Because I Said So

Against Luxury

This is a room in our basement, a dank recess beneath the front steps that used to be connected to our basement play/TV room and which housed many, many spiders and centipedes. We had a dehumidifier in there (it was damp and stinky), and when I used to reach in to empty it my hand brushed through a mesh of webs. Soon this room will be no more. It will be boarded up in our basement remodel project.

Tomorrow Jon and I go shopping to pick out all the stuff we need: new toilet, tub, and sink, fixtures, tile, paint, carpeting, etc. I'm both eager for and dreading it. Eager because I like decorating, and design, and color, and all that stuff. And dreading it because it seems our culture has gone MAD, totally cuckoo over the idea of luxury. It is everywhere. Examples:

huge houses where every bedroom has its own bathroom (and then maybe one more for, you know, guests)
huge bathrooms covered in marble or granite
huge kitchens with more granite and those big ass, 6- or 8-burner ovens that maybe 2% of the population (I'm being generous) would actually understand how to make good use of (the kitchens keep getting bigger, more expensive, and elaborate but, overall, people are cooking at home less and less)

It's not that everyone, everywhere has all this stuff. It's that the market keeps driving the standards up, and up, and up, and they never come back down. Pretty soon people think that they need this stuff (versus wanting it), and that it's necessity (versus luxury). I've been looking through books, and magazines, and at showrooms, trying to get some ideas for our new bathroom but all I see is the aforementioned bland luxury.

Nowhere do I see a room that is modest but stylish, comfortable and clean, a place that says both "You are welcome here" and "This is where you pee."

A room that says both "Some care went into the design, but the owners stayed within budget" and "The creepy centipede chamber has been sealed off for your comfort: be at ease."

Bottoms from the Top, Tops from the Bottom

Our basement project continues, and we are without a clothes dryer. The vent had to be disconnected, and -- not wanting to risk carbon monoxide poisoning -- we have been air drying our clothes. I did some searching online for an affordable, portable clothes line and found nothing decent under $150. I could buy a permanent clothes line for far less, the kind that requires sinking into concrete or some other, more permanent installation (for which we have neither the time nor the inclination). So, off to Target for some relatively inexpensive racks.

Hanging clothes out (shaking out the wrinkles, attaching the clothes to the line with wooden pins, taking the dry and fragrant clothes down before the evening dew) reminds me of childhood. My mother and grandmother always hung their clothes out in the summer. I remember running between the sheets in our backyard, between the two, crucifix-like poles. (Once, during a game of ditch, one of the neighbor kids climbed up the pole and sprung upon me as I raced by. In the shadowy half-dark, his oversized t-shirt billowing behind him, he looked like a vampire.)

I like the smell of air-dried clothes, and truthfully it hasn't been as big a pain in the ass as I thought it would be. In fact, it's one of the ways to save energy that many "green" sites and organizations recommend. What surprised me, during my search for clothes lines online, is that there is a small controversy about hanging your clothes out. In fact, it is forbidden in some newer housing and townhome developments, as well as in entire municipalities. Why? Mostly, it's aesthetics: it (supposedly) looks "low-rent."

Are people growing less and less tolerant of one another, or am I just getting cranky in my dotage?

The article is from several years ago, but the same arguments are still being made in current discussions around the web. And I can't just pass it off on those goofy Californians, because even those rational, Labatt-drinking, Coffee Crisp-eating, Gordon Lightfoot-loving Canadians are in on it.

Things That Bug Me: Sexy Halloween Costumes

Stealing from my friend Girl Detective, I'm starting a new category: Things That Bug Me. For my inaugural post, I'm choosing something topical: sexy Halloween costumes. I'm not talking about those that are by their definition meant to be sexy, such as Marilyn Monroe or Xena or Ralph Fiennes ("sexy" being subjective), but things that are really not, in fact, sexy in any cultural context. Such as:

a lion, or:

 

a pirate, or the creepy pedophiliac costumes of

Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz and

Raggedy Ann. I have no more to say about this. The pictures say it all.

Eew.