability of mortality? How can empower our children to know limits and trust that the world is a kind place while being ever mindful of their safety?

I am as guilty as anyone. We are all sinners here, children! Whenever I feel afraid, my first instinct is to shop. And I do feel better after purchasing some idiotic thing, if only for a few moments. I’ve learned a few tricks to slow the tide of consumption—I ask myself a series of questions (do I really need this? Where will I put it?), but those questions don’t address the underlying fear. I see grey hairs and my thinking spins into a spiral of, what have I done with my life? and a million other neurotic ramblings.

I certainly don’t have the answer, but I am committed to learning to identify the fear and find a way to address it directly. Because all that impulse buying to calm myself only contributes to something that truly does merit my concern—a poorly funded retirement and not enough emergency savings to get me through the next economic downfall.

So, tell me dear readers, what do you do when fear that has been carefully crafted compels you to buy? What do you tell your children when they insist that some new gadget is a must and the nightly news leads you to believe their very lives depend upon it?

The Idiot Box and Unrealistic Expectations

Money magazine recently had a small blurb about how television viewing is up in this crappy economy because it is an inexpensive form of entertainment. However, it turns out that it's not so cheap in the long run, because with each hour of television we absorb, there is an increase in the desire to consume non-essentials which results in increased spending. For far too many Americans, an increase in spending means an increase in debt.

This time, we can't blame the advertisers. It's the shows we watch and their unrealistic representations of everyday life that have us clamoring for more debt. I don't have cable and I don't watch all that much television. I'm a PBS dork, to be honest. But I have found myself railing at the television more than once over ridiculous representations of middle and lower-class life. Remember the Roseanne show? It depicted the life of a middle-class family. Ultimately, the show characterized the demise of the middle class with the death of unions, as Roseanne lost her job as a factory worker. I loved the show because it was so (painfully, at times) realistic. It showed a messy house, parents who made stupid choices with their money, and a family living essentially paycheck to paycheck. Hello, most of America.

Today's version of the middle-class family with a parent who works in a factory can be seen in the George Lopez Show. Although I love George Lopez's comedy, the show is an absolute farce. The house showcases outrageously expensive art and furnishings. The set for this show is actually more elaborate than even the Cosby Show, which showcased an upper middle-class family.

I'm not even touching the surface of unrealistic representations out there. Sex and the City (which always excused its ridiculous excess by saying it intended to play into fantasy), Desperate Housewives, Friends, on and on. You would think that people would see these representations as the farce they are. However, research has shown that as a culture, we have developed an odd relationship with our televisions. We have allowed TV to determine our concepts of reality more than our daily experience. How disturbing is that?

For instance, you may have a husband who absolutely adores you, a general sense of joy and a great job, but the idiot box is constantly telling you that your thighs are too fat for your happiness, health or career. Turns out, we are more inclined to believe the TV than our own experience. So, we jump on a new diet bandwagon for fear that no one will love us, we'll lose our jobs and will be miserable forever, despite the fact that there is no basis in our daily reality for such fear. Kinda insane, eh?

There are dozens of books tackling the topic of television: Endangered Minds: Why Children Don't Think And What We Can Do About It; The Plug-In Drug: Television, Computers, and Family Life; and Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television are only a handful of the examples of critical analysis of the impact of television.

But in the end, it's up to us to pay attention. What is determining your concept of "normal?" What determines the quality of your life? Why do you want the things you want? How much of your identity is comprised of genuine versus cultivated desire? I will often stop and ask myself why I feel that I want and/or need a particular item. Despite the fact that I don't watch much television, I find that 9 out of 10 times, I want a particular item or way of being or whatever because some random stranger is trying to make a buck off me. It's infuriating. I wonder how folks fair whose primary source of entertainment is the idiot box? If the research I've read is correct, not too well. I worry about us as a culture when the Joneses that we try to keep up with aren't even real.

Mother's Day for Peace

Happy Mother's Day to all you new and not-so-new mothers out there. To my Mama, I'd like to say thanks for teaching me the importance of courage, self-reliance, commitment to helping our one human family and for showing me how to squeeze a dime 'till it screams. My happiness is rooted in your love. Thanks, Ma.

To all the mothers in all the lands, may you have peace and joy. Thank you for having the courage to bring life into a world that so very often does not respect or value you. The strength of women never ceases to amaze me.

For your viewing pleasure, a little video about the origins of Mother's Day. I hope yours is filled with all the good stuff money can't buy.