Welcome, new readers! (Thanks to Risa at culturebot and Colin, No Impact Man.) I'm off to visit my grandmother, with a gigantic bag of mending.  I'm looking forward to time away from the computer, among other things - I'll write again when I get back next week.

Get this: so far in March I've purchased coffee drinks 9 times; in February I bought 11 of them.  Why?  Because I can.  Prior to Fix I might have purchased coffee once or twice a month when out meeting a friend.  But I'm finding that when I feel bored or tired or otherwise uncheerful, I get a little charge out of the one thing I can buy.  I'm not buying a small decaf, either: it's cinnamon dulce lattes and spring chai specials all the way.  I'm appalled that I get satisfaction out of this - the leaning up against the rules, the expensive sugary drinks, the embrace of Starbucks!  Even worse, now that my wallet is considerably fuller, I've been hopping into cabs at an alarming rate.  Technically, it's within the rules, given that it's transportation and not a thing...but it's a car, the enemy of cyclists everywhere!  What's more, I enjoy the experience - it's easy, it's fast, it feels luxurious.  Fix isn't about denying myself pleasure, but I wonder if it's possible to give myself a little treat without buying something.  The feeling I get from buying the coffee is quite distinct from the feeling I'd have if I were to sing a song or lie down in the grass or stand on my head.  And could I do those in the middle of the afternoon at work?  Still, I think I might have to nix the coffee drinks and cab rides going forward -- and I'm quite certain my sneaky inner yuppie will find something else to take their place.

I hung out yesterday with a group of girls I haven't seen in awhile.  We talked about Fix for a bit, and one of them asked about "necessities."  "I mean, you've bought stuff from the drugstore, right?"  Well, no. 

Yes, I've deemed soap and shampoo and deodorant necessities.  But let's be honest: how many bars of soap or bottles of shampoo and lotion are moldering away in the dark corners of your bathroom?   Girls receive bath crap by the ton from coworkers or people who don't know them very well.  Or there's the big bottle of lotion I bought that smells too fruity and doesn't work as well as some other brand.  But I don't want to throw it away, because it's still "good"!  And it can't go to charity because it's opened and that's a lot of effort for a bottle of lotion/five bars of soap/travel shampoo anyway.  I'm writing this not to castigate anyone for clutter or waste but to point out that for a lot of people, maybe most of the people I know and love, soap isn't a necessity -- exactly the right kind is.  We all have things like this: toothpaste, tissues, socks, underwear, etc.  Lucky for me soap is totally negotiable and our hostess Shanan unloaded a bunch of high-end beauty products on me.  Not sure I'm so flexible on deodorant, though - and I'm about to run out.

I recently finished Rathje and Murphy's Rubbish!, a book I'll come back to when I investigate trash in more detail.  Though a little out-of-date, it left a couple of lasting impressions: for one thing, I learned that over forty percent of the waste in landfills is paper -- and it doesn't biodegrade like we all think it does.  Furthermore, at the time of the book's writing (10 years ago), there wasn't a large enough market for recycled paper products to make it an eco-efficient enterprise.   I already avoid some of the pitfalls on paper: I read the newspaper online, I use the backs of printed out directions and maps and whatnot for the nine million lists I make a week.  But I'd like to reduce more.  Five minutes on the phone today supposedly means that I won't get catalogs from J. Crew or Anthropologie or other "similar companies" anymore (we'll see...).  When I'm buying things again, I'll aim to purchase products with 30% or more post-consumer recycled content.  Other ideas?

A friend challenged me to share the ways in which I'm insecure about Fix.  I'm a little scared of doing this for a year - both that it's too hard to keep up for a year and that it's too easy to do for a year: people make do and mend all the time (homeless people, very poor people here and in other countries).  I'm afraid that someone will write to say what a spoiled, entitled brat I am, and in some ways, I wish they would - only someone who has access to so much can call Fix an "experiment."  I'm also afraid that people are thinking it's a bigger sacrifice than it is: I've gotten so many emails from people expressing how they could never do such a thing.  I don't want to tell the people at my office: I'm afraid they'll think I'm taking advantage, lying, or stealing somehow; it's a given that they'll think it's a ridiculous enterprise.  I'm afraid of my few friends in business school - that they think I'm shitting on what they really care about, disrupting their dreams or something.  I'm concerned for myself in that I wonder if it's too neurotic, that the experiment is about control in a way that isn't healthy for my life right now.  I've been feeling lately that my world is really small - maybe this will make it even smaller?  The idea is to make it bigger, by learning about how my own life connects to that of my family and my community in ways that go beyond consumption.  And finally, as with every project I do, I worry that the documentation of this experience might prohibit me from actually having an experience: when you keep a blog, do you start to think of everything in terms of how it reads when you post it?

You've heard the trash-treasure adage a million times, and I'll probably repeat it often in Fix.  But it's true!  Last week 8 or 10 friends got together in Brooklyn to offload the random clothes that never worked or gifts we couldn't bring ourselves to wear.  The good thing about clothing swaps rather than giving to Goodwill is that you have a relationship with where your stuff is going and some of the emotional details remain intact.  I can get rid of the silk shirt I spent too much on because I can see that it looks way better on my friend.  Even if no one bites, everyone gets a laugh out of the aunt who insists on giving her neice elaborate monochromatic outfits.  Plus, among friends the respect factor goes up a little: we throw the disgusting t-shirts out rather than try to pass them off as acceptable "donations."

I'd estimate that at least 40% of my wardrobe consists of swap items at this point.  Almost my entire work repertoire came from other nine-to-fivers who make more money than I do - I'd like to spend as little as possible on bland button-downs, sweaters, and slacks.  This time, I managed to assemble a decent bag of discards despite moving a lot recently and going to a good number of swaps in the last year.  I ended up with three brand-new t-shirts, a perfectly cute coat my friend's boyfriend disliked, an apron, and a book.

Treasure?

        
Trash!                  

Slippery slope?  I was hungry and it was Friday and my work friends invited me out to eat.  And I was tired and I didn't really feel like talking about the project or defending its imprecise terms.  So I caved: I wanted to eat something delicious. Tapas, paella, and sangria fit the bill.