The Salad Days

When I moved into my first apartment, I was heady with the power of being able to live on my own terms. I could go to bed when I wanted, eat what I wanted, listen to what I wanted, wander around in my underwear if I wanted. It was my space. My place. But what I wanted to do was save jars and use them for glasses and keep a festering bucket of pulp in my kitchen into which I chopped up old newspapers and junk mail which I  used to make my own paper on the weekends. In a time before curbside recycling, I assiduously rinsed out containers and found uses for them. I cooked massive vegetarian meals and served them with herbal sun tea made in old pickle jars - bra-less and barefoot in the back yard. I made my own cleaning supplies from magical recipes that I found on mimeographed fliers at a head shop. My dad called me bohemian, my mom called me nuts, my downstairs neighbor called me all sorts of things for using her picnic table and clothesline for my paper-making without asking. I was young and dumb and on my own for the first time. I was broke and hungry and trying to make the best of what I could scrape together. I didn't realize I was playing the tuba for the frugal living bandwagon.

Frugal is the word on everyone's lips these days. In one of the nicer reactions to our economy's downturn, it seems a lot of people have decided to take matters into their own washing machines and start learning how to do without, do with less, do for themselves. Why pay Dow Chemical Company or Proctor & Gamble (remember when they were Satanists? Are they still Satanists?) for your laundry soap when you can whip some up yourself for pennies on the dollar with common household items? It's like my 18-year-old self is finally vindicated. I wasn't a freak, I was ahead of the curve. But actually, what I was, was broke. Which is what a lot of people are finding themselves now. The fact that we have the internet to share these brilliant ideas has only added fuel to the frugal fire. Inexpensive, recycled, sustainable fuel that you bought with a coupon, that is. The upshot of this is that when, on days like today, I finally decide I'm bored enough to dust and have no furniture polish, I can Google "homemade furniture polish" and come up with a variety of recipes without ever setting foot in a head shop or getting purple ink on my fingers. Brilliant. And that's just what I did. Bingo. Found one that called for ingredients I had around, threw it in a spray bottle, and I was off. [Side note: the Hooligan watched this activity suspiciously and then said: "Whatever it is that you're doing, I do not want to help you."]

So there I was: standing in my living room, spritzing my economical, self-assembled Swedish furniture with what is essentially a bottle of salad dressing and listening to the harmonium of sanctimony swell up in my personal soundtrack (everyone knows the harmonium is the most sanctimonious instrument) when I had an epiphany. One minute I'm feeling all snazzy-razzmatazz and oh-so-belt-tightening and the next I'm feeling like a greasy schmuck in a Morrissey sweater rubbing condiments on my furniture. I wasn't doing this because I had to. I could have driven or walked to any one of the 5 retail establishments within a few blocks from me and purchased a bottle of furniture polish the old fashioned way. This wasn't an adjustment made out of necessity or any sort of lofty principles, it was just something to do to make me feel better about myself. I wondered what my 18-year-old self would make of me: the hipster housewife, reluctant PTA mom, over-educated and under-worked, feeling like the Good Samaritan while she polishes her entertainment center in her middle class home in a nice neighborhood in one of the most upper-middle-class cities in the country. I kind of know what she'd make of me, being me and all.

It's not a bad thing to want to cut costs, to make do, to try to be good stewards of our resources. Not at all. I'd prefer this sort of mass reaction to economic downturn than some sort of Johnathan Swift-esque baby-eating reaction. It's not a bad thing to want to be good to the environment. But is it because those are actually things that we understand and believe in? A lifestyle choice? Or are we just belching and farting along on the tuba in the wind section of a particularly appealing bandwagon? What happens when the price of eggs and milk and gas and houses go back down again? When jobs are stable and available? When benefits and bonuses return? When -as these things are known to do- the cycle shifts and we're on the upswing again?

What happens when the salad days return? Will we still be dusting our furniture with salad dressing?