My blow dryer broke last week.  I had another one for backup.  Actually, I had a third one I gave to my mother-in-law when her blow dryer broke.  I have no idea why I had three of them sitting around.  I tried to fix the broken dryer by unplugging it, plugging it back in and pushing the reset button on the outlet.  I also tried cleaning out the spongy piece that captures lint.  Nothing worked.

My husband’s cell phone also died last week.  It was a little over two years old.  When he brought it in to have it replaced the clerk said most phones do not last that long.  Apparently our cell phone company’s “new every two” program is not an option but a necessity because the phone was not designed to last that long anyway. 

It is a great marketing gimmick.  Get people dependent on your product but design the product to break so people will need to replace it every couple of years.  The other marketing scheme that seems to work well is to create enticing upgrades.  I just bought a new lap top computer but it doesn’t work with my “old” printer.  The printer is 5 years old and it does not recognize the operating system in my new lap top.

This is depressing because my house is filled with this kind of stuff.

Most of my stuff will not wind up in an antique store.  Most of it will end up in a land fill.  It was designed to break, and I don’t know how to fix it.  It often costs more to repair a product than to buy a new one.  My grandparents probably knew how to fix a lot of the things they owned.  My husband and I are handy but we do not know how to fix a hair dryer, a fridge, a cell phone, a dishwasher, or a coffee maker.  The list goes on and on.

I am glad only one thing usually breaks at a time.  But what happens when every one’s cell phone takes a turn at breaking?  Apparently 426,000 cells phones are “retired” in the US everyday.  Some cell phones are recycled.  But what about all of those broken hair dryers?  There isn’t a recycling program for those. 

My Grandma and Grandpa worked hard.  Their hands and feet were their most dependable tools for getting the job done.  They did not exercise because their bodies grew stronger with use, and when their hands and feet stopped working someone else stepped in to literally “lend a hand.”  I like that warranty policy.  What Would Grandma Use To Get The Job Done?

The link for the cell phone statistic will take you to www.chrisjordan.com.  Chris Jordan does amazing photo art depicting products of mass consumption.  His art leaves me speechless everytime I look at it.

It is obvious what my kids play with - a mountain of plastic.  Actually, it is obvious what my kids think they want to play with because they do not play with most of the toys you see in the picture.  Right next to this mountain is a ”camper” my boys built out of blankets and chairs which they prefer.  This picture only represents one third of the toys in my house.  Toys seem to have a life of their own.  It is like they multiply when I am sleeping.

Unfortunately, most of the toys in my home will go the way of the landfill.  Plastic cracks and breaks and cannot be repaired.  Toys from my grandparents’ generation were most often made of metal and wood.  Metal and wood dent but rarely do they crack.  My grandparents did not buy plastic toys for their kids and they turned out just fine - some would argue better because they more readily engaged their imaginations. 

This is one of the primary reasons I decided to start My Grandma Was Green.  I realized if my grandparents could teach me a thing or two about living without plastic products - toys included - they could probably teach me about other issues related to sustainability and simplicity.

With that said, I know plastic has brought me a lot of benefits.  However, I want to reduce its presence in my life and use it when I really need it - like when I had emergency surgery a couple of years ago.  There was a lot of plastic involved and it may have literally saved my life.  That may sound a bit dramatic but I think it represents how difficult it is to sort through these issues.  There are no easy answers, but I think there are better answers.  I know I can learn a lot from my grandparents as I go looking for those answers.

What Would Grandma’s Kids Play With?  This is a picture of a toy made by a distant relative from my grandparents’ generation.  It is a wooden board with a series of metal hooks.  To play the game you had to try to toss the paper rings onto the hooks.  Each hook represented a different amount of points.  Apparently it occupied kids for hours.  My kids would probably enjoy it today.

When I was a little girl, we would go out to eat once a month.  Our favorite place to go was Red Lobster.  I would order the all you can eat popcorn shrimp with a Shirley Temple (Sprite and cherry syrup).  Even as I write this, I can picture my family shuffling to sit in a corner booth with a red and white checkered table cloth.  I can hear the squeaky noise my skin made as it rubbed against the seat.  I can practically taste the salty shrimp crunching in my mouth.

I still love to go out to eat.  It feels special because of my childhood experiences.  I go out at least once a week.  That sounds like a lot, but it is pretty accurate when I consider ordering in and a quick sandwich here and there.  My kids view going out to eat or ordering in as a very normal thing.  I remember when McDonalds came to town, whereas my kids consider fast food signage a part of the landscape.  I like to think of going out to eat as entertainment, but it is actually a pretty run of the mill activity.

I can probably say the same of movies.  Going to a movie theater alone with my husband feels like a treat because our kids are not clamoring all over us, but watching movies is another very normal activity.  We regularly rent movies online.  We also rent them from the library.  I like to pretend we are going to library for books but my kids race home to watch the videos, not to read.  I am working on that one!

Speaking of reading, I think it used to be its own form of entertainment.  My kids have more books than I can count.  I read somewhere that Abraham Lincoln owned only a few books growing up. He read each one so many times he had them memorized.

I know I have a lot more leisure time than my grandparents did.  My life seems to be focused on maximizing my time for leisure, relaxation and entertainment.  Consequently, a lot of acitivites my grandparents would have labeled as entertainment feel like a normal part of my routine.  We do other things as a family besides eating out and watching movies but I am hard pressed to think of anything that truly feels like entertainment they way I remember Red Lobster as a kid.

I am really curious about how my grandparents would have defined entertainment.  What did they do as a family?  Did my grandma spend time with friends?  Did my grandpa meet up with the guys?  Did my grandma and grandpa go on date nights?  What Would Grandma Do For Fun?