Revising Your Life

It's that time again. That bleak, cloudy moment when you realize that there are people who live in warm sunny places who are picking oranges from trees while you gaze at the lackluster yard standing shamefully naked without a covering of snow (the yard, not you, I hope). The broken remains of the perennials you were too busy to cut back in November hunch weakly as great, fat brown squirrels tear through the garden pursued by spry red squirrels less than half their size. The dog comes in with mud on her feet—MUD!—when you should by rights be slipping down the driveway on packed ice while trying to bring the groceries in the house. You come to acknowledge the insidious fact that this winter has looked more like March, the ugliest month of the year, than it has like the normally enchanting January of memory.

I think we're all fighting a low-grade depression in our house right now.

It is in this soul-crushing grayness that I find myself revising my recently finished novel (which, incidentally, takes place in the summer . . . how cruel). I go through chapter by chapter, line by line, word by word, cutting out the fat, culling the phrases that hold the story back, choosing a more precise or less cliche word here and there. I'm trying not to allow myself indulgences—favorite sentences that don't work very hard—and I begin to see that revising a manuscript is rather like revising the contents of your home or the way you spend your time.

There are things you just don't need that you hold on to for no more reason than a bit of sentimentality or potential usefulness in some far off future that will never really come. There are things you do for no more reason than they seem amusing or you feel you need to fill some time, but in reality you could be doing something much more useful, like keeping up with the laundry or calling your sister just to chat.

So once I'm done savaging my manuscript with red pen, I may turn my attention and my revision skills to my life. I realize that the beginning of January is a more traditional time for such activities, but I've been so fiendishly busy with work and sewing and exercise avoidance that I only now find myself mentally capable of such considerations.

But what should go? What should stay? I'm seriously contemplating making use of that old practice of assigning to each day a chore: laundry on Monday, ironing on Tuesday, grocery shopping on Wednesday, mending on Thursday, tidying the house on Friday, deeper house cleaning on Saturday, resting on Sunday. Until there are serious outdoor chores to work on in the Spring, I believe this could be a workable plan. To kick it off, I may take a few days off work after the catalog is at the printer in order to de-clutter and rid the house of dead weight. I have the sudden urge to find beautiful empty space and then protect it from encroaching hordes of stuff. I am feeling penned in on all sides (especially in my office) by creeping piles of stuff that needs shelving or filing or pitching. Mentally I feel rather the same.

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Think Local, Buy Local

In the past ten years or so there has been a big push to "think global." I'm not entirely sure what people mean by that. It just seems like one of those things people say to sound cultured or puff themselves up. But after that phrase became part of our vocabulary, something was added to it: "buy local." I suppose thinking globally and buying items grown or made all over the world was beginning to hurt people at home, so we were all admonished to buy things from non-chain stores and things manufactured or grown closer to home. This was also touted as a way to help save the environment from the pollution caused by shipping items from distant places.

Well, I'm not terribly interested in thinking globally. I do think about and care about what happens to people who don't live in America. I pray for peaceful solutions to political unrest and wars, I pray for those afflicted by natural disasters, and I give money to various causes to support people abroad. But when it comes to what I eat and what I buy for my home and what I wear, I am working to be less and less reliant on the world and more reliant on people closer to home.

Today I read two articles that support my push toward frugality and greater sustainability. First, I read about the frost that has destroyed crops in Mexico. Tomatoes, asparagus, peppers, cucumbers . . . they're all going up, up, up in price because of scarcity. We may balk at the cost of groceries already, and now fresh fruits and vegetables will be even more expensive. But not so very long ago, people didn't buy bag upon bag of fresh fruits and vegetables from the store in winter. They grew and canned their own food, which saves lots and lots of money. Or they bought canned or frozen food, which is far cheaper (though perhaps not as tasty) as fresh food. Or they bought things that are available fresh that are grown closer to home: potatoes, apples, and onions. Or they did without salads in winter. They may have had less variety, but to be honest, variety is a luxury, not something we're entitled to. It's not an unbearable burden to eat canned corn or frozen green beans rather than spring greens and baby spinach in February.

This frost, which is reminiscent of the ice storm last April that caused citrus prices to skyrocket, gives me renewed excitement, vigor, and sense of purpose as I plan my kitchen garden. Perhaps next year I can can even more fruits, vegetables, and jams to feed my family, save me money, and keep more pesticides out of our bodies and more pollutants out of the air.

The second article I read is a bit more complicated to process. This article talked about the coming rise in clothing costs. Now, I've already mentioned in my old blog that while I had this vision of making my own clothes as something that could save me money, it really didn't bear out because clothes today are so cheap. Cheap labor, chintzy fabrics that don't last, and hurried construction makes our cheap clothes possible. But if clothing prices rise, then perhaps handmade clothes at home will be the cheaper option. Besides, there are tricks to make it more cost effective, including utilizing sales, reusing patterns several times, and finding bargain fabric.

So rather than buying tomatoes from Mexico, I'm using local Michigan tomatoes, bought from a local farmer, that I canned at the peak of ripeness last August. And rather than buying asparagus or strawberries in winter, I'll wait until our local crops are harvested. They are far tastier anyway. Rather than buying clothes made in China, with cotton that was probably shipped there from the United States (does anyone else see the idiocy of this?) I will buy fabric from a local store, I will look harder for fabric produced in America, and I will enjoy the process of making my own clothes with care and precision.

Really, when you think about it, this is just what we should call intelligent home economics. It's just smart living and good stewardship. Something our female ancestors took for granted and something we should strive to reclaim.

Here's a resource for my Michigan readers who want to support our state by buying more locally produced items. It's called Buy Michigan Now and has a searchable directory of Michigan-based businesses that help you find sources for your buying needs that keep more of your money within the state. I'm sure that many other states have organizations like this. Get on Google and find yours today!

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