If you were going to toss it anyway...

Some cool re-purposing ideas from people much craftier than I on Re-Nest:

A cool, practical way to Re-use your plastic bottle tops
(Or, you can reclycle them if there is an Aveda near you)

Bird Feeder Made Out of Bottles

DIY Hanging Herb Garden

Use VHS Tapes as Shiny Ribbon

These are great ideas to help get my creative juices flowing.  The May goal to reduce the amount of plastic coming into the house has been semi-successful, but must obviously continue as an active goal for the forseeable future.  REDUCE REDUCE REDUCE. My new mantra. Reduce, and Refuse (as in, I refuse to buy new lip gloss because I have 15 tubes already, not Refuse = Slightly Affected Way to Refer to Trash).

Les and I have begun a massive apartment cleaning project for our decidedly un-massive apartment. It's incredible how just moderate amounts of clutter feels oppressive in a small space. But we're still struggling to figure out what to do about all of our stuff. Wishing I had Refused some of this crap before I had to figure out how to Reduce the piles.

Our Recycle bin is constantly overflowing, the trash can has been emptied more often in the last 3 weeks than I would like to admit. And even as I try to assuage my guilt with the growing "donate" pile on the floor, I have to wonder why anyone ELSE would want/need to bring my 37 slightly used candle votives or the 2 of my original 6 puffy vests that I know I can live without, or the "too lazy to figure out how to fix it" DVD player into their own fortress of stuff. Ugh.

I have way too much stuff already. And yet I always find myself wanting MORE. New. Better. Prettier. Or, even Greener. Living Simply is not that simple. For me, anyway.

The June project of the month is going to be to cook from scratch more often, thereby reducing the consumption of packaged and pre-made food Les and I have grown accustomed to eating. And I don't mean "putting our own toppings on a frozen pizza crust." I mean cooking for real. Taking the time to put food in our food. There's a twinge of dread mixed in with my excitement about this project, but I think it dovetails nicely into May's plastic-reduction project. Less packaging = less plastic, right?

Plus, it is way less scary than the project I have cooking for July...

Here Comes the Sun(screen)!

So it seems almost silly to write a post about sunscreen today, considering it is a blustery, miserable 47 degrees of drizzle and despair here in beautiful downtown Chicago. But since Memorial Day weekend marks the unofficial start of summer for the rest of the country, I thought this article about safe sunscreens from the Environmental Working Group was particularly timely:

Best Safe Sunscreens

This will be my first summer of Safe Sunscreens - I have never bought any of the brands listed in the EWG's report - so I don't have any first hand wisdom to share with you.  But I'll plan to try at least a couple of these over the coming months and let you know what I think. Because I am about as pasty as vanilla frosting, and Lord knows I need sunscreen every day that I am not bundled into my parka...

St. Lucia, honeymoon style, June 2010

Here's hoping my sunglasses and tank tops get to come out of storage before the 4th of July!

Hang tough, Chicagoans.

Cooking for less food waste

I really do like to cook, but I get frustrated by all the ingredients I often end up wasting. So lately we've been trying to come up with loose menus that let us make at least two dishes from the ingredients we buy. It's kind of a fun challenge.

Last night I went to the grocery store to get the ingredients I would need to make one of our all-time favorite dishes - Polenta Lasagna.  We love this recipe so much, we even gave it to the caterer and had it made for our wedding. It got rave reviews. I was psyched to have it for dinner last night.

I came home from the local little divey market and started unloading my canvas bags; sorting the dinner ingredients onto the messy counter. Green and red peppers, baby portabellas, yellow onion, garlic, fresh mozzarella, tomato sauce and..... no polenta.  Blast! I had forgotten the POLENTA for the polenta lasagna. Genius.

Oh well. I just made the lasagna without the polenta and layered it on top of some whole wheat gnocchi instead.

Veggies in the pan

To reduce my food waste without the hassle of composting, I'm saving up all my veggie cutting scraps in a bag in the freezer to make veggie stock eventually. I'm getting excited because the veggie stock bag is almost full! Soon soon soon I will be cooking my garbage into a tasty veggie soup base!


These went into the freezer with the other scraps.

While the "gnocchi lasagna" was simmering, I decided to go ahead and chop up all the rest of the veggies I had brought home. I'm definitely on the lazy side, and wanted to set myself up to have no excuses not to cook again this week. And tonight when I came home hungry and cranky, I put together a version of another of our favorite accidental recipes: pizza with purple potatoes, onions, and dried dates. We usually put goat cheese on top, but I used the rest of the fresh mozzarella from the lasagna attempt instead:

delish!

The potatoes and dates add a fun sweetness and "meatiness" to the pizza, and our typical goat cheese balances it out with some bite. The mozzarella version was good too, just milder.

Most of the "buy for one meal and make 4 more with leftovers" ideas are meat based. It's tougher to do with veggies, I think, because the "main ingredient" often doesn't keep quite as well as, say, a roast chicken. But I'm trying to gather more ideas.

My friend Jenn just shared these two great sustainable food blogs with me, and they have been really fun to read:
http://realfoodrehab.blogspot.com/
http://littlelocavores.blogspot.com/

Giving Up the Poof

I, like many of you, have cohabited with a scruffy-looking plastic mesh body scrubber for much of my adult life. The basic idea is that you squirt some micro-beaded Moisture Magic Shimmering Cashmere Body Wash onto your poof, and the rough plastic poof rubs off your yucky dead skin cells while the Magic Cashmere rubs perfume and silk into your arms and legs and torso.  This process will make you look sparkly and sexy, smell delicious, and make your skin feel like smooth smooth pudding.

Well, it does. Doesn't it? I still remember the first time I used Caress Body Wash in college after years of muddling along with whatever Suave-generic-cheap stuff my mom would buy for us to use in high school. I couldn't stop petting my own shoulder or sniffing my own forearm. I smelled incredible. I felt like silk.

But now that I'm over the whole fancy body wash thing in favor of natural bar soap, my faithful poof has dangled forlornly from the shower faucet for weeks:

Sad. I'm going to give it one last tour of duty to scrub out the icky mildew in the corners of the shower tile with some baking soda before it gets the boot.

But now that I'm using soap instead of body wash, and I don't want any new plastic in my life, what am I going to do about exfoliating? Ashen legs and scaly elbows are unbecoming to even we the crunchy granola.
I'm glad you asked.

Meet my new frenemy:

This is my all natural Yerba Prima Cleansing Co-Worker.  You are supposed to use this stiff-bristled brush on dry skin to rub away all your flaky cells before you get in the shower.
It's super English. Apparently everyone in the UK scrubs themselves before they hit the tub. If you can remember the pre-book launch party prep scene in Bridget Jones, she's rubbing her thighs with a similar brush. The invigorating pressure is supposed to reduce the appearance of cellulite and help keep it from forming. Cleans, scrubs, and reduces cellulite? Naturally? Sign me up.

I bought this brush at Whole Foods for like $12 or something. It hangs on a nail near the shower, and I try to remember to use it before I get in. I don't know if it is beating up my cellulite or not, but I will tell you that rubbing this brush over your thighs and legs and butt in a firm circular motion feels somewhere between "Aaaahhhhhhh...." and "AAAAHAHHHHHHH!!!!!!!"  It feels good, in a painful sort of way.  And you can tell that the dead skin is coming off, because it swirls around a bit like sawdust as you go to town on your wintry dry legs.

I will miss my happy orange body poof. There's nothing quite like a good, exfoliating scrubby-scrub with a poof and some magical chemical body wash. Nothing, that is, except some supernatural vegetable based soap and a cellulite-fighting Yerba Prima Cleansing Co-worker.

Plastic I Can Live Without

OK, so the blog schedule has been tougher to keep than I thought it would be. I have waaay more ideas than I have time to research these days, but I'm hopeful that that is starting to shift a bit for the summer.

But I did want to give you an update on my May project, which is to reduce the amount of plastic I use/allow into my possession. Some things, like switching to bar soap for face and body, and been a cinch. I love my new soap, and I love that I have two fewer plastic bottles in my life. Other things are going to require more work.

Here are some things that I am on track to de-plasticize from my life:

• Cheese - I can buy a limited but very tasty selection of slice-your-own cheese from the Co-Op in Evanston and bring it home in my own container.
• Bulk Stuff like rice, lentils, and beans - OK, so Les is really the lentil eater in our house. And we have yet to do the whole "Soak for a thousand years then boil for 5 days" bulk-bean thing, but we have the beans stacked up so nicely in jars, I'm sure we will hunker down and do this eventually. No plastic-lined aluminum cans or plastic bags.
• Shower products - In addition to the body and face soap mentioned above, I'm also ready to say goodbye to the cheerful orange plastic mesh poof thing that I had been using with my liquid body wash. I have a new skin sloughing tool, but I'm so amused by it that it's going to get its own post. I'm poised to begin easing my way out of commercial shampoo and conditioner as well, but I wanted to make it through the first wedding of the summer last weekend before going "no-poo".
• All manner of plastic bags - Armed with my dazzling array of reusable shopping bags (including some so cute and tiny that they can be snuggled into any decent-sized purse), I have no excuse for not being virtually plastic bag free. Don't believe the myth that your tomatoes and carrots and apples need their own plastic bag in order to come home safely with you. If the idea of them rolling around in your grocery basket or cart stresses you out, give them their own canvas bag for the ride around the store. You know you're going to wash them anyway, so don't wig out about there naked skin touching the checkout conveyor belt when you take them out to get weighed. See this cute little chico bag? Get one and stash it in your purse. Then you can say "I don't need a bag" for everything.
• Plastic lunch ware and utensils - My coworkers already think I am kind of weird, so it wasn't a big deal to start showing up to the break room with my own bowl, plate, cloth napkin, and real utensils. They fit into my desk drawer, and eliminate the need to reheat anything in plastic or use disposable cutlery. Now if only I could be disciplined enough to ALWAYS bring my own lunch rather than eating out 2 or 3 times a week, I could be making a dent...

So, some changes have been pretty easy to make. I'm definitely more aware of how much plastic there is everywhere, on everything. There are some plastic things that I just can't figure out how to reasonably give up/swap out. Like:

• Razors (not ready to be hairy-legged quite yet)
• The plastic that wraps our favorite pizza, organic carrots, bags of edamame, potstickers, etc...
• Doggy potty pads (These have seriously saved our sanity - and our floors...)

And lots of other stuff that I can't think of right this second.

But the awareness of all this plastic around me has helped me start to make some different choices. It's almost like a game now at the grocery store. Time to play "Get the Stuff With the Least Amount of Plastic!". The game has actually prevented me from buying things that I otherwise would have purchased, or at least hunt around for a non-plastic version. Like buying TP wrapped in recycled paper rather than plastic.

I'm still selfish and I still buy individually wrapped treats like fruit leathers (I COULD make these myself if I had a food dehydrator, but would I?) and sometimes string cheese. But I'm getting better. Little by little.

For some real inspiration, check out http://www.myplasticfreelife.com/. No whining about frozen pizza wrappers over there....

"Going Gray" book review

In an attempt to gather some other perspecitves on gray hair and the trials and tribulations of ditching the dye, I just finished this quick read:

Going Gray, but Anne Kreamer touts that we will get a picture of what the author "learned about beauty, sex, motherhood, authenticity, and everything else that really matters". I was hopeful. This sounded like a great boost to my slumping gray morale. 

I found the book to be a bit thin, and to have very little to do with any of the promised insights scrawled across the cover, but it was overall a quick and enjoyable read. She did uncover some pretty interesting findings in her research, but I cringe a bit at the fact that Ms. Kreamer resorts to deception and misleading set-ups to attain these nuggets of useful intel.

For example, she is happily married, but sets up several different Match.com profiles with photoshopped pics of her sporting either brown or gray hair to guage men's reaction. She also goes to bars to try to flirt. She meets with image consultants under made-up pretenses. No harm done, I guess, but how does a quest for authenticity engage so much sleight of hand? I do appreciate that she directly acknowledges this ridiculousness in the book, but still. It rubbed me the wrong way.

Anne Kreamer decided to let her hair go gray as she approached her 50th birthday. It wasn't a decision for her health or the planet, but one of vanity, actually. She saw a picture of herself with her dyed-brown hair and realized that she wasn't fooling anyone. Her hair didn't look natural, and it didn't even look...well, good. But she was hair-dye dependent like SO many of us, and didn't think she could really go gray, so before and during her graying process, she did some research. She wanted to get an idea of how this seemingly small decision would impact her personal and professional life, and hear the stories of others who have made the choice to rock the white and gray.
She's almost two decades older than I am now when she starts her transformation, and I can feel that in almost every page of her writing. I really think that if I were going gray at even 40, I would be much calmer about it. We all want to look and feel young, and gray hair is a scarily obvious marker of age. Believe me. I am feeling this already.

So gray = old, but so what? Are gray haired women in their 30s and 40s and above doomed to choose between their emotional, social, and sexual well-being and dye dependance?

Well, Kreamer discovered that gray hair does not appear to be the man-repellent she (and I) believed it to be. Her bogus Match.com profiles in different states at different times of the year reveal that her gray-haired profile got more "winks" and invitations than her brown-haired profile. Every time. In every state. She also startled herself (and I suspect at least some of her readers) to learn that gray hair is a bigger hurtle for women on the job market than the meat market. Women with gray hair are perceived as out of touch, less capable, and less energetic. Of course, silver haired men are still viewed as professional, experienced, and trustworthy, although more and more men are coloring their hair these days to gain or keep a professional edge.

Her book explored the history of hair dye in the US, including the marketing, trends, and Hollywood influences, and that part was pretty entertaining. She also noted that an estimated one in five men in America are now coloring their hair, so it's not just the blonde bombshells and the gray-hiding women folk who are getting hooked on the bottle.

I enjoyed her exploration of women's reasons for and commitment to coloring their hair. Many MANY of the women she interviewed swore that they would never under any circumstances stop dyeing their hair. I can relate. I used to be one of those women. I remember telling friends that one of the many reasons I was reluctant to have children is because I could not bear to forgo hair dye for 9 whole months. I would rather just have dogs. 

But in the end, she concludes that she looks and feels better with a shiny mane of gray and white than she did with the unnatural and severe-looking dark dyed hair. (I totally agree - I have seen her before and after pictures and there is no contest). And lucky for her, she is married to the man of her dreams and freelances for a living, so no mate-hunting or fickle, double-standard job interviews are on her horizon. Oh, and she's 50-something, so the gray is well suited for her authentic self.

Hair color may not seem to you to be a topic of deep thoughts or philosophical musing, but it may be if you are ever staring down the crown of a prematurely old-looking reflection in the mirror. Age, beauty, death, being real with yourself, accepting yourself AND others, judgemental tendencies... I could go on and on. Then add on layers of health preservation and creation care, and it makes for quite a loaded topic for the 50% (at least) of American women whose natural hair color has not seen the light of day in years. So I appreciate that there are books like this out there. It was just hard for me to relate to this particular book and the author's approach. Maybe I've stumbled upon an untapped book market - graying gracefully for the under-40 set!

Heirlooms - Part 3

What I learned from my mom about Grace

I don't even know how to start this. I've been thinking about this post for over a week now, and even as I sit down to write it, I don't know what I'm going to say.  Because the truth is, I can't think of too many things that I have learned about Grace that I didn't learn from my mom.

She struggled. With my dad's illness. With raising three ridiculous children. With loneliness, overwhelm, financial hardship. With losing both of her parents in her early 30s. With getting smacked in the face with metastatic cancer at 57.

But you had to look really closely to see any of the fissures wrought by all that struggle, because her day-to-day life was marked by a deep and quiet joy. There was always a song on her lips, a smile on her face, and something positive and optimistic coming out of her mouth. It was almost annoying.

I keep starting to write stories about the grace that poured out from mom while she was caring for my dad when he was ill, or about her life with cancer while God's luminous grace went right on beaming from within her. But I didn't like how it started to read like my mom's life was all about suffering and death.

It wasn't.

Her life was framed by singing. Ebullient, melodious singing. All. The. Time. Hymns, show tunes, Barbara Streisand, Simon and Garfunkel, Chorale numbers, The Carpenters.

And flowers. And parties. And friends. And signature dishes like vegetable pizza and dumples and 7-layer salad. She made jewelry and knitted blankets. She volunteered at her church. Took in my dad's parents when their house burned down and helped care for them until she needed care herself. And through all the pain and hard days and long nights, she was the most graceful person I have ever met. FULL of grace.

For my mom, "His Grace is sufficient" was more than a refrigerator magnet or a cross-stitch sampler. It was her breath.

I would just be rambling now if I kept typing. But I'll end with a quote from my favorite poet-theologian, Bono, that I think sums up what I learned from my mom about Grace:

Grace finds beauty in everything.

Heirlooms - Part 2

What I learned from my mom about Gray...

My mom didn't start coloring her hair until she was in her 50s. And even then, it was kind of an afterthought. When the Chemo took her hair, it grew back into an awesomely chic fuzzy gray crop. It was my favorite hair style my mom ever had. It suited her perfectly, and was it's own kind of bravery and hope. 

I know, I posted this pic yesterday. But I love it, and it's my blog :)

When she was younger, she kept glossy dark brown hair stylin' with minimal-maintenance cuts. It always had a glint of shine in all the photos I have of her from her early 20s and 30s.

She didn't fret about her hair much, even when it was falling out. She just wrapped her head in a scarf and didn't bother much with a wig or anything (except for my brother's wedding, and she looked great).

Mom's beauty routine was spartan: Wash face with Noxema cream, dab on some liquid foundation, powder blush, maybe a little eye shadow and lipstick. Mascara once in a while. No fancy eye creams or wrinkle reducers. And you know what, my mom had zero wrinkles. When I asked her her secret once, when I discovered fine lines around my mouth in college, she replied "Well, I hated my oily skin when I was younger, but now I know it was just keeping the wrinkles away! I don't use too much stuff on my face, and I always wear sunscreen and a floppy hat."

Good advice.

I remember one day, after she had started her chemo, that she had come to visit me in Chicago. I was standing in the kitchen of my apartment with her and my then-roommate. I looked at my mom, then I looked at my roommate and exclaimed "Look at my mom's perfect face! She's 56 and I have more wrinkles than she does!" My roommate wisely asked; "Mrs. Wiles, how much time do you spent worrying about how many wrinkles you have on your face?" Mom replied "Absolutely zippo", and my roommate turned back to me and chided "Why don't you try that method for a while, and see if it helps".

Aging gracefully is beautiful and challenging when you encounter it. I'm still trying to move in that direction. Because you can't start accepting and loving yourself soon enough. Wrinkles, gray hair and all. You never know how much time you have, or how old you will get. If my mom taught me anything about graying along, it would be that worrying about it is flat out a waste of precious, beautiful time.

Heirlooms

In honor of Mother's Day weekend, I'm going to indulge in a bit of mommy-love by sharing some things with y'all that I learned from my mom about Green, Gray, and Grace.

 

First up: What I learned from my mom about living Green

 

1. Use what you've got.
My family grew up in farm country, in a house that mom and dad built themselves (with the help of some skilled friends and family) soon after they were married.

 

Our house, decked out for Les and my wedding.

The house included lots of local material, which probably made my parents seem a bit like hippy kooks at the time, but really, it was a combo of financial cheapskateness and the abundance of things like field stones and re-purposed barn beams from my mom's family farm. They didn't go the thrifty route for everything. The siding is the original redwood from 40 years ago. Buy quality stuff, and it will last you forever.

 

The steps down to the garage are scavenged surplus rail road ties. Still the originals.

 

 

2. It's dumb to use electricity when you don't need to

• In the summer, mom used a clothes line instead of the dryer.
• The house was built with huge south-facing windows that heated the house up nicely in the winter, and were shaded by big trees in the summer.
• Open the windows if you are hot. Put on a sweater if you are cold.

 

3. A lot of good-old-fashioned thrifty habits are good for the earth too!

• Use cloth diapers instead of buying disposable (we were all Tidy-Didy-Diaper babies).
• Bake your own bread, make cake from scratch, pie crust is not as challenging as everyone makes it sound.
• Your shirt has a hole in it? Here's a needle and thread. Same goes for your jeans.
• We learned to sew at a young age. Making your own doll clothes, or simple skirts or purses is fun, and no one else will have the exact same stuff.
• Grow your own veggies. Make compost and use that instead of expensive, nasty fertilizer.
• Every time you get something new, something old has to go to Salvation Army (Ok, so we rarely, if ever, followed through with this directive, but she tried).

 

And if I had to choose the best Green thing that my mom passed down to me, it would be this:

 

Everything everything everything that God made is beautiful. Amazing. And precious.

 

I remember walking around with mom in the woods behind our house and not even needing to demand that toddler-tyrant drone of "What That??" because she was touching and naming everything for me with such wonder and pride.... "Elm tree! Columbine! Look! A momma cardinal! Hear her?"

 

We learned the names of plants, birds, animals, trees, weeds, stones (limestone! slate! I think that might be a geode!) with enthusiasm and great interest. I've forgotten some of them now, but I find myself telling our dog Auggie the name of every plant and flower we pass on our evening walks. Because I need to share the wonder with someone. The amazement of a fluffy hosta twirling free from a tightly-wound straw of green stalk. The eager anticipation of irises shooting straight out of the ground like arrowheads.

 

Mom didn't go to college, but she was a voracious reader. And she grew up close to the earth - on a farm, with 5 siblings. She worked in a doctor's office for over a decade. I believed she knew everything about anything that was important. Until she died in 2009, I called her every spring to talk about the first flower buds, or to ask her what setting I needed to use on the sewing machine to sew on denim, or to remind me of that soup recipe. She knew where to plant things, how to can vegetables, and where to buy the best yarn. She knew how to get stains out of the carpet, and when it was safe to transplant pansies.

 

 

I miss her every day. Especially around Mothers Day, when I used to hunt for a new peony plant for her garden, or a wind chime or a bird feeder to give her. I miss her in this whole G3 experiment. I want her to show me how to bake bread and freeze corn. I want to ask her about life on the farm. I want to show her how much I learned from her, how much of her I carry around with me every day. How much grace.

Hodge Podge

There are tons of things on my mind today, and I don't have too much time to post, so I'm going to share them with you list-style.

First, the bad news.

• Reusable bags are causing their own environmental problems
• First individually packaged bananas, now even my Swedish Fish get their own little plastic sleeping bag:

And now, the Good Stuff

• Green Pantry basics
• Awesome ideas from The Zero Waste Home (thanks, Shelley, for sending that my way!)
• Funny and creative ideas to repurpose those ridiculous, ubiquitous phone books
• One of the BEST things I have watched in a very long time:  Sarah Kay for TED talks

Silver Dusted - May Gray Hair Progress Report

As you can see, the roots are more like chunks at this point. The gray is really beginning to be a noticeable color in my hair.  I kind of like it. 

I kind of like it, and I also kind of want to chuck this experiment and go back to edgy chic chocolaty brown hair like this:

This was only 3 years ago!

Maybe a new hair cut would help. I like being able to pull it up, but the "wavy mop of salt and pepper" is only deepening my fear that I am slowly transforming into a hemp-necklace-wearing, sandal-footed hippie with hairy armpits and a closet full of long skirts. (This is a valid fear. I do drink my coffee out of a glass jar now.)

I still want to look put together and confident. I think I can be confident and rock the silver at 33, but it does feel like I need to cultivate "a look" so that I avoid sliding haplessly into a disheveled mess.

Fear is a big driver of consumption, you know? I've found my inner fear-monger trying to convince me that I'm going to have to dress very well and have perfect makeup if I'm determined to keep on with this experiment. Fear tells me that gray = old, and I'm not old enough to be old yet. Fear tells me to run immediately to Sephora and J Crew and suit up with a convincingly cool, confident, "Yes I have gray hair but I am ROCKING it" new look. Fear is making a pretty sly case. I won't pretend that I have not been chomping at the bit to get some new summer stuff.

But I've decided that my first plan of attack to keep the Buy Stuff whispers at bay will be to.... GET RID of STUFF! Yes. This is my new plan.

My wardrobe must be like an art collection or a prize-winning essay.  Ruthlessly edited, focused, honest, and unique. Which means that anything that does not flatter, fit, or fill me with joy must go. Only a small collection of running/yoga and sloth clothes allowed. That way, anything I pull out of the closet to wear will be a winner. It will work. I will rock it. Same goes for makeup. Into the heap with all my random, ill-suited shades and trendy products (when they are gone, of course, unless they are super toxic, and then I will just pitch them). I've done enough research now on safe and green cosmetics that I should be able to pare down my mess to a safe, healthy, beautiful batch of essentials and not bother with the other junk.

It hadn't really occurred to me that clothes and makeup would have much to do with my hair, but the grayer it gets and the kookier I start to look, the more I remember that my hair color is changing. Just like if I bleached myself blond or dove into cherry red. And that does change your whole look, not just your hair.

So if I'm not enlightened enough to give up caring about my looks all together, at least I'll try to face my Fear Buying demons head on, and with a handful of self-awareness and a wallet full of self control.

At least until the next J Crew bonus sale.