No. 4

the invisible merit badge

To build our businesses, my husband and I had to tighten our family’s financial belt.  The kids wore hand me downs.  I wore hand me downs.  We did not go on vacations.  Our cars were used.  A lot of things were used.  Those used things broke and we learned how to fix them (OK, Drew learned to how fix them).  Consuming less was hard when we were scrambling to keep up with (what we saw as) our peers.  But it was easier to feel content in relation to our lower-income tenants who saw us as rich people.

When you think of an environmentalist, you often think of a scientist or an activist.  These are intentional environmentalists.  There are also a lot of unintentional environmentalists – people who consume very little because they cannot afford to do anything else.  My intent is not to glorify or oversimplify life on the financial edge; it is to say that many consumption-based issues are a problem of access. 

For those with the means, there are a dizzying array of certifications to smooth the way to a better purchase:  Organic, Energy Star, GOTS, Fair Trade, FSC certified, B Corp, and Green Guard.  These are helpful merit badges for products and methods that are less bad.  People love merit badges. 

But there is no merit badge for making do with what you have or for using what someone else no longer wants.  On the inside of the built environment, that is often a great option.  When I moved into my first apartment, I bought a cheap white sofa from a furniture store.  It was absurdly impractical.  I had three cats.  They clawed it to shreds.  It got hideously dirty and went to a landfill 7 years after I bought it. 

Later when my parents downsized, I took their sofa from the 1970s.  It was bomb proof.  I reupholstered it twice and still have it.  It will, no doubt, outlive me.  My siblings also scavenged my parents’ durable goods -- so much so that we relive our childhood every time we visit each other (which is pretty cool).  Half of the furniture in my house comes from our parents.  Another sizeable chunk comes from someone else’s parents via flea markets and Craigslist.  The few pieces of furniture that we bought new are shoddily made junk that we regret buying.    

Furniture waste (or f-waste as it is called in the circular furniture movement) is especially concerning because furniture is typically big, heavy,  intricately-constructed, and chocked with toxins that make them difficult to recycle.  According to the EPA, Americans discarded 12.2 million tons of furniture in 2017.  Eighty percent of that furniture went to a landfill and only .3% (that’s point three not three percent) was recovered for recycling. The pandemic has undoubtedly escalated that waste.  What is at work here is the same thing as fast fashion: industry has cheapened the means of production to lower the barrier of a purchase while simultaneously accelerating fashion cycles.   

Beyond environmental impacts, fast fashion also takes an emotional toll.  When we shorten fashion’s lifespan, the result is that you will never love what you buy more than the day you buy it.  The joy is designed to deteriorate.  Wikipedia’s definition of fashion offers a potential antidote: “Fashion is a form of self-expression and autonomy at a particular period and place and in a specific context.”  Autonomy is exactly what is needed to inoculate yourself against the deterioration of joy.  You must think for yourself to tap into a meaningful, personal, and ethical understanding of beauty.

Turning down fashion’s volume does not mean that the result is boring, weird, ugly, or a resale killer.  In fact, homes that embrace a particular fashion too much are in greater danger of resale issues than ones that have an eclectic, open style.  Is today’s modern farmhouse tomrorrow’s split level?  Eclectic, personal spaces, to me, are more interesting, comfortable, and thoughtful. 

Millennials’ embrace of vintage furniture is exciting.  I encourage them (and everyone else) to stretch even farther.  In his book Secondhand, Adam Minter follows the path of the stuff we throw away.  His is the story of the mop up crew: the Goodwill volunteers, the people who clean out our parents’ house after they die, and the recipients of our cast offs in other countries.  In Secondhand, we learn that my generation was the last to make do with their parents’ dated furniture.  Younger generations prefer to buy cooler, hipper vintage furniture from Denmark.

A quote by author Arthur Brooks gets at the heart of the matter: “The secret to satisfaction is not having what you want, but wanting what you have.”  Wanting what you have in the Instagram age is a matter of will.  When you have the means to buy, what stops you?  If we do not exercise our will, we become the materialistic equivalent of Mr. Creosote from Monty Python’s Meaning of Life who engages in a repulsive cycle of eating and vomiting into a bucket.  Since nature no longer restrains us from unhealthy choices, we must choose between satisfaction or accessorizing our vomit bucket.