kimberlysteele | Entries tagged with living with less

Beauty is an industry and more specifically, a racket. One of the primary goals of mainstream media is to make people feel insecure about the way they look. Especially funny is how the same media extols the virtues of being beautiful on the inside while blatantly overvaluing youthfulness and attractiveness in every frame, billboard, and song.

Being beautiful on the inside and the outside are far from exclusive conditions. Consider the late George Michael of the 1980s musical duo Wham! who kept several charities alive via anonymous donations, worked in a homeless shelter and begged other volunteers not to reveal what he was doing, and secretly paid for a woman's IVF treatments so she could realize her dream to become a mother. Michael, who died of cancer at age 54 in 2017, gave away a $200 million dollar fortune and may have done so undiscovered had it not been for his untimely death.

Though I would argue it is far more valuable to be like George Michael than to look like him in his prime, spiffing up what you've got on the outside is a good idea. As in all things, moderation is key. The trouble with our modern age is the drive to physically resemble one's own version of perfect. "Perfect" can be extremely warped. Nowhere is this more tragicomically demonstrated than the plastic surgery addict who refuses to let go of his or her youthful self and winds up as yet another slightly ghastly clone as if that younger self had a love child with a Madame muppet. Far better to let the hair gray, the jowls emerge, and the crows feet to spread, I think. There's something about the natural aging process that makes humans resemble ancient trees in their grandeur. They are big, old, and gnarled with complex networks of lines. One can only imagine the tangled complexity of their roots. The last thing I would want to do would be to zap that complexity into oblivion with a surgeon's knife.

Starting From the Bottom with Footwear

I used to wear heels as a young woman. I associated them with classiness and adulthood, plus they made my short legs look a bit longer and my big hips appear to be more narrow. I no longer wear heels, though I would consider it for a special occasion. I have never had a problem with buying gently used shoes, and this has saved me a fortune over the years as I tend to beat my shoes up fairly badly. The main secret to shoes looking good for short people is to create a solid monochromatic line from the waist down. When socks match shoes and shoes match pants or skirt, the effect is very pleasant to the eye. Contrarily, pairing chunky, white or multicolor athletic shoes or sandals with shorts or too-short pants and further breaking the visual line at the waist can make a person look slovenly or careless. If you want to instantly look saner and more put-together, think monochrome, baby.

Clothing

According to valuepenguin.com, the average cost of clothing per month is $120. This is absolutely absurd and unnecessary. I rarely spend $120 on clothing in an entire year. The number one inflator of clothing costs is buying new. The second is buying too many clothes.

When I was in college in the 1990s, I thought I had a fairly large amount of clothes. I had 4 pairs of jeans, 4 skirts of various length, and about 20 tops. I had at least 6 dresses. Then I met my roommates. My roommate had 50 pairs of jeans. I have no idea how many tops she had. She had dresses, T-shirts, and a trunk stuffed with accessories. She had a leather bomber jacket that got left in someone's car and was ruined with mold. Most of my roommates had similar amounts of clothing.

I visited Antioch College in Ohio (where I did not attend) to see a friend of mine in the 90s. Antioch was woke before it was cool. Back in the day, Antioch was the school that started the whole trend of forcing young men to ask permission at every phase of mating in order to avoid nonconsensual acts that would otherwise immediately be construed as rape. Antioch was a rich kid utopia where children decided exactly what activities made up "class" half of the school year. The other half was spent on campus doing drugs. Once every few months, every dorm student would convene in the center of campus for a makeshift parade/freakshow, with young adults doing whatever came to mind, such as riding tricycles. Antioch collegiates did not bother with laundromats. Instead, they bought any clothing that fit from local thrift stores, wore the clothing until it was stiff with bodily excretions, and then either threw it away or let it accumulate in piles in the hallways of the co-ed dorms.

When well-cared for, thrift store clothes can last much longer than the paltry few months they would spend on a faux-bohemian at a party school. I have had a few of my thrifted items for two decades. They are usually nicer items than anything I can afford to buy new. I have somewhere between 8-10 skirts, five pairs of pants, 25 or so tops, one blazer, one winter coat, one spring coat, two bras, other assorted underwear, a dozen scarves, and about 25 pairs of socks. My entire wardrobe fits into 3 large pull-out drawers and half of a small clothing rack. 80 percent of it, excluding socks and underwear, is thrift and the rest was Christmas gifts. I have not bought a new item of clothing for somewhere going on fifteen years.

Hygiene

I am lucky that my Japanese genetics took over my bottom half and I never grew much hair at all on my legs. Shaving sucks and personally I wouldn't do it to my legs even if I was paid to do so. That said, the secret to a great shave is hair conditioner. Once you have used hair conditioner as shaving cream, you will never go back.

Isn't crotch funk a fun human predicament? Crotch stench is usually the result of not wiping thoroughly enough or not bathing frequently enough or both. I have never been able to grok people who have access to perfectly luxurious baths and showers who go without for days or weeks like a medieval European serf. Another issue is many cannot smell their own body odor. Please, for the love of Pete, take frequent baths or showers. It's really not OK to stink. Body odor is its own form of perfume. Just like department store perfume, I don't want to smell it on someone from a few feet away, and I'm going to be super-grossed out if I can smell it across a large room or coming at me down a hallway from 30 feet.

I have mentioned in past articles about calcium packing teeth at night. Calcium packing is where you squish out the contents of a gelcap calcium supplement and rub the white goo into the cavity prone parts of your mouth at night. It works very well and done regularly enough, can combat halitosis and prevent tooth decay.

I wear regular antiperspirant/deodorant from the dollar store in the warm months and deodorant only in the cool months. Deodorant can easily be made with one part arrowroot powder and one part coconut oil with a dash (anywhere up to a teaspoon) of baking soda. A few drops of essential oil of lavender or tea tree oil can be added for scent.

Plucking hairs makes them grow back more slowly. Native Americans in Thomas Jefferson's time hated facial hair and plucked theirs out without mercy. Pluck enough times and the hair will not grow back at all. Keep this in mind when you pluck your eyebrows!

Body Butter

Just as conditioner is better at being shave cream than shave cream, body butter is better than lotion at being lotion. Body butter is one part coconut oil, two parts shea butter, and one part olive or jojoba oil. Melt all of the oils together for about ten minutes on a low heat stove or double boiler, pour into a large bowl, mix with essential oils if desired, and then sit the bowl in the refrigerator for two or more hours. When the oils have semi-hardened, take the bowl out and whip it as if it was whipped cream. The resulting butter is absolutely amazing.

Hair Care

I feel like I have some expertise where hair is concerned because I have always had a ton of hair. I was born with a full head of black hair. My hair is very coarse and thick. It wasn't always fun to have this hair -- it can be extremely crazy and it requires much care and handling. Believe it or not, I used to have three times as much hair on my head as I do now. I believe my insane hair is an indication of my weird etheric body, which is excessive in its own way.

It's just not necessary to spend a ton of money on hair. I have not had my hair done in a salon for fifteen years. One reason is I don't like to be fussed over as I sit in a chair. I find it very weird. Salon styling is also way, way, way too expensive for my budget. I don't dye my hair. Dye and bleach are both very harsh and strangely addictive, but if you like dye and bleach, whatever, you do you. My natural hair color is dark brown shot through with gray. When I finally start having big gray-white spots near the scalp, I plan on removing most to all of the brown with bleach and going completely silver.

Long Versus Short

I have had short hair and medium length hair. Ironically, long hair is easier to maintain and takes less time to style than short hair. I believe long hair is appropriate for men and women of all ages. Long hair is great for everyone except for people with the thinnest of hair. There is often no way to hide a pronounced cowlick with short or medium length hair. If you have long hair, all you need to do to erase the cowlick is to put your hair up or in a ponytail.

My Hair Routine

I wash my hair every two days. After washing with normal cheap $3 shampoo (right now I'm halfway through a bottle of Suave Ocean Breeze) I condition with whatever conditioner I have on hand. Suave conditioners are particularly nice but I like anything with a pleasant smell. After rinsing out the conditioner, I spritz my hair at least ten times with a mixture of one part vinegar to three parts water. I towel dry my hair by daubing, wrapping, and squeezing, but not rubbing. Then I rub a small amount of coconut oil into the ends of my hair and at the nape of the neck where it likes to get frizzy. I put a turbie twist towel on my head and then sleep with it on all night. I do not own a blow dryer. I style my hair in the morning by using a straightening iron to flatten out my bangs.

Cutting Hair

I have cut my parents hair for years. Both of them have thin, short hair. I cut my father's hair with an electric razor and my mom's with a combo of electric razor and scissor. They both get hair cuts about every eight weeks. I also cut my own hair using the Unicorn Horn method. This method is where you put your hair in two ponytails, one at the top of the head near the forehead and one at the back of the head like a more traditional ponytail. You then pull both ponytails in front of your eyebrows and cut a straight line. When the ponytails are loosened, the result is extremely flattering layers. People with thinner hair can do the unicorn method with a single ponytail. I use two because I have too much hair to get it done in one.

Overall, beauty truly is in the eye of the beholder. When I look at an Instagram model, often all I can see is thirst and Photoshop. I don't understand the appeal of Kim Kardashian at all and I think she was much cuter before she went whole hog on lip fillers and butt implants. There used to be a makeover reality show I watched called What Not to Wear. What Not to Wear nominees were recommended to the show for a $5000 wardrobe, makeup, and hair makeover by their friends and family. Though sometimes the show genuinely improved the appearance and the pride of its nominees, it was far more common for it to strip the nominee of her individuality. The show was proficient at turning biker babes, anime princesses, and amateur street walkers into posh suburban mom clones in kitten heels and tasteful blazers. In short, sometimes ugly is beautiful. If I don't like your tattoos or your neon bustier, no one is making me look at them. Somebody likes it, and if that somebody is you, all the better.

As a former member of the upper middle class, I was not raised to be conservative with money or resources. I intimately understand why certain people are still driving around in Grand Cherokees and Teslas in 2022 and why they think it is normal to live in what their European counterparts would consider to be an ostentatious palace. I empathize with the reasons young women and men will trade their personal integrity and most of their short time in this incarnation to move into the fancy apartments by my town's train station. They cling to the last of the salary class jobs and in return, they get a newly-constructed temple to modernity with hallways that smell like department store perfume and floors that you could eat off of. It took a great deal of conscious rejection on my part to shake off the desires implanted in me to be comfortable.

Even now, after several decades of being fallen and deplorable, the comforts of the upper middle class still reach out to me. I still eat avocados, though it is not often that I choose to afford them. From what I can see, the upper middle classes are set up for an increasingly hard fall. As the economy gets worse and worse, it is those who are the most attached to luxury and chasing luxury who will suffer in direct proportion. That's why I am sharing some of my own strategies and observations for living with less, and I hope you'll share yours in the comments.

Life Without Health Insurance

I am not suggesting anyone should try to go without health insurance. Nevertheless, I have not had it on a regular basis since my husband lost his salary class job in 2006. There's a rough chance I might not be alive if we didn't have health insurance in 2002 as newlyweds. I had a mysterious gall bladder ailment that came within about 30 minutes of ending my incarnation as Kimberly Steele. Luckily a pair of good doctors figured it out (one was a clinic MD and the other was an emergency room doc) and I live and breathe today. Health insurance, like other insurances, is a racket. It is a money making vehicle for the miserable salary class with the point of making obscene amounts of unearned wealth for a few who float at the top of the money and power pyramid.

Doctors no longer heal for the most part, and when they do, they charge so much for it, it is only affordable if you have a salary class job or are willing to go in to tremendous amounts of debt or both. First and foremost, I accept my health as my own responsibility. If my health is bad, I have options, and the first of those is not running to the doctor for every sniffle, ache, and pain. There are herbs for everything. For constipation, I drink senna tea and exercise vigorously for at least five minutes. If I have a headache, I take white willow and/or drink a cup of black tea. If I sneeze a few times, I put a tiny amount of Dollar Tree off-brand Neosporin in each nostril. Neosporin and its knockoffs are essentially zinc ointment and zinc heals wounds while soothing inflammation. Sneezing often results from small stress wounds up high in the nostrils. If I am sneezing and stuffy, I do the Dr. Peter McCullough protocol that involves snorting salty Betadine (more zinc, this time in fluid form) water into each nostril and letting it pass through the back of my throat. Usually if I am taking the correct array of vitamins and exercising daily, the sneezing and wheezing does not get that far. If all of my treatments fail and I get a cold, I do the sensible thing and drink plenty of fluids and sleep as much as possible. Personally, I don't go see a doctor because I cannot afford the visit. Additionally, I don't know what they would tell me to do aside from what I am already doing.

For me, the secret to my robust health is a triad. One part of it is mental: I accept that I am going to die and that it will most likely be painful. Death is no picnic and dying sucks. Complaining about it 24/7 does not help, and the type of person who abuses his or her personal relationships by constantly serving up litanies of his or her aches and pains is annoying. I am not about to be that kind of person. If I die of natural causes, if I have done things right, no other human will have any idea that I have been sick.

The second part of my secret to health is mild, daily exercise. When I do not exercise every day (with the occasional skipped day because life does that) and go several months without my daily routine, things fall apart, I begin to gain weight, and my chronic health problems such as headaches and constipation begin their flare ups. Every day, I either walk someplace nice like the forest preserve or I ride my foldable stationary bike for about 45 minutes. I do not run, lift weights, or belong to a gym. Gyms base their business model on the fact that most people buy memberships and don't show up. There is no reason to be one of those people. On the opposite end of imbalance, being a gym rat is unsustainable because it turns fitness into a compulsion. Outside of training for athletic competition, daily exercise can easily be done at home or outdoors with minimal equipment.

The third secret to my health is supplements and herbs. I take a B spectrum vitamin every day along with Vitamin D. That's it. I have issues with peeing a lot, especially at night, so for that I drink dandelion tea in the morning first thing. At night, I take uva ursi (bearberry) and cranberry in pill form. For constipation, I take the aforementioned senna.

I don't believe my cats are any different when it comes to benefitting from herbs and supplements. All of my cats except for Ash are prone to sneezing and kitty congestion, so the lot of them get powdered lysine mixed into their food once a day. Ash has issues with his digestive tract and gum inflammation, so he gets lysine as well as calendula oil with a little marshmallow root mixed with some liquid treat. Unfortunately, when Kiki was alive, vets could do precious little for her. Her vet did help by prescribing a fiber supplement along with regular human stool softener that extended her life for those precious last years. I did notice that slippery elm worked as well or better than her prescribed medicine, which of course cost 50x as much.

The Eyes

When I got a new glasses prescription in 2021, it was the first time I had seen an eye doctor in fifteen years. I only got the strong prescription in 2021 because I needed special glasses for driving at night. For ten years, I have been wearing the same old prescription and ordering new glasses from Zenni dot com when necessary. My myopia is considered severe and I have been wearing glasses since age 8.

The facts on the ground are that I cannot afford $400-$600 at the optometrist's every year. It is the optometrist's business model to escalate my eyeglasses prescription every time I see him or her until I am almost completely blind. The problem with glasses is they make you increasingly dependent and the stronger your lens prescription is, the more your eyesight weakens to accommodate it. The remedy here is to use old, weaker prescriptions in small increments instead of stronger ones. When I stopped seeing the optometrist fifteen years ago, I wore my old contacts and glasses for about five years. Then I started getting my old lens prescriptions filled via online services, such as glasses from Zenni and prescription contacts from Korean companies. I only wear my driving glasses at night when I am driving. The second I am done driving, they come off. I have two other pairs of glasses -- one weak pair for close-up work and teaching lessons and one middle of the road pair for general activities.

The Teeth

Despite having had braces for ten years from ages 10-18 as a child (the family orthodontist was a real grifter), my teeth are far from perfect. They are stained and a young student once commented they are several different colors, LOL. My teeth are much healthier than they were when I was young and seeing both dentists and orthodontists regularly. I have not seen a dentist since getting a veneer on one of my front teeth in 2013.

Dental health is again a triad of secrets. The first is I accept my teeth are never going to be perfect, Hollywood chiclet white and straight. Even if I had perfect Hollywood veneers, what would be the point of getting them? I have a single veneer and I constantly eat around it -- it was expensive and if it goes, I'll have a hard time affording a replacement. Having a mouthful of them makes no sense.

The second is that I understand dental health comes from the inside, not the outside. Bad teeth, just like bad bones, are the product of acidosis and inflammation in the rest of the body. Unpopular opinion here, but most people cause their own perpetual acidosis by eating animal flesh and secretions and then add insult to injury by eating processed sugars. I can eat bread, white sugar, and fat because I don't make those things the mainstay of my diet. When I have a couple of cookies, it isn't adding to the acid-promoting meal of barbecue ribs from the night before. Eating animal flesh and secretions rots your teeth from the inside by raising the body's acidity, period. The bulk of my diet tends to be grains, fruits, beans, and vegetables.

The third part of my dental health is the habit of squishing out the gooey contents of a regular, garden variety calcium supplement capsule and packing the goo into my gums and behind my front teeth every night after brushing and flossing. This prevents rot in all the places that are prone to it during the most vulnerable time for teeth.

Some additional notes on dental health: I do not buy toothpaste. Instead I mix one part arrowroot powder to one part olive or other cooking oil such as coconut in to a paste. Then I sweeten it with Stevia and put some essential oil in there, usually of mint. I have not been buying toothpaste because it is stupid expensive and contains a bunch of sulfates that seem very iffy to ingest.

Pineapple is an excellent food for promoting bone health of all kinds, including teeth. Pineapple contains bromelain, which is a potent bone-builder. I am not sure when or where I learned this, but I do remember pineapple being very helpful before and after oral surgeries in my teens.

As for whitening teeth, I simply don't care to do it, but in the days when I cared, I would brush with a mashed up strawberry or some activated, finely powdered charcoal.

I hope this helps you!