So last Friday I started cycling into a relatively mild manic phase and I’ve been cleaning since. (I’ve never been a slob but neither have I ever been accused of being a neat freak.)
I’ve gotten to the point where I’m going over things I’ve already done. Anyone need their house cleaned? At this point everywhere is within walking distance.
So I find myself doing that which I’ve never thought of doing before. I’m washing my clothes in the bathtub. I assume others have done this? Please tell me I’m frugal and resourceful. (Flat broke with no smokes and a cache of food consisting literally of 4 packs of Ramen, 2 cans of corn and a non-labeled can that I think contains either baked beans or Hoffa’s remains.)
Do you love ranch dressing, and dip everything into it, from vegetables to pizza to fries, and everything in between? That’s how you know you are truly white trash. Not everyone that loves ranch dressing is white trash, but all white trash love ranch dressing.
I have washed clothes in a bath tub and hung them out to dry until it was too cold (Alaska winter) and then I hung a line throughout the house to dry our clothes and bedding. There were times while living in the Bush that I would have to tell my kids that yes, we had to eat salmon/halibut/king crab again because the hamburger at the cannery store was too expensive.
When I lived in Washington state there used to be a guy who would go to the grocery stores and get the “too overripe produce to donate to the food banks” produce and drive it to the neighborhoods where he knew people living on the edge of poverty were. You would be amazed and what you can salvage from that. We would also glean the fields after the crops were harvested. It was cold, wet, hard work, but you could pick a lot of produce that the machines missed, especially root crops. I have eaten a lot of ramen, and understand the empty cupboard situation well, right down to the unlabeled can of mystery food. I also have some mood disorders, and understand the cycling as well. Scrubbing walls and floors, cleaning out cabinets and cupboards and light fixtures was my way of coping as well.
Hang tough, times will get better! My life has been lived on the edge forever, (I am 50) but changes this year have resulted in being in a better financial state, and I don’t have to be afraid any longer. I wish the best for you, take care.
I don’t translate being broke to being white trash. Do you have cars on blocks in your yard? There are better indications of white trash than going through some hard times
You are frugal and resourceful. And also nice to be near. BTDT. By the way, if you’re careful how you hang your clothes up to dry, you might be able to get away without ironing them.
You are not white trash if you are actually washing the clothes, not just dousing them with Frebreze or worse smoking underneathe them to let the cigarette odor “clean” them. Millions of people throughout Eastern Europe wash their clothes in the bathtub because of lack of washing machines, you’re demonstrating your solidarity with all the other clean, but poor people throughout the world.
What** moorland reiver **said. Poor, or even flat busted broke does not equal white trash. You are more tha welcome to come on over and clean at my place. I get in funks where cleaning falls by the wayside. I’ve been making an effort lately. I thought I was doing okay, but then I invited a last minute guest to Thanksgiving and started looking around and noticing things I’d not only missed but never contemplated cleaning, like the louvery thing on top of the microwave.
I’ve never washed clothes in the bathtub, but just becase the very thought makes my lower back hurt. I’ve washed plenty in the kitchen sink.
It’s been a festival of rice and beans at our house. Ramen, too.
I wash clothes in the tub on a regular basis. I have a clothes line but my pit bull (mix!) likes to shred anything hanging out there, even when I strung a line from the top of the trampoline to the top of the house and stood on a ladder to hang my laundry out.
I don’t know how he managed that one when he can barely get off the ground for a hot dog.
These days I just have them hanging up all over the house.
I also have two broken down cars in the yard. Both over 20 years old. One is a van we are glad to own because it means even broke down, we have a place to live if we can’t pay the rent.
Her: “Our bank balance is negative 50 bucks.”
Him: “So that means we have to raise 50 bucks just to be broke?”
(some sitcom bit I saw in an ad. I think it’s “According to Jim”, but not sure, didn’t pay attention to that aspect. Just know that I’ve “been there, doing that.”)
You’re white trash if you think that Jeff Foxworthy is a documentarian. (In less-funny terms: you relate heavily to his “redneck” bits. “Rednecks” seem to be merely white trash that live south of the Mason-Dixon line.)
This has piqued my curiosity. When your food supply gets that low, let us know if it tastes like Boston’s signature dish, or like missing labour leader.
You guys have me wondering - what’s the difference between poor and white trash? White trash are usually…economically-challenged, but not all poor people are white trash.
I spent a year as white trash [I lived on 13th Bay St in Norfolk VA] where I was making minimum wage and had $20 a month for groceries. I washed everything except my work uniforms in the sink and hung them on a wooden rack inside [because anything left outside got stolen] mainly because the work uniforms got sent to a commercial laundry by my employer.
Sack of beans, Sack of rice, huge commercial container [1 pound] of Montreal steak seasoning that ‘fell off the back of a truck’ thanks to a friend who worked in a diner. I haunted the crunch and dent section of the produce section of the 21st Street Farm Fresh, and invested a buck in a package of chicken backs as I could fish and crab [mainly crab] at the Lynnhaven Fishing Pier after I got off work [toss a pair of tidewater nets in, set a kitchen timer for 45 minutes, go to sleep. When it rings haul them in, check for crabs, rebait if needed, lather rinse repeat. I traded or sold the excess crabs for different seafood or cash at a seafood store locally] and got a whole smithfield ham as a christmas present - that sucker lasted me as seasoning for about 5 months, ending its wonderful life as the bone in split pea soup.
I was quite glad to get a much better job. Working in a semi legal boiler room making outgoing phone calls validating those little raffle entry cards and setting appointments for timeshare meetings. Hey, it was paying $9 per hour, and I seem to remember $5 per appointment set up that the people actually showed up for. I actually ended up making about $100 or so a month from people actually showing up for the timeshare meetings. I apologize if I tried to set an appointment with you, but you did actually fill out the damned cards …
I washed my clothes by hand when I lived in Bulgaria. I’ve never actually seen a bathtub in Bulgaria, so I used what anyone in my situation would have used - a legen, or a plastic washtub. I hung them up to dry inside my house. Sometimes I didn’t have running water, and then I’d go out to the town cheshma (fountain) and haul water back to wash up. I’d heat it up first, though, because handwashing with freezing water stinks.
I also picked up pinecones and twigs walking around my town to use as kindling for my petchka (wood stove).
