Bulk shopping, hair care

[rebeccmeister]

I have strong opinions on the subject of bulk shopping. I generally dislike the style that involves going to Costco and buying a pound of cinnamon. Unless a person makes cinnamon rolls every single day, I have a hard time imagining a scenario where a person would be able to use up a pound of cinnamon before it loses its wonderful flavor. Plus, you're still left with an empty plastic container at the end, and now you have to get rid of it somehow. Downcycling isn't quite the same as recycling either.

Shampoo and conditioner have been a slightly different story. I know I've written about that before, specifically because I know annikusrex made a good conditioner recommendation to me, but Goog seems incapable of pulling up the old entry, sigh. Lame. Regardless! I can now tell you that it takes me ~3 years to use up a one-gallon jug of shampoo, and the shampoo remains perfectly good up until the end. And so, today, I had the joy of ordering a fresh one-gallon jug of shampoo, along with a one-gallon jug of conditioner. Here's to the next three years of hair-washing!

This reminds me of two other things I've pondered recently. Have you heard about the trend of coloring armpit hair? I think it's hilariously fun. Why not? It celebrates the fact that women have armpit hair.

I still shave my armpit hair. By this point, it just feels better to me. But I go through periods where I stop shaving my leg hairs because it's an annoying costly chore and my skin doesn't like it. That got me to thinking about what it would be like to live in a culture/place where people don't have strange notions about body hair modifications (think about threading as another instance). What "manufactured needs" do we accept, and where do we draw the line for personal/aesthetic/financial reasons?

Comments

[randomdreams.livejournal.com]

The only Costco thing that worked for us was group buys: get cinnamon and divvy it up among three households, to reduce the waste. I bet it's great for families with three kids. It's complete overkill and wasteful for DINKs -- like, we found that we spent about the same amount per unit of food eaten, and just threw away a huge amount more food.

[rebeccmeister.livejournal.com]

This is how the REAL old-school co-ops used to operate! I watched a video a couple of months back about a community housing operation in Los Angeles that had its own bulk foods store/operation, which looked pretty awesome. It would be MOST awesome if foods got delivered to the bulk operation in reuseable containers (5-gallon buckets or somesuch). I cannot overemphasize my distaste for packaging waste, especially plastic waste.

[randomdreams.livejournal.com]

Totally with you on that. My parents were members of a food coop in the 1970's and it was very much a bring-your-own-container affair, almost entirely waste-free.

[manintheboat.livejournal.com]

skazat easily eats enough cinnamon in his oatmeal to go through a pound of cinnamon in 3 months.

And I don't shave my legs in the winter. I think lots of women as they get older just don't care anymore.

[rebeccmeister.livejournal.com]

Every once in a while I find myself inside of a Costco-like store, and they almost never fail to make me depressed and very much uninterested in buying anything. Would it be worth it to go to Costco just to pick up that one pound of cinnamon? I suppose he probably eats a corresponding amount of oats at the same time, so perhaps! scrottie eats enough black beans and rice to completely justify bulk purchases of them and of cumin.

[annikusrex.livejournal.com]

off this-topic, but recently you wrote about the apparent toleration by newcomers to seattle of chain restaurants etc. & thought you might be heartened to hear about this (http://www.capitolhillseattle.com/2014/12/capitol-hills-world-of-beers-now-chain-free-500-east/).

[rebeccmeister.livejournal.com]

Heartening, indeed! I have to guess that there's some economist somewhere keeping track of dynamics between chain store operations vs. local operations, and I'd be interested to see more of her or his analysis.