The cost of consumption

Questioning wedding registries, the cult of Buy Nothing, Embracing Craigslist, and discovering Eichler houses

As a way of marking the new year, I have been slowly cleaning out my closet. My goal is to not merely make space for the new, but to make space. What would it be like to have a closet that is not bursting at the seams, that is filled with items actually worn and loved? One in, two out, I pledge will be my new rule.

I am paralyzed, however, by the process of getting rid of the things in my closet. I am pained by this process—not only emotionally, but literally and logistically. The array of Zara dresses and skirts that hit above the knee, as well as the skinny jeans that belie my generation, are easy enough to get rid of. I can put those in a box, print a free shipping label, and send them to ThredUp, though I retain no hope of receiving remuneration. Goodbye to my twenties! Out of sight, out of mind! I find it harder to relinquish the work wardrobe taking up half my closet, even though it seems to belong to a person who no longer exists. I have not stepped foot in a conference room or a courtroom in almost two years, but I fear that as soon as I box up my suits and demure dresses—carefully curated over the years to suggest my competency and also that I am a cool person when I am not at work—an occasion will arise that requires me to spend a week in a conference room schlepping binders, and that will thus require me to spend more money on recreating this boring and suitable wardrobe.

But the true difficulty lies in disposing of the yoga pants with the hole in the crotch, the light puffer with feathers exploding out of the sleeve despite my efforts to patch it with a band-aid, and the bras with underwire poking out of them. What do I do with these slightly maimed articles of clothing that have served their purposes over the last five to seven years besides just throw them in the trash?¹ Reluctant to send them to a landfill, I too often end up stashing them in the paper bag in the kitchen along with the other items that we are unsure how to ethically dispose of: batteries, used carbon dioxide gas cylinders from making bubbly water, those little linen bags that all of my make-up and jewelry arrive in.

Underpinning my desire for fewer things lurks a belief—of uncertain origins—that equates an abundance of stuff with moral failing. Emerging in the popular culture is a message that to be skeptical of consumption, to be aware of its impact on other people and the planet, is to be ethical. (Too often this message is propogated by companies urging us to purchase their “ethical” and “sustainable” products.) As I have internalized this moral skepticism of consumption, looking around my house has begun to burden me with low-level guilt and panic—dog toys strewn on the floor, unopened packages by the front door, unshelved books on the coffee table, the ukulele propped against my desk. Whereas my one-bedroom apartment in LA had three enormous closets, including one that could have fit a crib and been counted as a nursery in New York City, my current house doesn’t even have a coat closet. The lack of storage space in our two-bedroom bungalow means there is nowhere to even hide our overabundance of stuff. Humidifiers, winter coats, and special occasion platters live out in the open. Our kitchen’s innards—grains and legumes in glass jars, the Instapot, the unused fondue set, cookbooks—are all piled precariously on a chef’s rack in the corner, a looming disaster with the next earthquake.

It’s not that I don’t value the stuff that I have. Many of the items in our home, particularly those that have been handed down from my parents or grandparents, or that Ben purchased in Chile, are imbued with meaning and are symbols of who we are and where we came from. What burdens me instead is the lurking question of where everything in our house will end up—particularly every item in the house that has been bought at Target—when we have reason or occasion to replace them. It is traditional to regale a couple celebrating their marriage with stuff to outfit their home, as a way of marking their building of a life together. But this tradition is anachronistic when the bride and groom are 33 years old and have both lived alone for years before moving in together, and between the two of them have two entire sets of silverware and plates, roughly six sets of sheets, eight to ten bath towels, and upwards of 15 hand towels. In the year since we moved in together, we have accumulated additional accoutrements of early bourgeois middle-age: blue and white Japanese ramen bowls, olivewood salad servers, linen napkins, colored candlesticks, a set of six ramekins. I can scarcely come up with a list of things that we want, let alone need, and the thought of having to make space for items that we do not want or need fills me dread. And yet, everyone tells us that people will buy us gifts, even if we ask them not to.

Rejoining Facebook to partake in a “Buy Nothing” community provided me with a brief respite from this overwhelm. The allure of the Buy Nothing Facebook group is that it provides a seemingly effortless channel for purging your house of unwanted junk—and also for acquiring stuff you need that other people are eager to get rid of. Via my neighborhood’s Buy Nothing group, I obtained—for free—wooden trivets, an unused salad spinner, and a satchel in which I carried Toby when he was a puppy. I’ve gotten rid of even more detritus this way: full-sized sheets, an HDMI cable, an old rug, unwanted Ikea bowls. Each person who arrives at my porch to take away something that has been cluttering my home feels like an angel. There are people in the Buy Nothing community who are eager to take your empty yogurt containers, back issues of the Economist, and maternity leggings. It’s extremely gratifying to see these manufactured items gifted a second or third life, and for a moment, I can feel my dread of the landfill recede, until I remember what a minuscle and niche community this is that I despise having to be on Facebook to partake.

Committing to buy ethically not only often costs more, but it often takes more time. It’s a luxury. It requires a car. Resolving to purchase larger-ticket furniture items for our home secondhand means that I spend hours scouring Craigslist and Facebook Marketplace for dining room chairs, midcentury bed frames, and standing lamps. Most days, there is just a lot of junk, and Wayfare advertises in my peripheral vision an attractive lamp for $129.99 that will almost certainly break or go out of fashion in three years. When we do find something we like, it is a trek to collect it, and one we often must make immediately so that the seller does not agree to sell to someone else. We find ourselves driving to random places in the East Bay we would never otherwise go at random hours. We bought a bohemian Urban Outfitters standing lamp for our living room from a couple living in a new-build townhouse in Albany that was separated from the 580 freeway by only the train tracks along which Amtrak runs to Sacramento. I buy our TV for $30 from a woman in sweatpants on a corner in downtown Oakland, who explains to me why she is moving out of her current apartment while I look for her on Venmo. Best of all is our excursion to Castro Valley, where we buy Danish dining room chairs from a lovely couple named Eric and Ellen who live in a coveted Eichler home, in one of the few developments of Eichler homes in the United States. They proudly recount Eichler’s philosophy of accessible and affordable beauty. Eric struggles to remember how to assemble the chairs. His wife fusses over him. He wants to show us his home; Ellen insists it is too messy. They were overjoyed to see their beloved chairs go to a young couple who will treasure them.

On our drive home from Castro Valley, Ben tells me he will miss these excursions with me, given my resolve to spend more time writing on the weekends and partake in fewer day-long outings. But I am committed to these excursions, which do feel like a luxury, to the unexpected delights that arise out of our resolve to furnish our home with intention. Using Craigslist in this way is not all that different from the way in which my parents and grandparents furnished their homes by scouring antique stores in Portobello Road and Litchfield County, slowly and with intention. This is collection, not consumption. I will send Ellen photos of the chairs when I reupholster them. I will ask if she has decided whether she wants to sell the two other chairs. Hopefully we will get to see inside their home next time.

1. In the course of writing this piece, I decided I was willing to spend $20 to have a large bag shipped to me by a recyled clothing company so that I could send off these items of clothing to be recycled and could avoid sending them off to the landfill.