Friday my son said, “Can we please get rid of this rag? I think it’s done.” It was a rhetorical question. He just asked for a laugh because the kids love to poke fun at my really weird sense of economy. I cut up old Henley shirts as “floor rags” but I spent a very “not thrifty” amount setting up our chickens. It looks crazy to the family to spend so much money and time on chickens when you can get a dozen eggs at Dollar General for about a dollar or organically feed ‘free range’ (free range my foot) eggs for about $6. My husband and kids see these things through an economic lens and sense of time scarcity.
I see these decisions through a wastefulness and supply chain lens. A 2003 Fast Company article claimed that the US spends more on buying trash bags than many countries spend in a year. Even though that claim is under scrutiny, I still refuse to buy trash bags. I returned the diaper genie from my first child’s baby shower and stuffed empty tissue boxes with Wal-Mart bags. I felt somehow more virtuous for tying up each full disposable diaper in a plastic shopping bag. Ah, baby-steps. It wasn’t until my last child was having difficulty potty training that I considered escaping disposable diapers. An English friend loaned me her supply of cloth diapers and walked me through the process of how to deal with them. That was when I began considering going past the ‘recycle’ trap, past the ‘reuse’ virtue and into the ‘reduce’ freedom. [By the way, no judgment here if you are using disposable diapers…surviving those years is hard.] Using cloth diapers for my last child in his last months of potty training was too late to make a huge difference in the diaper years, but I can tell you this: It certainly sped-up potty training!
As a side-note, if you are struggling to get your little one to get serious about the potty, having a wet, heavy cloth diaper makes a world of difference. I also can’t recommend enough the top potty chair used in England. It is so hard for a child to kick over, there are no little crevices for stuff to get stuck in and it lacks any interesting elements that would make it fun to play with. In England you can get one for a British Pound, roughly how we think of a dollar. They are harder to find in America, but this one is available and there is also this one.
Full disclosure: I gave birth to my last child in England and suddenly found myself with three children age 3 and under. All this recycling, with real glass glasses for kids, standing in front of the trash area separating out all the elements, while one child is frantic to nurse and another child trying desperately to hold it so you can walk him into the ladies room….oh, that was hard. I thought I would loose my mind trying to survive among all this enlightenment! However, now I can see I was dealing with too many learning curves at once.
Living in England for a few years gave me the opportunity to watch how historic castles and large manors are managed by families who take their legacy seriously. Though you will see recycle bins there, you won’t see them over-flowing. If you dine on the grounds you will be served on stoneware and you will drink from an actual glass. By not creating the trash in the first place, they head the problem off at the pass. You will also see bins that break recycling apart from composting. Many properties will quickly put organics (paper or food scraps for example) into their own compost system so it can be broken down to serve their immense gardens. In other words, instead of paying people to haul all the garbage away and then paying someone else to haul in fresh soils and fertilizers they have their customers separate everything for them and use what they can on-site. I also saw this type of sorting system in a Denver, Colorado chain restaurant in 2016, so it is spreading to the U.S.
So, how does England tie into these pitiful floor rags? I can’t place my hand at the moment on which book it was, but one of the gardening books I read decades ago showed a British man standing atop his 6′ tall compost bin at his Manor home. The caption noted that this Aristocrat made sure to compost everything on his property, even cutting the buttons off his old shirts before throwing them into the pile. I thought, ‘Surely you could find something to do with the Lord of the Manor’s dress shirt before it ends up compost?’ His point was taken though…everything is a resource. You paid for it. Get every bit of good out of it you can.
So, what makes it easier to close the loop? How do the British make it look posh instead of poverty-ridden? After reading several books such as this and this and lots of experimenting I have come to the conclusion that:
#1 – Buy quality clothing that actually fits even after it’s been washed. It’s taken me hitting mid-40 to plunk down the extra money to get ‘Tall’ sizes from a brand I trust instead of only hitting the clearance rack. Not buying cheaply constructed clothing (known as ‘Fast Fashion’) saves time and money in the long run considering how many more times you can/will wear it and that you don’t have to waste time shopping/searching for clothes that fit.
#2 – Try to use each resource for it’s highest and most valuable purpose. It makes more sense to donate clothing that someone would actually want. You can only use so many floor-rags.
There is actually a market for natural fiber cloth scraps that the charity shops sell/donate to. It’s called Textile Recycling. Do the volunteers a favor and bundle that all together and label the bag to save them time.
#3 – Only cotton or blends with very little poly in them actually work as cleaning rags. Every type of old shirt and sweat pants have been experimented with. Even if you have the patience to deal with a non-absorbent rag it’s not worth frustrating your kids and spouse if you want them to do their chores without complaining (I should say…’even more complaining’).
#4 – I will feel smugly virtuous if I can take a shirt from years of wearing through floor rag and into compost bin. It’s a vanity, but these days I will take whatever prideful indulgence I can find.
#5 – It’s not my job to save the world. Thinking that way stresses me out and puts me at the mercy of needing to please other people. I won’t be bullied into someone else’s concept of ‘green’ when my core value is to ‘not be wasteful’. I just want to be like those heirs of the manor who take care of their own backyard. And you have every right to pursue what resonates with your core value; it is likely different than mine.
This last one means I just need a plan for my stuff. The sheer volume of out ‘stuff’ overwhelms me pretty fast, so to give myself some breathing room I have a place to keep things for every stage. Britain has influenced me here by making all those stages behind closed doors or somehow hidden so my thrift doesn’t become an embarrassment. I used to take off all the bands, seams and square up the rags so the kids couldn’t tell it came from a shirt. After 3 washes the rag has no shape anyway. The teens just want the tags removed and no ‘tighty whities’ because that would be too embarrassing. We also struggle with socks because they work great, but it never stops looking like a sock…..too embarrassing for kids!
I’ve got several hiding places and even got the saw out and made a real mess of our old first generation ‘Pull Out’ trash can system that didn’t have a recycle compartment. I’ve just left my recycling under the sink and now I have a composting compartment! I even put hubby’s collected coffee grounds in there so I can put them directly into the garden soil instead of cycling them through the compost bin. This has required a bit of work to set up, but day-to-day it is oddly satisfying to swipe juice off the floor with a soft floor rag from my college pull-over or put a tissue into the composting can. Probably something a little wrong with me.
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