Not Made in China
When DD#2 was home for a visit a couple of weeks ago, she helpfully took charge of the downstairs bathroom renovation. Our house is 24 years old. At the time the husband built it, we were under some fairly tight budgetary constraints. Those were also pre-Internet ordering days, so I was limited to what I could buy from local hardware stores, which were not known for having a vast selection. Although my house will never be one to grace the pages of a decorating magazine, some things do need updating. That has been a mixed success.
If nothing else comes out of this coranavirus situation, I sincerely hope that we will stop outsourcing all of our manufacturing. I would be willing to pay more and/or forego purchasing items just so I don’t have to shell out money for trash. Case in point:
I bought a new towel bar and toilet paper holder for the downstairs bathroom. The husband helpfully installed them for me the other evening.* This is driving me absolutely bonkers. The quality control supervisor must have been taking a nap when this came out of the factory. And yes, it was made in China.
[How hard is it to measure something this simple?!?!?!??!]
I need to point out here that I live in a farmhouse-style house with oak trim. I am aware that that is not the current trend in home decorating, but I am not going to shell out tens of thousands of dollars to make it look like something out of an IKEA showroom. I love my farmhouse-style house with oak trim. I do not really want metal accessories in my bathroom. I inhabit that narrow demographic—characterized by women who want to drive stick-shift diesel station wagons—where my choices are severely limited. There are thousands of metal toilet paper holders out there and one or two wood ones. DD#2—who works in retail and is a notorious power shopper—scoured every supplier’s website she could think of and couldn’t come up with anything else.
[* I am not opposed to home improvement projects, but this is how these things typically go: I ordered a new towel bar. The husband is working 18 hours a day. I hate to bother him with simple projects and there was no reason I couldn’t install this myself, considering that I was just putting the new one in the same place the old one had been. I took the towel bar out of the package and did a quick dry fit, only to discover that the old towel bar was 22” long and the new one was 24” long. After two decades, I cannot remember whether the original one was 22” long when we purchased it or if the husband cut it down when he installed it. (Based on the location of the brackets, I think it was the latter.) Could I have cut the new one down? Sure, after I hiked out to the new shop and spent half an hour trying to figure out where the husband keeps his collection of saws. I gave up and just asked him to handle it. He did the whole installation in a couple of minutes. This is no different than him handing me a hoodie and asking me to replace the zipper. He’s smart enough to figure that out himself, given enough time, but it’s far more efficient for him to ask me to do it than to waste time going up that learning curve. Our division of labor, sexist and outdated as it may seem to some people, works for us.]
The husband said he could move the bracket on the left side up so that the roller is level, but then the fact that the brackets are not level with each other is going to drive me nuts. Arrrgggh.
I have given myself a stern talking-to this week. I like fabric, and let’s be totally honest— I like to collect fabric. Part of the reason my fabric collection is so vast is because most of it is produced overseas and produced relatively cheaply. Ma Ingalls no doubt would be horrified at the utterly wasteful concept of “fussy cutting” fabric to use small portions of yardage. I am not entirely sure how to change this—it is not always as simple as finding an American supplier for something—but it is something that I need to address. And I hope it’s a larger lesson to come out of this whole mess. I think I need to leave that toilet paper holder as it is so it serves as a good reminder.