The Modern Serfette and I have been going through some lean times lately, since I changed jobs and she lost hers within the course of a week. This has given us more free time than we know what to do with, while having very little money to spend in it.
Today, we mailed out our rent checks (leaving me with about $100 in savings) and hit the thrift shop down the street, where I picked up a dress shirt and two pairs of pants for about $8 each. I just started reading An Affordable Wardrobe last week and while I don’t really get his whole “dandy” aesthetic, I’m definitely appreciating goodwill stores in a whole different light.
We went to my mother’s for Thanksgiving this year, and she’s still on this Russian kick from a trip she and my stepfather took last year, so along with the turkey and stuffing she served blini and vodka. While I can’t recommend her blini recipe, she has definitely turned me onto a couple of cheap Russian vodkas that are a lot smoother and taste much better than any of the premium stuff you’ll see at trendy bars. Once I can do a more thorough tasting, I’ll post a review here.
There’s a bit of a clutter problem over there, and while it’s not quite Hoarders level yet, and maybe even better than when I was growing up, it’s still pretty filthy in spots. The first big thing one notices upon entrance is the dozen parrots. This happened innocently enough; one starts with two birds and the rest comes naturally; my mother briefly attempted to sell the birds but found she could not even give most of them away. Being birds, they tend to crap all over the place and while its mostly constrained to the area in front of their cages, most homeowners would consider any pile of birdshit one too many.
The other problem, and probably the more serious one, is that they hoard food like they grew up in the thirties. They have the fridge completely full, to the point of tetris-like precision, and they leave semi-perishable condiments out on the table indefinitely. The last time I was over they had a bottle of ketchup that had turned brown, but that had since been trashed, so there may be hope for them yet.
This has inspired me, in subsequent days, to clean up around the apartment and particularly pare down my wardrobe. I have a tremendous amount of clothing for someone who wears the same outfit three days in a row, but much of it is stained with developer from my photolab days, or was purchased in the three week window when I fit a 32″ waist. Even after I saved two pieces for mending and with the three new items coming in I have a net loss of clothing which gets me a little closer to having an efficient wardrobe.