Making Do

I hate to point this out, but most of us have been spoiled rotten by the convenience of modern American life. Twenty-four-hour-seven-day-shopping. Need something? Go get it! Back in a flash! Hungry? Have a meal delivered in thirty minutes! Good, huh? But is it possible that in exchange for hurry-up convenience, we have traded off our self- sufficiency, our independence - our ability to make do? Most of us no longer know how to make substitutions. Comparing this to my childhood, I see we've come a long way in fifty years.

My parents recycled long before the word was invented. We lived in a post war suburban neighborhood but my mother always had a compost pile and vegetable garden in the back yard. We used jelly jars (the ones with the screw-lid tops) for drinking glasses. Dad used two-edged razor blades in a brass razor that had belonged to my grandfather. No plastic disposables for him. He deposited the old blades into a slot in the back of the medicine cabinet, never to be seen again. Soft drinks came in glass bottles that we had paid a deposit on. We poured milk from glass bottles that were returned to the store that then returned them to the dairy to be refilled. Once a week, we set out one small trash can, half filled, for the trash man. For a family of five, today, it takes three cans twice a week. Excessive packaging is the obvious culprit, but we can't deny the principle, ongoing cause is galloping consumerism. Unfortunately, now, our fragile economy has become rooted in the philosophy of, buy-it, use-it, throw-it away, buy it again. The bulging landfills reflect this disposable society we have created. Unfortunately, no one is making any more land.
        

But perhaps more importantly, our altered lifestyles demonstrate our complete dependence on manufactured goods. It would seem we have lost touch with the basic survival skills our parents exercised. They were able and willing to make do with what they had and could make the things by hand they couldn't buy. For example, I'd be willing to bet that the brick barbeque pit still stands where my dad built it forty plus years ago. By contrast, we buy a new propane barbeque grill every two years. I'm ashamed to admit how many we've sent to the dump.
        

As a designer, and someone in tune with my creativity, I'm feeling a weighty responsibility to use my skills to be more a part of the solution to the problem than a party to it. Although the idea for my Making Home column was conceived because I thought I wanted to help others rediscover their own creative abilities, more importantly, I think I wanted to rekindle, in myself, the self-reliance that was my parent's ideology and the independence that is our abandoned heritage.