The Romance of Thrift

It's been a good week for baby supplies. Last week I woke up one morning and looked out our window to see a wooden, white, high chair next to our dumpster. It's very cute but needs a bit of work on the tray.

I also decided to feel like a hippie and order some hemp/cotton fleece to make diapers out of. I think I'm most excited about this - it satisfies all kinds of things - my love of making reusable things, creativity, practicality, and thrift.

Then after coming home from church on Easter Sunday, I saw a solid wood dresser, four drawers tall and perfect size to double as a changing table. The back is in bad shape and it's missing some handles, but that's it! So, I got out my sander and started sanding away. There's nothing quite like using power tools and being covered in dust. If we could just add the smell of manure I'd be right at home (I miss rural Wisconsin). I'm still trying to decide to paint or stain it - either way, it won't happen today - it's raining outside and we live in an apartment.

G.K. Chesterton, by the way, wrote a great chapter about "The Romance of Thrift" in "What's Wrong With the World." I absolutely love it and I'll give you a teaser, but you should read all of his section on Feminism. You download it for free at project Gutenberg.

"Thrift is the really romantic thing; economy is more romantic than extravagance. Heaven knows I for one speak disinterestedly in the matter; for I cannot clearly remember saving a half-penny ever since I was born. But the thing is true; economy, properly understood, is the more poetic. Thrift is poetic because it is creative; waste is unpoetic because it is waste. It is prosaic to throw money away, because it is prosaic to throw anything away; it is negative; it is a confession of indifference, that is, it is a confession of failure. The most prosaic thing about the house is the dustbin, and the one great objection to the new fastidious and aesthetic homestead is simply that in such a moral menage the dustbin must be bigger than the house. If a man could undertake to make use of all things in his dustbin he would be a broader genius than Shakespeare. When science began to use by-products; when science found that colors could be made out of coaltar, she made her greatest and perhaps her only claim on the real respect of the human soul. Now the aim of the good woman is to use the by-products, or, in other words, to rummage in the dustbin."