Rat bastard. I’d kill for a bottle of ketchup right now! Braggart.
Thanks for some laughs everyone. So I’ve got all these clothes hanging about trying my damnedest to make the place look like a refugee camp. The problem is every time I turn around I think it’s an intruder and almost have a heart attack. Sigh.
Oh, it was a can of corn. Not the sexiest vegetable but I drowned it in butter (forgot I had that, yay living in Wisconsin) and salt. God was it good!
I have tons of ketchup packets in the fridge. I’m fortunate that I make enough (how, I don’t know, having been out of work for 7 months) to have an actual ketchup bottle too, but when that runs dry and we can’t get a new one right away, those ketchup packets are good to tide over. Fast food takeout gives you way too many of them, and when you’re in the restaurant, they don’t mind you grabbing a mittful.
(Those things don’t have expiration dates on them, do they? Because I’m sure that my son is older than a few of them.)
I always took it as keeping poorer habits when you don’t have to. Or, at the very least, not caring about how you present to the outside world to the point that you don’t bother cleaning up.
ZPG had a good example.
This has its origins in the Old South. Poor (or po’) white trash are basically people who have no pride. It’s a mindset as much as an economic class. White trash has no ambition, other than to get through another day. White trash drop out of high school as soon as possible, in order to get a job at a factory. Never mind that the job is a dead end one, and the person would make much better money, and have chances to advance if s/he graduates high school at least.
The only difference in being poor and white and being white trash is one is a pejorative.
My daughter gets Ramen when she does the night shift and brings it home for me. I’m too poor to even buy Ramen right now. :smack:
OP, you’re just poor.
If you all were in Middle Georgia (a skosh south of Macon) I’d make a turkey dinner and feed every last one of you, then send you home w/ a covered dish. I work miracles w/ lentils and rice, I’m told.
For a month before my cleaning business got off the ground I lived on the green beans from my garden and some windfall apples from the yard of an abandoned house. During my cleaning business I never refused any food offered to me and in fact Passover was my favorite holiday. My observant clients rid themselves of the food that wasn’t Kosher for Passover, then when it was over gave away the stuff that was. Sure, potato starch brownies are flat but nothing ice cream couldn’t fix.
I’ve had to cut back on my butler’s hours. And my Porsche is on blocks in the front of my estate.
…what happens if you can afford to wash your laundry in the machine but wash them in the bathtub anyway? My apartment building has a schedule, and my time is Saturday afternoon. Because I don’t have things to be doing on a Saturday afternoon?
No, really, I should wash my clothes more in the bathtub. It’ll save me 3 bucks a load and my clothes don’t get really dirty, just day to day Cheetos crumbs. 
I’ve washed clothing in the bathtub and I wash my underwear in the bathroom sink regularly. Plain white hand soap on undies is much better than machine washed with detergent to me.
Does this make me white trash?
I’m a black chick.
I don’t think it’s a simple as that.
GAWDDD, that’s the worst kind of white trash there IS.
Some of you older folks may recall bars of laundry soap; they still sell it for supa-cheap, it still does the job well but can be murder on the skin of your hands. It should rinse out better than machine detergent, though, from your clothes and your tub.
I have a dream of building a small washing device from a 40 lb cat litter container, a hole in the lid and the handle of a new toilet brush, bristles removed. Someday…
No, jali, you’re just Nubian royalty.
It’s always been my impression that white trash = lazy at any cost, someone who works welfare and Medicaid into their financial plan rather than plan for personal financial growth to eliminate the necessity of assistance. Basically: chronic mooch culture of honkey mo-fo decent. Not the same as just being poor. A cake of soap costs less than a monster truck rally ticket. If the choice becomes necessary and is a difficult one to make, you’re trash.
we have one of these for our camp at pennsic, it works quite well.
No, the most important qualilfication for being white trash is an attitude. A millionaire could be white trash. See “The Beverly Hillbillies”, who proved that you can take the hillbilly out of the mountain, but you can’t take the trash out of the hillbilly.
Actually, ranchers and farmers used to put their dirty laundry in tightly sealed plastic containers or drums with some water and soap, toss them in the back of a pickup, and go about their business. The clothes would get thoroughly agitated…and then the folks would drain the sudsy water, add clear water, and drive off again, for a rinse cycle. If you have some sort of exercise bike (and actually use it), you could hook it up to a plastic container for agitation.
I wouldn’t consider them white trash. They were quite generous philanthropists, after all. But the people that were drawn to them were of pretty low character.
Hmmmm… I think use of the kitchen sink over the bathroom would expedite your membership. (God, are we really on the cusp of codifying rules?)
Anyway, you can be an honorary member. Though having you around might class up the joint too much and disqualify us all. 
I don’t have a solution to the rest of your problems, but this one can certainly be fixed. 
Would you say people choose to be white trash?
I’m not sure what you mean. I know people who simply refuse to work because doing so means their wages get reported and then garnished for overdue child support–that’s certainly a choice. I know others who figure they can get the same amount of money if they remain on welfare or if they take an entry-level job, so why bother with the job?–that’s also a choice.