Ecofrugality is now called "underconsumption core"

Once again, I find myself riding the wave of a trend I didn't know existed. A week or so ago, I read an article in Grist about how many TikTokers are now fighting back against the consumption culture popularized by many influencers with videos about a lifestyle they call "underconsumption core." This aesthetic, according to the article, is "generally about reducing and reusing." In their videos, creators show off their reusable bags, thrift-shop visits, minimalist skincare routines, and possessions they've bought cheap and kept for decades. Doesn't this sound a lot like the sort of thing I've been posting about for the last 15 years?

Of course, when I first started this blog, there was no TikTok and "influencer" wasn't a recognized profession. So I figured, if this new platform is now providing a forum for a lifestyle I've been promoting for years, why not jump on that bandwagon? Why not whip up my own little one-minute video, set to "soothing background music," about my ecofrugal—excuse me, "underconsumption core"—habits and contribute it to the conversation? And, seeing as it's December, why not make it all about the ways we practice underconsumption during the holidays, which are normally the spendiest time of the year?

So I filmed a few little clips with my phone, edited them together in the free ClipChamp program, found a public-domain musical track on Pixabay, and posted it on both TikTok and YouTube. If you have an account on either platform, I'd appreciate your popping by there and giving it a like. If enough people seem to enjoy this first video, perhaps I'll make some more in the same vein. I've got the software more or less figured out now, and it's not like I have any shortage of material to work with.

Happy holidays to all, and to all an ecofrugal new year!

Meet the new toothpaste, not the same as the old toothpaste

Brian and I have a few very specific requirements for toothpaste. I insist on a brand that's cruelty-free (not tested on animals). Brian needs one that's free of sodium lauryl sulfate, which seems to give him canker sores. And we both want a toothpaste with fluoride, which, until recently, was the only chemical available that could actually prevent tooth decay. (Nowadays, there's an alternative called hydroxyapatite, which appears to be equally effective. But it's also more expensive, so most fluoride-free toothpastes don't contain it.)

None of the leading toothpaste brands (Crest, Colgate, Tom's of Maine, Sensodyne) meets all these requirements. So, for the past several years, we've relied on Trader Joe's toothpaste. Not only did it tick all the boxes, it was also much cheaper than the major brands at $3.50 for a 6-ounce tube. But last summer, we learned that Trader Joe's had discontinued its store brand on account of problems with its supplier. Our man on the inside (a friend who works there) told us the store was working with a new supplier and expected to get its product on the shelves by the end of November, but our one remaining tube wasn't going to last us that long.

So, after squeezing every drop out of that tube and exhausting all the sample tubes we'd received from our dentist, we went looking for a new toothpaste that met our stringent requirements. After a bit of online research, I determined that the best alternative was a brand called hello (without an initial capital letter). We picked up a tube of that for $5 at Target and, on the whole, liked it very much. The flavor was pleasantly minty, and being greeted by the cheerful "hello" on the tube made a pleasant start to the day. 

There were only two things we didn't like about it. The first was the price: $1.06 per ounce, nearly twice as much as our old Trader Joe's toothpaste. The other was the tube it came in. Our old toothpaste came in the traditional squeezable tube we'd both grown up with, which we could flatten and roll as we worked our way down the tube to squeeze out the paste more effectively. This new tube was made of a springier plastic and would reinflate itself after being squeezed, making it more or less impossible to squish every last bit of the paste out of the tube.

So, as November drew to an end, we kept an anxious eye on the toiletries shelf at Trader Joe's, hoping the new store-brand toothpaste would show up before our first tube of hello ran out. But November ran into December with no sign of one, and it got harder and harder to squeeze anything out of the hello tube. Finally, we gave in and bought a second tube—which, of course, was the cue for the new Trader Joe's product to show up at last. In fact, not one but two new toothpastes appeared: a "sensitivity" toothpaste with fluoride and a fluoride-free whitening toothpaste with hydroxyapatite. Both were the same price, $4 for 6 ounces—more than the old store brand, but considerably less than hello. Although we already had a full tube in reserve, we decided to spring for a tube of the new TJ's toothpaste anyway and open it first. That way, if we didn't like it, we'd have the other tube to fall back on. We hesitated over which of the new toothpastes to try but eventually settled on the one with fluoride, since it was more familiar.

After one brushing with the new toothpaste, we realized this might have been the wrong choice. It had a sort of weird taste that we could only guess was due to the desensitizing ingredient, potassium nitrate. (We'd tried sample tubes of Sensodyne before, and it also had a hint of that odd flavor, but with stronger mint and sweetener flavors to cover it up.) So now we face a bit of an ecofrugal dilemma. Do we (1) try to use up this whole tube of weird-tasting toothpaste, (2) go back to the pricier hello toothpaste that we know we like, or (3) try the other Trader Joe's toothpaste, which may or may not have the same peculiar taste?

No matter which we choose, there's one downside we'll definitely have to live with: those pesky, self-inflating tubes. The new Trader Joe's toothpaste comes in the same kind of stand-up plastic tube as the hello toothpaste. If we go for option 1, we probably won't be all that bothered about being unable to use up all the toothpaste from this tube, since we don't really like it anyway. But with option 2 or 3, we may have to resort to buying (or making) one of those special tube-squeezing tools or even cutting open the tube to scoop out the last few drips.

What we'd like best, of course, is to have our old toothpaste back, in the same old tube. But since that's not an option, we'll have to figure out which choice is next best. C'est la vie ecofrugale.

Our first big-venue experience (and why we won't repeat it)

This weekend, Brian and I did something a bit out of step with our usual ecofrugal spending habits. As regular readers know, we're both big fans of the show Critical Role (in which "a bunch of nerdy-ass voice actors sit around and play Dungeons & Dragons"). So when we learned that the Critical Role cast would be running a live "Critmas" event at the Freedom Mortgage Pavilion in Camden, New Jersey—their first ever show in our state—we decided to spring for tickets. We'd already been to see a live show in Brooklyn featuring a subset of the cast and had a lot of fun, so we figured this event would probably be worth the cost of admission.

From the moment we first started planning the trip, though, the venue seemed determined to convince us we were wrong. First, there was the cost and hassle of ordering the tickets. They were only available through Live Nation, so I had to set up an account with that site—which turned out to be a subsidiary of Ticketmaster—in order to place the order. The process of setting up the account, linking it to my PayPal account, and placing my order took well over an hour, requiring several attempts before the transaction would go through. And by the time Ticketmaster had finished piling on taxes and fees, our two "Standard Tier" tickets, allegedly priced at $75 each, came to a total of $226.88.

This already high price, as we quickly learned, did not include parking. The Freedom Mortgage Pavilion's website informed us that while parking was "available" at various nearby lots, we would have to find and pay for it ourselves—unless, of course, we wanted to shell out an additional $50 for "premier" parking. We couldn't bring ourselves to swallow that additional expense, especially since it would most likely mean fighting our way through a massive traffic jam at the end of what was already likely to be a very late night. So we spent several more stressful hours poring over maps of the area trying to find other parking options. Our best bet seemed to be the Rutgers Camden campus, especially since Brian has a Rutgers parking permit that would allow him access to lots that might not be open to the general public. A campus map showed several parking lots, but it didn't explain who was allowed to use them. Some were clearly labeled as resident parking, but others were unmarked. We ended up planning out a route that would take us past several different lots so that if one was full, we could move on to the next.

Then there was the matter of food. The venue's website clearly stated that we could not bring in any outside food or drink except for one sealed bottle of water. However, we would be allowed to bring in an empty bottle and fill it up at one of the water fountains. So that would take care of basic hydration, but nourishment was another matter. The show was scheduled to start at 7pm, and it would take us about an hour and a half to drive there, so we wouldn't be able to eat dinner beforehand. We couldn't tell from the website what food options would be available, but we could be pretty sure they would all be expensive and would involve waiting in long lines. So we planned to pack a picnic supper—peanut butter sandwiches, fruit, baby carrots, and a couple of cookies—that we could nosh on before and after the show.

A final source of stress was the Freedom Mortgage Pavilion's bag policy. It was clear from the venue's website that my purse, which is practically a part of my body, would not be able to come to the show with me. The venue allowed only clear plastic bags no larger than 12 inches square and 6 inches deep and "small clutches, wristlets, or fanny packs" no bigger than 6 inches by 9. I had a zipper bag that was just within those limits, so I figured I could squeeze the essentials—my large phone wallet, a pillbox, and maybe a couple of small toiletries like a nail clipper and lip balm—into that. But then, less than a week before the show, I received an email from the venue reminding me about its policies, and the size limit it gave for clutch bags was only 4.5 by 6.5 inches—roughly half the size stated on the venue's own website. Confused by these conflicting rules, I consulted Reddit and found that the venue had adopted these smaller size limits two years ago and somehow never bothered to update its website to reflect them.

With only a few days until the show, I posted a couple of frantic messages on Facebook (one in our local Buy Nothing Group and one in our board-gaming group) asking if anyone could loan me a plastic stadium bag that fit the venue's limits. I ended up getting not one but two offers and, just to be on the safe side, accepted them both. However, that didn't solve the problem of what to do with my phone. I had to bring it with me, because our tickets were on it; they contained a digital code that changed regularly, so I couldn't just print them out ahead of time. But I couldn't bring the wallet that normally holds the phone because it was over the size limit. It was possible they'd allow the wallet if it was inside a clear bag, but it was also possible they wouldn't, and we didn't want to take the chance. And carrying the phone around naked would have put it at risk of damage.

Rather than run out and buy a case for it, Brian decided to try making me one. He borrowed the phone and basically built the case around it, cutting two panels out of corrugated cardboard and wrapping them in fabric cut from an old pair of fleece tights. Then he wrapped the whole thing in thinner, more flexible cardboard cut from a cereal box and secured it with a rubber band. The finished case was right on the edge of the 6.5-inch limit, so there was always a chance some zealous security guard would seize it, but losing it wouldn't cost us anything.

The last thing we had to worry about was getting to the venue. Google Maps offered multiple routes, but the most straightforward one appeared to be the NJ Turnpike. We carefully reviewed the steps to get from the Turnpike to the parking lot, going over each turn in street view so we'd know what to expect, and also how to get from the parking lot to the venue on foot. Google said the journey could take anywhere from 60 to 110 minutes, and the show was scheduled to start at 7:30 pm, with the doors opening to regular ticket holders (as opposed to those who had paid $250 a seat for VIP tickets) at 6pm. We decided to leave at 4:30 pm to give ourselves plenty of leeway in case we got lost, ran into traffic, or had some other sort of mishap.

As it turned out, none of the things we'd worried about came to pass. We made it to Camden in about an hour, and the first parking lot we looked at had plenty of available spaces. We made the chilly one-mile walk through the streets of Camden without difficulty and arrived at the venue right as the doors were opening. The guard took only a cursory look at my borrowed stadium bag before waving us through, raising no objection to Brian's homemade phone case. We made our way through the crowd, found our seats, filled our water bottle, and still had over an hour to spare before showtime. 

We did make one deviation from our careful plan; despite having partaken of sandwiches and carrots in the car, I realized soon after we seated ourselves that I wasn't going to make it through the whole show without something to munch on. Luckily, we didn't have to stand in the long concession lines, as there was a vendor passing through the aisles selling big boxes of popcorn for $10. Normally, I would balk at paying this much for a snack I can make at home for pennies, but under the circumstances, it seemed like the best deal we were likely to get. So I shelled out an extra $10 for a box and nursed it through the entire four-and-a-half hour show.

The Critical Role cast, as always, put on a great show. From where we were seated, far back in the huge auditorium, they were only tiny figures on the stage, but the venue had large screens set up that allowed us to see their facial expressions in close-up. This meant that most of the time, we were looking at the screens, rather than the live actors on the stage, so visually, it wasn't all that different from watching on our own small screen at home. But being part of the crowd, laughing and shouting and cheering when the characters did something awesome, definitely added to the experience.

Still, as we walked back to our car through the cold December night, we found ourselves asking: Did it really add that much? Yes, being in the room where it happens was a lot more fun than watching at home. But everything we had to do in order to be in that room was a lot less fun. In fact, everything other than the show itself—ordering the tickets, planning our route, searching for parking, packing sandwiches in lieu of a proper dinner, driving to and from Camden, walking from the parking lot to the venue and back on a cold December night, and arriving home exhausted at 2 am—was extremely stressful. Neither of us could say with confidence that the experience, taken as a whole, was better than staying at home and watching the show curled up on the couch in our jammies with some hot cocoa. And we certainly couldn't say that it was so much better as to be worth the roughly $241 we spent in total for the tickets, gas, tolls, and vastly overpriced popcorn.

So, while this was a worthwhile experience, it isn't one we're eager to repeat. The joy of watching the show in a room full of fellow Critters (fans of the show) just wasn't enough to balance out all the cost and hassle. I kind of feel like if Critical Role ever returns to New Jersey, rather than pay over $200 to see them live in a huge arena, we should try to find a group of local Critters and have an at-home watch party. We can share a potluck dinner, sit on comfy chairs to enjoy the show together, use the bathrooms during the break without having to wait in a long line, and still get to bed before 1 am.

Is thrifting really thrifty?

For the past eight years, my aunt and I have had an arrangement about holiday gifts: When she comes to visit over Thanksgiving weekend, we hit the local thrift shops together and buy each other's presents there. This year, I invited my youngest nibling to join in the exchange as well. I had perused their wish list on Gift Hero (our more socially responsible alternative to the Amazon Wishlist) and noticed that a lot of their picks were clothing items, so I suggested we look for them the ecofrugal way.

Well, this was a semi-success. As usual, I couldn't find anything I particularly liked at the thrift stores, so my aunt wasn't able to get a gift for me there. But both she and my nibling found items for themselves: a cute little fuzzy jacket and a colorful striped sweater, respectively. And Brian, who joined us on the trip, also found a nice green sweater for himself. That's the good news. The bad news is that the three items together cost $87. 

Mind you, I'm not objecting to what I paid for my relatives' gifts; there are definitely other items on our gift list that cost about the same (though there are also some that cost less). But it seems a trifle high for secondhand clothing. Consider that last year, Brian and I spent only $52 at Goodwill for six pieces (two pairs of shorts, one pair of jeans, one pair of sneakers, one pullover, and one turtleneck)—an average of $8.67 per garment. These three items averaged $29 per garment—more than three times as much.

This leads me to an uncomfortable but inescapable conclusion: thrifting isn't always a thrifty choice. That's not to say it never is; at a store like Goodwill, where most garments are under $10, you'll certainly pay less than you would buying fast fashion, and you'll probably be able to find better-made garments too (though it may take a bit of Goodwill hunting to find them). But at consignment shops like Greene Street, you're likely to pay more than you would shopping the Black Friday sales at Target or Old Navy.

Of course, secondhand shopping still has other advantages over fast fashion. It doesn't require the massive amounts of water, energy, and other resources that go into new garments, and it doesn't produce the massive amounts of waste and emissions that come out of the process. It's unquestionably the more eco-friendly choice. But it's not the ecofrugal no-brainer I thought it was. Instead, it's one of those awkward cases in which the best choice for society and the best choice for your bottom line are often in conflict, and you have to figure out which matters more to you.

Thrifting can still be an ecofrugal choice if you stick to the nonprofit stores, such as Goodwill and local church basement shops. But unfortunately, there aren't very many of those around here, and the ones we do have are a bit of a mess. Our one local thrift shop at the Reformed Church is small, cluttered, and hardly ever open; the nearest Goodwill store, while bigger, is poorly organized, making it hard to unearth the few pearls hidden in the massive dunghill. So if we want to visit a thrift store with real bargains, we have to go some distance out of our way. We still go once in a while, but we can't drop in on a regular basis to find the good stuff before it's snatched up.

Consequently, we tend to have our best luck visiting thrift shops away from home. When we go to visit my in-laws for Christmas, we make a point of stopping by at least one of the three Goodwill stores in their area, all of which are much better than ours. And when we saw my sister's family for Thanksgiving this past weekend, they invited us to come visit them in Boston next year and check out a chain called Savers, which they visit regularly. It's a for-profit chain, but apparently it's a big enough one to boast a substantial selection of decent stuff at reasonable prices. We can usually find enough during these out-of-town thrift-shop visits to fill the gaps in our wardrobe and tide us over until next year. It's not ideal, but if we want to shop ecofrugally, it's our best option.