shoestring gringa

The Black Dress, oil on canvas

What with the chronic scarcity of books here in casa shoestring, I spend lots of time reading on the internet.  One group of blogs I follow is by women who write about personal style, with a subset of women my age (let’s say older) writing about personal style.  They often discuss clothing, but also life in general, what used to be called in former times the art of living:  what this consists of, why so few people seem to either care about it or achieve it nowadays, cultural conflicts surrounding the pursuit of it, why Europeans seem to do it so much better, and what makes it so ironically, maddeningly elusive in the good old consumer-goods-saturated USA.

It’s been nice to find some like-minded souls out there interested in creating beauty in their lives, and I click through their blogs with interest every morning.   We have things in common, at least we seem to have read a lot of the same books.   Although that genre of books, on reflection, seems more focused on avoiding affronts to aesthetics than creating beauty… but I digress.   The books contain some helpful rules and principles, which we’ve all imbibed dutifully.

When it comes to the practical achievement of our shared ideals, however, I must part company with my cyber-sisters, what with living in Mexico and all.  For example, one dictum to be found in all the how-to books and a favorite among the faithful:  Edit your wardrobe ruthlessly.  If you have not worn it in the last year (or two), throw it out!

Oops, can’t do that!  Here in Mexico, we dare not get rid of anything, ever, from used mayonnaise jars to old tires.  These things — all things –  are not so easy to come by, and once their original purpose is done with, sooner or later they’ll surely come in useful for something else.  I think Mexico must be the recycling capital of the world.  Nothing ever gets wasted here.  I’ve always found this highly admirable; apart from the obvious virtue of avoiding waste,  the creativity which results appeals to the artist in me.

So, clothes.  I don’t get rid of them, unless they’re really in shreds, and then they get a decent funeral.  This doesn’t mean to say I use the entire stash at any given time; far from it.  What I do is, at each change of season, go through it all and pick out whatever looks interesting for the upcoming months.  Sometimes I might remodel a piece or dye it a different color.  Despite the fact I’ve had most of the stuff for years, there are always delightful surprises waiting, items whose existence I’ve totally forgotten (memory loss does have its uses).  Once sorted, the rest goes back into the footlocker with a couple of mothballs, to lie fallow for another year.  The clothes of the season currently ending are stored in a separate box.

Using these pieces as a foundation, I can fill in any gaps with a few new items, usually basics like worn-out t-shirts, or some accessory to pull things together.  My side of our tiny clothes rack and my clothes drawers remain organized and uncrowded, my mind uncluttered by extraneous stuff.  But reassured all the same by the knowledge it will be there the day I or someone else needs it, a day as easy to imagine as mañana here in Mexico.

Deciding what to bring and what to leave behind before moving to Mexico was an agonizing process and we certainly didn’t get it right every time.  With the benefit of hindsight, I offer this thought — when in doubt, bring it!  You can always give it away later.  Someone will want, use, and cherish it when you no longer do.

Here are a few items that turned out, sometimes surprisingly, to be a Really Good Idea to bring along.

• Bread machine.  Now defunct, unfortunately, but great while it lasted.  Its importance would depend on what’s available locally, of course.  Where good bakeries were abundant, I still used it occasionally for making whole grain breads which are not so common in Mexico.  In our current remote location, making our own bread is the only option.  Bread machines help with two seasonal problems in breadmaking:  having to light the oven in hot weather, and finding a place for the dough to rise when it’s cold.
• Sheepskin-lined boots.  It may sound incongruous, but I’ve used mine in every place I’ve lived in Mexico except Yucatan.  Unless you are going to the torrid tropics, where maybe you won’t need them, they well might end up be your most prized possession.  Houses in Mexico are of masonry construction, and masonry buildings can be chilly, very chilly, even when it’s a balmy 80 degrees F outside.  Remember that central heating is practically unheard of in Mexico, and most people don’t use space heating either.  Many people warm up by simply going outside and sitting in the sun during the chilly hours.  If you have things to do inside the house, better bring clothes.
• Tools.  All of them.  From chain saws to seam rippers.  You’ll never regret it.
• Hair dryer.  I hate using hair dryers because of the noise they make.  But in winter I use one when it’s just too cold to let my hair air-dry.
• Vacuum cleaner.  I was ready to gleefully leave ours behind (ditto noise objection and also we were not going to have carpets) but the Mexigringo wouldn’t hear of it.  He loves his vacuum.  And it has proved to be infinitely useful in the eternal battle against dust/dirt/cobwebs, as well as for post-DIY cleanups.  Not to mention ash and soot control now we are using a wood-burning fireplace and heating stove.  A canister or shop vac model would be more practical than our upright.
• Pressure cooker.  We didn’t actually bring one but bought it here.  Which was a real hassle finding a stainless steel (as opposed to aluminum) one although we finally located a Spanish-made model for about ~$50 US.  This being Mexico and all, you may find yourself cooking beans a lot, and the pressure cooker significantly reduces time and gas usage.  It’s also dandy for getting tough cuts of meat tender fairly quickly.
• Camp stove with gas cartridges.  This has saved the day many times.  Great for making coffee etc. in semi-camping living conditions, if you’re anticipating any of those.  And an ongoing Good Thing every time the propane tank runs out in mid-dinner preparation.  (Better mid-dinner than mid-shower!)  After you get your two-tank propane setup so you never run out of gas, there’s always camping.
• Coleman lantern with fuel cartridges, flashlights, and LED headlamp.  For power failures.
• Porta-Potty.  We were really happy to have this when working long days on our house with the nearest public bathroom six blocks away.
• Over-the-door towel rack.  Sometimes it’s the little things that mean the most.  This $14 Target item has been our faithful friend through many a hardwareless bathroom.  When there’s no door it will fit on, it will hang happily over the shower curtain rod.   One of those over-the-showerhead hanging soap/shampoo racks is a useful companion piece.
• Stuff-holders, i.e. any item that can hold a bunch of other items.  Our most beloved stuff-holder is a hand-me-down kitchen counter/table from Target with decorative metal trim around the sides off of which pots can be hung with S-hooks.  Other examples include a wine rack with small drawer (full of keys) which holds the water dispenser, a futon platform with 14 drawers underneath, all manner of little rolling wire carts, hanging fruit baskets and pot racks, and bookcases.  Mexican houses are devoid of built-in storage features of any kind, and if like most gringos you are overburdened with stuff, you will be needing a place to put it all.
• Expanding curtain rods and assorted lengths of cloth.  Instant curtains!  Can also be used in doorways.
• Jar of white tempera paint and brush.  Makes quick, cheap frosted glass equivalent.  You can paint windowpanes with this to have privacy while still letting in light.  Good solution for bathrooms and anyplace you might not want a curtain.
• Old-style phone, i.e. non-electronic model.  It will work during power failures.

Before I get off the subject for good (when?? please!! you’re probably saying), I’ll just share one last laundry experience in the hopes it might save someone else from a similar pointless exercise.

A few weeks ago we were having a lot of rainy weather here, and what with our limited selection of clothes, I worried a lot about getting it to dry by the time we would need it again.

And then I remembered what my mother so un-fondly recalls doing when we lived in England in the early 1950s, which was to retrieve the frozen-stiff garments from the clothesline and iron them dry.

Brilliant, I thought, I’ll just do that! The old style! How simple, how elegant! (How labor-intensive, but oh well.)

How mistaken.

Oh, it still works with some things, pure cotton jeans are fine. But in most clothes nowadays, even the clothes of a natural-fiber freak like me, there lurks some small percentage of synthetic content which does NOT take well to being steamed dry with a hot iron. No, these fabrics will melt, rather than dry, under a hot-iron assault.

If you think about it, it wasn’t so long ago, maybe 100 years, that people boiled their dirty linens. That was before my time, but I can remember the days when Clorox was routinely used; everything white (read cotton) got bleached. And then they had bluing to counteract the yellowing effects of the bleach. I suppose all socks must have been wool back then. (A pair of wool socks costs at least $12 now, and you have to buy them at a backpacking store — when did that happen?) But I digress. In sum, take heed: old-style laundering practices can be hazardous to present-day fabrics.

So, it was back to the drawing board, or more accurately, to the clothesline, this time one strung up indoors for those rainy-day Saturdays.

This last weekend found me once more with a mountain of dirty clothes, sans garden hose, and with rain predicted for Sunday. What’s a shoestring to do? I filled the machine using a couple of buckets, from the shower. It worked fine. I think I might even like it better than that stupid hose business.

I must point out that my current laundry woes are not at all typical, fortunately. There are usually a number of options available for getting your clothes washed wherever you might find yourself in Mexico, if you prefer to forgo the delights and hassles of owning a washing machine. Most of these places are lumped under the term Lavandería.

Cities, larger towns, and anyplace with lots of tourist traffic will usually have some variation on the self-service laundromat familiar to gringos. The main difference you’ll find is the interpretation of the concept of “self service”: there will often be a number of ladies buzzing about the place, selling you soap in little plastic cups, taking the money and directing you to the washers, mopping the floors, etc. The laundromat we used awhile in Mérida featured a couple of loud TVs, tables and chairs, and even magazines. They weighed your laundry to determine how many machines you would need (no standing on top of the load and jumping up and down to stuff it all into one machine here!).

Most places of this type offer the option of leaving your clothes there for the attendants to do, and picking them up when they are done. Many places which look like self-serve in fact aren’t and offer only this option. They charge by the kilo, and the prices have always seemed extremely reasonable to me (having had my fill of hanging out in laundromats a long, long time ago).

Next there is the lavandería which is a regular full-service laundry, with no washing machines in sight. You bring in the clothes, and they weigh them and tell you when you can pick them up. They will usually be beautifully folded and redolent of fabric softener. If you’re traveling on a tight schedule, it’s wise to clarify their business hours before leaving your clothes there. Many businesses close for two or more hours in the afternoon for lunch, reopening at 4 or 5 and then closing at 8 or so.

In really small villages where there are no official laundry services, have no fear, there is still a way. There will always be someone around who is willing to do your laundry for a modest fee. Nowadays it’s usually someone with a washing machine; in the old days it was a little old lady who did it by hand. Turnaround could be a bit slow, so don’t leave it to the last minute. In fact, never leave ANYTHING to the last minute; it’s bad practice anywhere but an invitation to disaster in Mexico.

Dry cleaners are called tintorerías and are found in cities and larger towns. I’ve yet to try one so can offer no personal experience except to say that one of my sisters-in-law has her work clothes dry cleaned and they always look great.

Well, it was yesterday actually. No time for much of anything else on laundry day. Actually it was extra laundry day. I’ve only been able to do laundry on the weekends lately, because the MG has been taking the garden hose to the other house to water cement with during the week. What does the garden hose have to do with the laundry? — you might well ask. Too much, at the moment. Here’s a few thoughts on getting the clothes washed in Mexico.

Depending on the age of your house, laundry arrangements in Mexico may be somewhat improvisational, so it was lucky for me that the MG knows all about things like appliances and drains and so forth, because the only thing that I ever knew about them was putting enough quarters in the slots, and operating the change machine, and how they get all bent out of shape if they see you using Rit dye in their machines.

Assuming you want to do the laundry at home, you’ll want to make sure that any prospective dwelling has a washer hookup, or at least the potential for one.

The newer houses I’ve seen have dedicated laundry areas, either in back of the house or in a kind of enclosed service area along the side where the kitchen door is. I’ve yet to meet anyone who uses a clothes dryer, although they can be found in stores. The price of electricity is probably the reason for this. Clotheslines are located in patios or on rooftops. Here in rural Sonora, lots of people just hang their wet clothes over a fence.

Oftentimes in Mexico, the washing machine will be situated outside the house somewhere, especially in the warmer areas. (Actually it’s pretty common in Tucson, too.) But unlike in Tucson (that I know of anyway), in Mexico you can buy waterproof covers that fit over the washer to protect it from the elements. I always assumed these were made by extra-industrious housewives when I saw them, but the MG maintains that they are ready-made.

In older or more humble housing, arrangements vary. Our casita in Yucatan had a hookup area in an alcove in the patio, i.e., incoming water, but it lacked a drain. The MG, aka Mr. Fabulous Fixit, solved this by buying a length of clear plastic tubing at the hardware store and running it around the patio wall where it could spew forth into the street. We confined ourselves to washing at night while living in that place. The clothesline was conveniently located right next to the washer.

In our next place, there was space in the bathroom to put the washer, which was good since we could use the shower drain by stuffing a short length of plastic hose down it. It usually would stay put; when it didn’t we got an unscheduled floor-washing. The downside of that location was there was no threaded faucet for the incoming water; but fortunately the patio faucet was in reach of a garden hose. We hung the clothes out to dry on the roof.

Our present rental also has space in the bathroom for the washer, which even has a drainpipe of its very own. It’s hooked up to the hot water line (which we rarely use due to expense), but again, has no cold water, so we have to attach the trusty garden hose to the kitchen sink (which has a patio-type faucet) some 40 feet distant. The clothesline is in a patio behind the building which is not accessible from the house, you have to go up an alley to get back there, and through a padlocked door.

In our real house, which we’re presently fixing up, we’re going to have cold water, hot water (just in case), a dedicated drain, and no more stinking garden hoses! Mr. Fixit is even threatening to get a dryer, which I think is too expensive. Sure would be nice on some days, though….

Tropical or temperate climate? This was a biggie for me. I had a lingering suspicion I might not thrive in Yucatan, having once spent a summer in Ft. Lauderdale, which has a similar climate, and boy, was I right.

Some people just love the tropics — (mad dogs and Englishmen, and quite a few Canadians) but if you have never spent the hot season in these precincts, check it out before making any big commitments. I was utterly miserable, having always lived in pleasant Mediterranean climes like California, or the dry desert Southwest. I found the humidity smothering and oppressive. I couldn’t figure out what the hell to wear, because having anything at all next to my flesh was torture. The local women went blithely about bareheaded, in miniskirts and skimpy tops, a style which I declined to emulate because (a) that kind of exposure isn’t too flattering on me, and (b) my skin would have cooked to a crisp. Wearing a bra was unthinkable. I finally devised an acceptable outfit for the street, consisting of a linen-y blouse with pockets which hid the bralessness, a short denim skirt, and a large-brimmed straw crownless hat whose open top allowed the steam to exit off the top of my head while providing shade for my face. So much for fitting in with the locals. I was able to walk to the market and back in this getup, but once home would have to rip it from my body in desperation and run to stand under a cold shower for ten minutes. Around the house I wore loose rayon tank tops and mini-pareos, and hoped nobody would come to the door.

To be fair, many big old houses in Yucatan stay fresh and cool in summer, but our casita, with its asbestos roof, was not among them, despite the high ceilings and sea breezes. Some people resort to air conditioning, at least in one room, to cope with the hot season. Unfortunately I am physically and philosophically allergic to air conditioning. And electricity in Mexico is shockingly expensive.

Winter was marginally better, but to tell the truth I found that pretty unpleasant as well. The humidity was such that one felt chilled at 65F. A malign wet wind blew, ushering in respiratory complaints and flus far nastier than any I’d experienced in drier climates. When it was cool, and the sun was out, it was creepily possible to feel both hot and cold at the same time, a sensation I found singularly disagreeable. No, I did not adapt well to the tropics. We ended up moving.

If, like me, you prefer a temperate clime, you have lots of choice, as the whole north of Mexico qualifies, as well as the vast high central plateau. The climate in many of these places is rightly described as “eternal springtime.” The main thing to be aware of in these areas is that, even if it’s eternally spring outside, the masonry houses can be cold at some times of year, so don’t give all your warm clothes to Goodwill before leaving. And bring that down blankie, and the flannel sheets, and all the rest of it. You can always get rid of it later. But you can’t dash out to Target and buy a new one if you need it.