The other day I was sitting on my front porch, flipping through an issue of the once-great Sunset magazine, annoyed AF at how it's become yet another magazine pushing expensive, unnecessary, unsustainable products and lifestyles on people rather than empowering them to make smarter decisions as consumers.
And while I don't claim to have a 'buy nothing' history, my focus over the decades has only increased in this direction, from the concept of living simply, to focusing on experiences rather than amassing stuff, to minimizing my environmental footprint by not falling for the pressure to constantly buy-buy-buy, and first look at what I already have before considering a new purchase. Is it still serving its purpose? Do I really need more than what I currently own? Will it last for decades? Can I repurpose something I have in another way?
Almost 20 years ago, I bought two steel drum side tables in a floor model sale at Crate & Barrel. Since then, they've been used not only in our living room next to our sofa and chair, in one house we used them as bedside tables and while we were temporarily using our coffee table as a TV stand, they actually served as the coffee table! They're practically indestructible, add a modern vibe to any room, and are infinitely reusable. I love them and can't imagine ever getting rid of them.
Even older than the tables is this painting of two women, an original that I found in an antiques/thrift trailer in Denver when I lived there back in the early 90s. I got it for $20, and it's come with me to the many places I lived after that, from my kickass pad in Capitol Hill in Seattle in the late 90s to my apartments on the California Coast in the early 00s to my homes bought and sold over the past two decades. Over that time I never knew who "Zora" was, the artist who painted them, just that it was my favorite and one my dad loved so much he'd say 'how are the ladies doing?' back when he was alive.. Nothing came up in my online searches, and so I relegated it to the 'I'll never know" - until one evening a couple years ago when we had our neighbors over for dessert. They were getting ready to depart and he looked at the two ladies by the front door and said "oh my god my AUNT painted that, it's Zora and her sister" And my chin dropped to the floor, to put it mildly. He had never seen this one so was flabbergasted, and gave me a copy of a pamphlet-sized book that told the story of Zora Steenson and her sister Hughberta, and from that moment on I had history in my hands. How the painting reached Denver is anyone's guess, but it's been really lovely knowing of her years doing fashion-inspired art, working commercially for a card company, and her general independent spirit. In our current home, I painted our bedroom to match the blues in their dresses. Fancy expensive art? Prints from Ikea? No thanks! Meaningful pieces like this with a history of not only their lives but of my own adventures? Yes, oh yes.
Silverware? Yep. While my very first silverware was from thrift stores when I moved out at 17, a couple years later at 19 I decided I wanted four place settings, and fell hard for one in particular called Fiddlehead at Pottery Barn. But at $25 per setting and making $6/hr, it was far above my budget, so I put it on my Christmas list (still young enough to have one at that age, lol) to get Pottery Barn gift certificates to afford them one by one, and sure enough, that's how I got the silverware that I still have, 30 years later. Like the side tables mentioned above, these have that industrial vibe, while still meshing well with the modern farmhouse thing I've had going on since well before that became a 'thing' in design.
I'm not a handbag person, with one exception. I've always loved antique handbags since high school, and so while my normal bag is actually a sling made from recycled bike tubes that this guy in Germany makes, when I need something for those rare nights out on the town, this baby has served me well for at least 15-20 years. Take good care of vintage pieces like this and you'll never feel the need for any of that Made-in-China crap that's being turned out by mostly slave labor in a dictator-run country.
Cast Iron Skillets by Griswold and Wagner handed down by my mother are essential, and put that Lodge junk to shame. They are easily found in antique malls for far cheaper than new cast iron pieces (Stars in Portland's Sellwood neighborhood is particularly a great place to find them as they have one vendor who specializes in rescuing and rehabbing old cast iron like these and still selling them for reasonable prices), work beautifully on induction cooktops, and not only are great for cooking, grilling, sauteing, frying, etc., but also are what I bake my bread in. They are at least 75 years old and I've had the Griswold since college and the Wagner pot since I bought my first house in the '00s. Don't believe the hype about maintenance. Use them regularly, avoid chemical soaps (I actually just sprinkle some kosher salt on it if I want to scrub something stuck on, works like a charm), and occasionally brush them in oil and toss in the oven to season them a few times a year. Not a big deal, not a big price, and not a scourge on the planet like the Teflon-coated gunk out there.
And finally? Two good cookbooks. Beyond my binder of collected recipes (the holy grail in our house) over the past 30 years, these are the ones that have lasted as others got donated. The Italian's answer to the Joy of Cooking, the Silver Spoon has over 1,300 pages, addresses just about every food ever eaten in Italy (and a lot that we here in America would have no clue about), and I'd say after having this almost 15 years, I've probably made 10% of the recipes in it, there are so many. Most recipes are deceptively simple - meaning, you assume they can't be that great with so few ingredients, right? Wrong. Follow carefully and you'll discover some real heaven in nearly every recipe. It'll never make it to the donation bin - hell, even the pancake recipe is so good that houseguests in the past are like "I was never a big pancake person, but these are F*cking GREAT!" The other one is my Good Housekeeping cookbook that my mom gave me back in '93 as I'd used hers like crazy as a teenager trying out recipes. now, this is a throwback cookbook in so many ways (pictures of things that the Brady Bunch would coo over...), but it has SO many great basic how-to's if you've never made a certain type of food or cooked in a certain technique. I can't bear to let it go. Then I remember how kickass the Paprika Chicken recipe is and give it more time.
“I make myself rich by making my wants few.” ~ Henry David Thoreau
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