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daemonlunaaka Someone On The Internet is Wrong.
I was randomly linksurfing (I believe I went twitter, a link from Roger Sutton from Hornbook, an article on picture quality at movie theatres, to this), and began to seriously doubt Seven Habits of Highly Frugal People when it solemnly informed me that it was cheaper and better to grow your own vegetables than buy them, and to make your own cocktail dress instead of buying one.
And then I got indignant and flaily, in a someone-on-the-internet-is-WRONG way.
First of all, growing vegetables, I'm sure, CAN be more cost-efficient, but not across the board. Really. You have to have access to somewhere you can grow them, time to cultivate them, the ability and resources to trouble-shoot when something goes wrong, and a climate to support what you want to eat.
(This is why I view the locavore diet with a large dose of skepticism. I live on the prairies, plant hardiness zone 4a. There are microclimate variations depending on even what part of the yard something goes into, but I'm still going to be living out the winter on stored carrots, cabbage and potatoes, and canned, frozen and preserved things if I eat only things grown within forty miles. Can it be done? Sure. But I am not that hard-core. Next time you see someone advocating hard for the local food movement, take a good look at where they live and what sort of local produce they have available to them. I'm just sayin'.)
There are some things where it is cheaper to grown your own--we're lucky enough that we're going to have plentiful amounts of mint on hand in a couple of months, and all sorts of other fresh herbs. If I plant things in the right place and remember to water them, and we don't get TOO much rain, and it's not too hot either, and I remember to pick the buds off the basil before it flowers and goes to seed, and the dill doesn't get aphids, etc, etc.
Mint is easy, BTW. Grows like a weed, and will take over if you let it. Which I have, because the only other thing growing in that corner is some fairly boring ornamental ground cover. We'll have mint until the first frost. I have tried rooting some clippings in a pot last fall, but there just aren't enough hours of sun in the winter, so it just sat there being miniature and straggly until spring came. And rather than try to baby it along under a plant light (buying the plant light, added electricity cost, keeping the cats from eating it, remembering to water it, etc, etc) I'd rather pay a couple of dollars extra at the grocery store the one or two rare times in the winter that we really want to do something with mint.
In the long run, we will come out ahead with the raspberry bushes. Even so, it's going to take another three or four years at least before we get more than a handful of raspberries at a time. But in a few more years--oh, all the raspberries we can eat! So many raspberries! Yum!
We've done okay with tomatoes some yaers, but others, all your effort gets you six tomatoes all summer. (Six delicious tomatoes, granted. Usually.) Don't even ask about the strawberries that the birds just love.
However. We have the luxury of living in a house with a yard to grow things in, the disposable income to spend on growing things, enough leisure time to figure out how to grow things and to take care of them, and live in an area where it's safe to have potted plants in your yard and not have them stolen or smashed.
If you take the cost of the packet of bean seeds, or baby tomato plants, add in the potting soil, the fertilizer, the bump up in the water bill to keep everything watered, not to mention the time spent planting, fertilizing, weeding, staking up, tying back, forgetting to water the beans and having them fail to thrive (or, getting too much rain and rotting in the ground before they germinate)...
It's concievably possible to come out ahead. But it takes time, planning, luck, money, and experience. I'd say it's not worth it just for the cost savings. There are a LOT easier ways to save a few dollars on groceries.
As for the cocktail dress--you have got to be fucking kidding me. Sewing requires a significant amount of practice, talent, investment in materials, and skill. I own an inherited sewing machine. I sew wobbly lines. I could probably manage some linen napkins or a table runner, but for the amount of fabric I'm buying, I highly doubt it would be more cost effective. And the number of wonky, ill-formed things I would turn out while practicing would not be inconsiderable. This is just to master the act of sewing. The tailoring and design for a cocktail dress is astronmically miles away from a napkin. It doesn't matter if my napkin doesn't fit exactly, for one.
If you just HAPPEN to be skilled in dressmaking, and have the ways and means to get the material and make it yourself for cheaper, all the more power to you. But I'm willing to bet that's a rather small segment of the population.
I don't even own a cocktail dress, but I'm sure there's a hundred better ways to be frugal than to make your own. Take something you already own and mix it up with accessories. Shop second hand and vintage. Get alterations to an existing dress to update it. Arrange a clothing swap with friends.
I have recently discovered a hitherto unsuspected love of knitting socks. Let me tell you, it is far easier and cheaper to go out and buy socks, by the cost of the yarn alone. Then factor in knitting needles. (Here's a hint: they come in many sizes. And materials. And variations within--brands and styles and personal preferences. Same goes for yarn, times ten.) Then add the time needed to learn how, and practice, and make mistakes, and rip back that heel for the fourth time, and spend two hours trying to correct for a dropped stitch that you can't find. And the access to books, the internet, other people who knit and can explain it to me, and places with enough specialization to get more than the very basic supplies. Even ignoring all of that, acknowledging that I have the tools and expertise, I'm still going to spend anywhere from $10 to $30 on the yarn, and a month's worth of evenings knitting while watching TV, just for a pair of plain socks.
Make stuff because you enjoy the process. Because it lets you customize it for the colour and style and fit and look that you want. Because you get a thrill out of learning a new technique. Because you love the look and feel of something you've made yourself. Becaue you take pride in the craft and skill you're developing. Because the act of forming little loops of string with sticks is soothing. (Or at its worst, stressful in a different way than your other stresses, with decidely lower stakes. I screw up a pair of socks, I unravel it all and end up with the same ball of wool I started with, mostly. Worst case scenario, I have to find a last-minute birthday or Christmas present, or present someone with one sock and a promise of a matching one.)
And if you have no inherent knack or inclination to make it yourself, but the skill, individual nature, and support of handicraft over mass production is important to you, buy it from soneone who can make it. Recognize that hand-made costs more than mass-produced for a reason. (Even if I charged minimum wage for the hours I spent making a pair of plain socks, they'd easily cost as much as a moderately-priced non-designer cocktail dress.)
Grow things because you think it's pretty damn cool that you can produce edible stuff out of dirt. Because the tomato plants on your fingertips as you pinch back the plant smells like summertime and home. Because your garden tomatoes honestly taste better, not just because they're organic and vine-ripened, but because they came from your garden. Because you've chosen things your climate and soil and space and level of time commitment will support. Because you think it's important that your kids know where their food comes from. Because making your own pasta sauce guarantees no cross-contamination of allergens. Because you have made a conscious choice that this is where it's important to you to put your time and energy and money, all of which are inherently limited resources.
There are other ways as well as or in addition to growing your own food to be more frugal and/or healthy and/or environmentally conscious. Buy raw ingredients rather than pre-prepared things. (Canned tomatoes + onions + garlic + dried oregano will make a really yummy pasta sauce with not a whole lot of effort, and will taste a lot better than the bottled stuff, you will know exactly what goes in it, and it will probably come out cheaper in the long run. Add a splash of wine or vodka to make it even better. And it will take less time than waiting for pizza to be delivered.) Pack a lunch. Freeze leftovers and take that for lunch. Pay attention to sales, buy in bulk when it makes sense to do so, educate yourself on when it makes a difference to buy organic, if that's something that's important to you. Figure out when the cheaper store-brand doesn't matter to you, and when there's a difference where you're willing to pay more for it. All of this requires time and planning. And knowledge. And practice.
Go visit your local farmer's market, but be prepared to spend more than at the grocery store, and be aware that some places will be local, organic and probably expensive, and others will be commercial operations that may be importing their hot peppers from Mexico. Figure out how much this matters to you. Learn what's in season when. Know that if it's out of season, it's imported and/or grown in a greenhouse, thereby possibly using more resources than importing it. All of this also takes time, and knowledge, and living somewhere where you have access to a farmer's market, the ability to get there when it's open, and the disposable income to chose to buy the locally-grown, organic strawberries rather than the on-sale bulk bag of oranges that have been flown in from Mexico at the grocery store.
None of these things will be possible all of the time. Or even some of the time. There's a reason that mass production happened, and it's not all because large corporations are evil. There's a reason specialization happens, whether we're talking production of socks, or growing tomatoes. And if you think hand-made is inherently better, let me sew you a cocktail dress and we'll see.
Maybe the different between the bulk oranges and the organic stawberries is the price of making sure your kids eat some fresh fruit that isn't pre-processed this week. (Or buying the processed to hell peanut butter rather than the organic nothing-but-peanut sort is because dealing with the way the oil settles on top and it gets all chunky drives you up the wall.) Maybe the trip to the farmer's market is the difference between having the energy to deal with cooking and doing the laundry that week, or not. Or is an hour on the bus vs sleeping in after a week of double shifts. And there are guaranteed to be days when you don't have the time or energy to cook, food in the fridge, freezer or pantry, or maybe you just really want take-out pizza. Go with it.
So I say know your limits, do your best to be reasonably educated about your options (remembering that time in and of itself is a finite resource), and practice moderation. And don't believe everything you read on the internet.
I was randomly linksurfing (I believe I went twitter, a link from Roger Sutton from Hornbook, an article on picture quality at movie theatres, to this), and began to seriously doubt Seven Habits of Highly Frugal People when it solemnly informed me that it was cheaper and better to grow your own vegetables than buy them, and to make your own cocktail dress instead of buying one.
And then I got indignant and flaily, in a someone-on-the-internet-is-WRONG way.
First of all, growing vegetables, I'm sure, CAN be more cost-efficient, but not across the board. Really. You have to have access to somewhere you can grow them, time to cultivate them, the ability and resources to trouble-shoot when something goes wrong, and a climate to support what you want to eat.
(This is why I view the locavore diet with a large dose of skepticism. I live on the prairies, plant hardiness zone 4a. There are microclimate variations depending on even what part of the yard something goes into, but I'm still going to be living out the winter on stored carrots, cabbage and potatoes, and canned, frozen and preserved things if I eat only things grown within forty miles. Can it be done? Sure. But I am not that hard-core. Next time you see someone advocating hard for the local food movement, take a good look at where they live and what sort of local produce they have available to them. I'm just sayin'.)
There are some things where it is cheaper to grown your own--we're lucky enough that we're going to have plentiful amounts of mint on hand in a couple of months, and all sorts of other fresh herbs. If I plant things in the right place and remember to water them, and we don't get TOO much rain, and it's not too hot either, and I remember to pick the buds off the basil before it flowers and goes to seed, and the dill doesn't get aphids, etc, etc.
Mint is easy, BTW. Grows like a weed, and will take over if you let it. Which I have, because the only other thing growing in that corner is some fairly boring ornamental ground cover. We'll have mint until the first frost. I have tried rooting some clippings in a pot last fall, but there just aren't enough hours of sun in the winter, so it just sat there being miniature and straggly until spring came. And rather than try to baby it along under a plant light (buying the plant light, added electricity cost, keeping the cats from eating it, remembering to water it, etc, etc) I'd rather pay a couple of dollars extra at the grocery store the one or two rare times in the winter that we really want to do something with mint.
In the long run, we will come out ahead with the raspberry bushes. Even so, it's going to take another three or four years at least before we get more than a handful of raspberries at a time. But in a few more years--oh, all the raspberries we can eat! So many raspberries! Yum!
We've done okay with tomatoes some yaers, but others, all your effort gets you six tomatoes all summer. (Six delicious tomatoes, granted. Usually.) Don't even ask about the strawberries that the birds just love.
However. We have the luxury of living in a house with a yard to grow things in, the disposable income to spend on growing things, enough leisure time to figure out how to grow things and to take care of them, and live in an area where it's safe to have potted plants in your yard and not have them stolen or smashed.
If you take the cost of the packet of bean seeds, or baby tomato plants, add in the potting soil, the fertilizer, the bump up in the water bill to keep everything watered, not to mention the time spent planting, fertilizing, weeding, staking up, tying back, forgetting to water the beans and having them fail to thrive (or, getting too much rain and rotting in the ground before they germinate)...
It's concievably possible to come out ahead. But it takes time, planning, luck, money, and experience. I'd say it's not worth it just for the cost savings. There are a LOT easier ways to save a few dollars on groceries.
As for the cocktail dress--you have got to be fucking kidding me. Sewing requires a significant amount of practice, talent, investment in materials, and skill. I own an inherited sewing machine. I sew wobbly lines. I could probably manage some linen napkins or a table runner, but for the amount of fabric I'm buying, I highly doubt it would be more cost effective. And the number of wonky, ill-formed things I would turn out while practicing would not be inconsiderable. This is just to master the act of sewing. The tailoring and design for a cocktail dress is astronmically miles away from a napkin. It doesn't matter if my napkin doesn't fit exactly, for one.
If you just HAPPEN to be skilled in dressmaking, and have the ways and means to get the material and make it yourself for cheaper, all the more power to you. But I'm willing to bet that's a rather small segment of the population.
I don't even own a cocktail dress, but I'm sure there's a hundred better ways to be frugal than to make your own. Take something you already own and mix it up with accessories. Shop second hand and vintage. Get alterations to an existing dress to update it. Arrange a clothing swap with friends.
I have recently discovered a hitherto unsuspected love of knitting socks. Let me tell you, it is far easier and cheaper to go out and buy socks, by the cost of the yarn alone. Then factor in knitting needles. (Here's a hint: they come in many sizes. And materials. And variations within--brands and styles and personal preferences. Same goes for yarn, times ten.) Then add the time needed to learn how, and practice, and make mistakes, and rip back that heel for the fourth time, and spend two hours trying to correct for a dropped stitch that you can't find. And the access to books, the internet, other people who knit and can explain it to me, and places with enough specialization to get more than the very basic supplies. Even ignoring all of that, acknowledging that I have the tools and expertise, I'm still going to spend anywhere from $10 to $30 on the yarn, and a month's worth of evenings knitting while watching TV, just for a pair of plain socks.
Make stuff because you enjoy the process. Because it lets you customize it for the colour and style and fit and look that you want. Because you get a thrill out of learning a new technique. Because you love the look and feel of something you've made yourself. Becaue you take pride in the craft and skill you're developing. Because the act of forming little loops of string with sticks is soothing. (Or at its worst, stressful in a different way than your other stresses, with decidely lower stakes. I screw up a pair of socks, I unravel it all and end up with the same ball of wool I started with, mostly. Worst case scenario, I have to find a last-minute birthday or Christmas present, or present someone with one sock and a promise of a matching one.)
And if you have no inherent knack or inclination to make it yourself, but the skill, individual nature, and support of handicraft over mass production is important to you, buy it from soneone who can make it. Recognize that hand-made costs more than mass-produced for a reason. (Even if I charged minimum wage for the hours I spent making a pair of plain socks, they'd easily cost as much as a moderately-priced non-designer cocktail dress.)
Grow things because you think it's pretty damn cool that you can produce edible stuff out of dirt. Because the tomato plants on your fingertips as you pinch back the plant smells like summertime and home. Because your garden tomatoes honestly taste better, not just because they're organic and vine-ripened, but because they came from your garden. Because you've chosen things your climate and soil and space and level of time commitment will support. Because you think it's important that your kids know where their food comes from. Because making your own pasta sauce guarantees no cross-contamination of allergens. Because you have made a conscious choice that this is where it's important to you to put your time and energy and money, all of which are inherently limited resources.
There are other ways as well as or in addition to growing your own food to be more frugal and/or healthy and/or environmentally conscious. Buy raw ingredients rather than pre-prepared things. (Canned tomatoes + onions + garlic + dried oregano will make a really yummy pasta sauce with not a whole lot of effort, and will taste a lot better than the bottled stuff, you will know exactly what goes in it, and it will probably come out cheaper in the long run. Add a splash of wine or vodka to make it even better. And it will take less time than waiting for pizza to be delivered.) Pack a lunch. Freeze leftovers and take that for lunch. Pay attention to sales, buy in bulk when it makes sense to do so, educate yourself on when it makes a difference to buy organic, if that's something that's important to you. Figure out when the cheaper store-brand doesn't matter to you, and when there's a difference where you're willing to pay more for it. All of this requires time and planning. And knowledge. And practice.
Go visit your local farmer's market, but be prepared to spend more than at the grocery store, and be aware that some places will be local, organic and probably expensive, and others will be commercial operations that may be importing their hot peppers from Mexico. Figure out how much this matters to you. Learn what's in season when. Know that if it's out of season, it's imported and/or grown in a greenhouse, thereby possibly using more resources than importing it. All of this also takes time, and knowledge, and living somewhere where you have access to a farmer's market, the ability to get there when it's open, and the disposable income to chose to buy the locally-grown, organic strawberries rather than the on-sale bulk bag of oranges that have been flown in from Mexico at the grocery store.
None of these things will be possible all of the time. Or even some of the time. There's a reason that mass production happened, and it's not all because large corporations are evil. There's a reason specialization happens, whether we're talking production of socks, or growing tomatoes. And if you think hand-made is inherently better, let me sew you a cocktail dress and we'll see.
Maybe the different between the bulk oranges and the organic stawberries is the price of making sure your kids eat some fresh fruit that isn't pre-processed this week. (Or buying the processed to hell peanut butter rather than the organic nothing-but-peanut sort is because dealing with the way the oil settles on top and it gets all chunky drives you up the wall.) Maybe the trip to the farmer's market is the difference between having the energy to deal with cooking and doing the laundry that week, or not. Or is an hour on the bus vs sleeping in after a week of double shifts. And there are guaranteed to be days when you don't have the time or energy to cook, food in the fridge, freezer or pantry, or maybe you just really want take-out pizza. Go with it.
So I say know your limits, do your best to be reasonably educated about your options (remembering that time in and of itself is a finite resource), and practice moderation. And don't believe everything you read on the internet.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-05-23 02:53 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-05-23 09:28 pm (UTC)