Convenience vs Conservation

Hank's former flat-mate from London ("room-mate" for the American reader) just posted an amusing article on Facebook.  Like me and Hank, she is back in DC after several years in the UK and is reflecting on the lifestyle changes.  The article (below) is a witty insight into the difference between European and American domestic appliances, and (important for those who don't subscribe to the First Amendment) it's pleasantly non-jingoistic.

European appliances, certainly those readily available in the UK, are not always built with convenience as the main priority.  The writer of the article comments that the inconvenience is probably government-sponsored, to discourage excessive use of high-energy appliances.  Well yes, but sceptically,  I'd point out that domestic appliances still tend primarily to affect a woman's workload, so I wonder if there isn't a gender agenda here.  During my time in Japan, where housework was almost always a woman's work, it was astonishingly labour-intensive: making a simple bento box for lunch could take nearly two hours in the morning,  Japanese washing machines still ran on cold water and in a country where everyone had an electric pencil sharpener, I knew ONE person with a dishwasher (an American).  Women were so disempowered that until 2001 it was illegal to have contraceptive pills in the country.  I don't want to make Japan out to be a place where women were ill-treated - the lady of the house usually received a lot from her husband in return for her efforts - but I did feel strongly that such a high-tech country would have made greater advancements in technology if the appliances primarily serviced salaried men.

Gender issues aside, there is a broader issue of convenience vs conservation.  A tumble dryer eats electricity and gradually attrites your clothes.  I discovered recently that my black running tights, now tumble dried five or six times, have slowly become almost entirely transparent.  To think that I'd been wearing them running with the dog, and - horror!- for weeding the front garden. 

Despite these occasional minor glitches,  I truly love the convenience of US culture.  I adore the easy-open, easy-reseal bags for groceries which keep food so fresh.  My kitchen sink has a handy hose for spraying the dishes.  There are cup holders everywhere in cars.  The GPS in buses tells my iPhone app exactly how many minutes away the bus is before I even leave home.  AMAZING.   

There are of course things which the conservationist struggles with.  I'm still not sure that garbage disposal via sinks doesn't bring rats into city sewers.  And of course, driving everywhere in really big cars...  I know you have less traffic, petrol is cheaper and it really is a joy to drive in the USA but ....

It would be a terrible shame if American the Beautiful were sacrificed for America the Convenient.

But telling Americans to buy smaller cars would be like telling Londoners not to use the Underground.   Until cheap, reliable alternatives exist, people will default to what they know.

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Two of my neighbours recently petitioned the local Council to cut down three diseased trees in our  street.  The same couple polled the remaining neighbours and generously bought the most popular replacement: plum saplings.  The pair were clearly happy to have had the chance to choose which trees are on our street and they hope to replace all the other trees in the future.  To me, though, tiny saplings look a bit odd on a street of Victorian townhouses.  A part of what I value is heritage and to the British eye,  old homes are part of an establishment, naturally complemented by imposing old trees.   A young tree not only looks oddly small but also deprives the street of some of its old charm.  This is a classic cultural difference in viewpoint.  My neighbours value the convenience of designing their environment, I value conserving what was already there. 

I've paid the price for this preference to conserve; the Victorian windows I refused to replace in my London flat were draughty and noisy and drove my heating bills through the roof.  I, of course, wore more clothes to keep warm (THAT is the British way!) but my flatmates probably found it inconvenient sleeping in long johns under mountains of hot water bottles and quilts.   I recall also being intermittently boiling hot and freezing cold when staying at Hank's; he never found out how to operate his central heating.  I fear the instructions were thrown out with the recycling.

As I write this, I'm looking out of my window at the new plum saplings bending in the wind, their tiny boughs heavy with beautiful plum blossom and deep red leaves.  Perhaps I am being a grumpy old woman.  The trees are a perfect fit in the New World.  I guess a part of me still clings to the Old.

Read the original article here.

When two become one - what do you do with what's left over?

I recently caught a re-run of that 2005 Lifetime TV show "Merge" where a man and woman, deciding to cohabit, try to make their independent tastes in home decor merge together, without nominating too much of each other's stuff for the wood chipper.  It reminded me of the situation Hank and I face in our first home together, trying to make his chrome, leather and black furniture merge with my floral Victorian chaise longue, Wedgewood china and Royal Doulton figurines.

Figurines and cuddy toys - what you men love most about cohabitation

Hank and I had each owned pretty full sets of furniture in our former, independent lives but I was at a disadvantage here in DC - not that it's a power struggle - because I'd left most of my furniture in London to rent out with the apartment.  So, with the relatively few items I have in DC, even a tiny sacrifice for me now could signal a huge shift in the balance between Hank's chunky man-stuff and Georgia's tasteful and refined selections.

Ok, ok, I accept that last description was not very impartial.  Like most people, I am attached to my sense of style, and change is all the harder because sentimental women such as me attach such personal significance to decorative items like a dinner service ("ah.... remember that Christmas when we got Chinese take-out?  Best ever...").  Still, at least these merging pains are really not exclusive to me and Hank.  I have heard of homes where DVDs were shuffled up on shelves so that the perusing eye took in Alien vs Predator, the Godfather, Terminator, The Wire, Platoon, Mama Mia ... Wait, what?!

Fortunately for me and Hank, what seemed like a daunting task at first has become quite worthwhile.  You may by now be wondering, where on earth dark wood furniture could meet antique Victoriana halfway?

Unknowingly, Hank's parents provided the final piece of the design puzzle when they kindly donated their Asian-inspired mahogany sleigh bed.  It became obvious: SE Asia, colonial-style.  Hank's dark-stained Balinese teak will blend with my screenprints and his rice paper and wicker room dividers.   We hope to choose some campaign-style pieces from my favourite DC vintage furniture store Miss Pixie's.  Lots of tall, leafy house plants to create the illusion of the East Indies.  Maybe we'll scatter a few silk cushions.  With my repositioned Japanese altar cabinet now housing the Wedgewood,  I really feel comfortable with the way this is moving....  This could really work!

I've hidden the Wedgewood in the cabinet, ok?  But Hank, if the china gets into any "accidents" I will call the FBI to dust it for your prints.

But as with all power struggles (reminder: this is not a power struggle), there are sacrifices: this week's loser is poor old Debbie, the Royal Doulton figurine pictured earlier.  Hank just can't find it in him to display her beside the TV.

So, goodbye, Dolly.  It's the bottom shelf of the bookcase for you.  With a smile, I must confess: since she is so valuable and so breakable a dust-magnet, even I am relieved to see her go.

NY Times tips on avoiding a "no-holds-barred meltdown right out of “War of the Roses.”

What is the secret of a happy marriage?

In a recent New York Times wellness article, Tara Parker-Pope printed a sustainable marriage quiz that questioned whether relationships can succeed without allowing each party to grow as an individual.   The question has probably crossed your mind, and I would even go so far as to suggest that this point is probably particularly important to you if you are male.  My fiance, Hank sent me the NY Times link and I know he feels that our two years together have helped him expand more than just his waistline.  I utterly adore him and am happy that he feels I have helped him grow.  I wonder if all women feel the same, though.

There is a gender angle missing from the questions raised by TPP.  Fifty years ago, I wonder how many suburban housewives of DC would have said that a relationship had enabled their self-realisation.  Perhaps some relationships helped them realise that they were becoming someone they did not wish to be: an exhausted mother, a hen-pecked daughter-in-law, a domestic maid.  Remember Linda Loman in Miller's Death of A Salesman, struggling to keep the family together while her husband wrestled with his own dreams? And who can forget that scene in Revolutionary Road where Frank Wheeler yells at his wife, April: "You are an empty, empty, hollow shell of a woman. I mean, what the hell are you doing in my house if you hate me so much?"   


Frankly, where else could April Wheeler have gone?  


To echo Charlotte Lucas in Pride and Prejudice, happiness in marriage was for centuries "entirely a matter of chance" and happy or not, failure was simply not an option.  Austen's generation had no way out of a marriage, just as they often had little choice on the way in. 


At the risk of reading too much into the socio-economic side, (Newsflash: I'm a feminist), I wonder if the freedom to choose when to enter into a relationship - and when to end it - isn't also a huge factor in the relationship's success or failure.  


Historically, the freedom to marry when and whom you chose has been closely linked to income. Women of Austen's generation and social status could neither earn money nor inherit it.  They depended first upon their fathers, then upon their husbands, to whom their fathers had given them away.  Linda Loman and April Wheeler's financial stability depended upon the success of their husbands' professional ambitions.  This tested the wives, yes, but also placed a huge burden of expectation on the husbands.  


In this era of high female employment, you are probably thinking: well, no-one forces modern American women to marry for economic reasons but we still have a 50% divorce rate.  Ok, but let's really think about this.  Pressures still exist.  How does society respond to "career women" who never marry or choose to remain entirely single?  Did you have an unmarried aunt who got a "pity" invite to every Christmas dinner? Did your mother ever encourage your sisters to settle down before it was "too late"  while your brothers only received similar comments many, many years later?  Consider the wildly different associations you have with the words "spinster" and her male equivalent, the "bachelor".


Clearly women still feel the pressure to marry more acutely than men do.  


As a 21-year old I remember thinking my female friends who were already 26 and unmarried were risking being left on the shelf.  Now, at 32, I look back in astonishment. The rest of your life together is a really, really long time.  Why the big rush?   At 21, I was attracting the type of moronic boyfriend I deserved, with that ridiculous attitude.  It was only after I met my fiance, at the age of 30, that it occurred to me: when we women spend time realising our own dreams before marriage, we attract the type of partner who loves our self-realised personality.  Could it be that just when we decide we really don't need to get married, is the point when we become best suited to marriage?  If so, and if at this point you still want to marry your partner, that has to be a winning ticket.  That means less of the tricky renegotiating of boundaries that women often initiate years into a marriage; the wife has fewer abandoned dreams and a fuller pension pot; the husband values her good company and doesn't mind her preference for microwaved dinners.  Both know where they stand - and are happy with their position - before moving forward together.


It follows that the things a woman may later wish she had done before she got married should all be done before she gets married.  I firmly believe we should encourage this in our daughters. That's also why I urged one of my closest friends, a 30-year old on a great salary, to quit her miserable job in the City and take her dream four-month backpacking holiday in Asia.  She knew this could be her last chance to travel like that.  She will return a more attractive person for seizing that chance.   She is not simply 'discovering' herself but actually creating herself out there.  She will return empowered to make the right choices about potential partners, her career, her home, and her friends. 


For most modern women, a marriage and children is fulfilling but is not enough to populate an entire human identity. The concept of choice is important. "A relationship is healthy when both parties have permission to ask for what they want and need, and they both have permission to say no if they choose" writes John Gray.  He is the author of Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus, the most useful relationship book I have ever read.   I suspect in most modern marriages, the permission he talks about is already there.  It is the "asking" habit which needs to be strengthened.  Often, we women need to teach ourselves how to say "no" to what we don't want. That learning process takes time and probably requires experimentation and challenges which are concentrated outside of a domestic setting.  To experience those challenges some women may choose to travel through Asia with a backpack, or seek validation through work or volunteering. Sometimes academic challenges will be important, or any act of committing to something just because we feel good about it.    John Gray is right about how important it is to give each other permission to choose.  Equally, we women need to give ourselves permission to choose what we get ourselves into - and out of - before we can genuinely be happy helping our husbands to grow.

Revolutionary Road: me at Everest Base Camp (Tibet) the year before I met Hank.

Read the full NY Times article here


POST SCRIPT: 
I am not a psychologist and my opinions could be way off the mark.  Do leave your comments here. 
Just in case marriage still scares you...  Here's Chris Rock's take on divorce.  Be warned, it is hilarious but not suitable for kids: