What's a hem?

One of the great misconceptions about the LCL (low cash lifestyle) is that it is a slovenly lifestyle.

Perchance this is due to the LCLers general proximity to poverty, or our propensity for malt liquor.  Admittedly, the LCL lends itself to slovenly behavior more readily than most lifestyles, but they are not inherently united.

Now, a slovenly lifestyle is most visible in one's dress.  Some dudes, especially LCLers, are horrid dressers.  If one dresses poorly, it gives the impression your bed is surrounded by KFC buckets.  If one dresses nice, it  gives the impression your bed is not surrounded by KFC buckets.  There might be KFC buckets in the house, but they are at least down the hall.

When you dress nice, by the time someone finds out your bed is indeed surrounded by KFC buckets, they are already invested.

Further, even us LCLers have to give the impression of being well to do from time to time.  Unless you partake in the highly un-LCL practice of owning a late model beemer, dress is the place to do it.

The reality is some LCLers manage to be dapper dressers while holding onto their hard earned greenbacks.  DeeBee is known for lounging in his home in sport coats.  Captain Nemo is often sporting a fedora.

It does take legitimate effort to undo a habit of slovenly dress.  It cannot be undone in a single night.  Here are some suggestions to help my fellow LCL dude NOT look like he came out from his parents basement because they ran out of hot pockets.

• We all have stained and torn shirts.  Those are called "work" shirts.  They should only be worn while one is doing "work," as in physical labor, not to your friends social gathering.  Stop it, you look homeless.
• Find a god damned belt.  I am tired of seeing your hairy ass.  It must be like buffing peanut butter out of shag carpet down there.   Your toilet paper must get rug burn!  Wear suspenders if you have to.
• Find out what size you are.  I'm talking shirt and pant sizes.  Nothing makes someone look more like Uncle Drunk than a shirt that is 3 times too big, except a stained wife beater.  See bullet #1.
• Stop letting mom buy your clothes.
• Do some clothing research.  I recommend "Details Men's Style Manual" by Daniel Peres and Co, as it is approachable and has lots of pictures!
• Clothes with excessive pockets/cargo pants: this paramilitary look is more Timothy McVey than Chuck Norris.  People think all your pockets are for candy to lure children back to your van.

Remember: don't bring down our low-cost reputation by dressing like a slob.  Help us help you live the dream.  Now, throw out those opinion tees!

LCL: Low Cash Links!

Our first link/photo of the week!

This D.C. councilman apparently has a can of Steel Reserve Malt Liquor on his office desk.

Unfortunately, it is because he was banning the sale of singles, a LCL staple.  But we can dream, can't we?

http://dcist.com/2010/11/so_whats_up_with_the_steel_reserve.php

Grandpa Stoff

Captain Nemo's post, "Chuckin Stuff," reminded me of the high risks many LCL (low cash lifestyle) types take in hoarding stuff.

I don't mean having a kitchen cabinet filled with canned goods; canned goods are useful. I am talking about the truck whose driver sits in a cocoon of salt packs and neatly folded napkins. The deepfreeze in the back room containing trashbags of old clothes. The shelf in the garage covered by jars of various banned pesticides and parts for a vehicle you have never owned. (That's me!)

The issue with this is that if you are a hoarder, and you do not deal with your stuff, someone else will. Allow me to tell a story regarding my favorite hoarder.

Myself and my business partner purchased a house from his grandpa, whom I shall call "Grandpa Stoff." Grandpa Stoff was a hoarder of epic proportions. The cleanout was a nightmare: The man had a bucket of lightbulb ends. ENDS. Just the metal parts... just in case...

We also found: a bucket of melted lead, 30 years of Playboys missing their naughty pics, a 4"x4"x4" box labeled "toilet paper" with a solitary roll inside, nine cubic feet of rat feces, 12 hammers, no phillip's head screwdrivers, an assortment of glassware stolen from local restaurants, a literal ton of rusted and deformed iron pipe, and a large box filled with rubber bouncy balls.

Now, understand that Grandpa Stoff didn't buy all this stuff. Grandpa Stoff was a mailman, and would look through trashcans and take anything he thought had value. He would drag home vacuums just to cut the power-cords off of them. He would pocket the stolen glassware at the end of a meal. But the worst was yet to come...

There was a collapsing four-car garage at the rear of the property, and this is where we found our most terrifying remnant. Buried in the debris of the garage, we found a tightly wrapped grocery store bag. Inside this grocery bag was a used and abused electric buttplug!

This buttplug wasn't a modern silicon and battery powered device. This was old-school hard bakelite plastic with a coiled power cord so it could run off 120 volt household service. This was my business co-owner's grandpa's electric buttplug, likely recovered from a trashcan along his mail route. In a moment of perverse fascination, I plugged the unit in. It sounded like the damn space shuttle.

Sold it at the estate sale for $10. Thats right; I sold my buddy's grandpa's used electric buttplug at a public estate sale at the old family homestead.

So, the moral of the story? Go get rid of your crap. Otherwise, you will bring geriatric anal penetration shame upon your family for generations to come.

Asshead.

Chuckin' Stuff

At first this may seem counterintuitive. How can a low-casher possibly afford to get rid of any of his/her meager capital holdings?

Easy. You don't have "capital holdings" or even "life's possessions." You have, ahem, "junk."

That's right. Junk. Crap piled up to the ceiling. Every flat surface in your apartment morphs into a table, slowly accumulating debris like the silt that builds up on river bottoms. In the future, scientists will drill deep into your piles of useless stuff and extract layered cores for study.

"Look!" they'll say, with excited eyes. "This layer of receipt-ite seems to have been laid down in late 2007 during a period of particularly intense take-out dining activity!"

You don't want that fate, do you? No. On top of that, stuff costs you money. Even after you've bought it, it takes up valuable space that you could be subletting or using for other low-cash activities. If you move, it sucks up your gas mileage and makes you take extra trips. What this means is that all your stuff had damn well better justify itself.

Recently I have been throwing things away. Before any greenies out there get upset, I don't mean everything went straight to the landfill. Things were recycled and donated; I just mean that they were removed from my life. I've got a stack of clothes going to Goodwill next week.

It's really wonderful. A lighter load. Breathing room.

So here's what you do. Start with paper. Pile up all your useless stuff in front of you and make three piles: definitely junk, definitely save, and "decide later." The toughest part of this is not just pushing everything into the middle pile. Go through it. Poem you wrote in high school? Unless you read it at your best friend's funeral, CHUCK IT! Stack of pay stubs from your days at Bubba O'Fratboy's Fake Irish American Pub Chain? Keep the last one so you know how much you sold your soul for, and shred the rest. CHUCK IT! Shred your soul while you're at it; it's weighing you down. Pics of you and your ex who's married now and treated you like secondhand chewing gum that you kept anyway because it was such a sweet short time and you still like to think about JUST CHUCK IT ALREADY!

When you're done, put the "don't know" pile aside, and go back to it a week later with the same triage-style operation. Three rounds of this should finish the papers. Now on to other things...

Clothes: You know that outfit you've been saving for a "special event"? YOU ARE NOT SPECIAL! And let's not even get started on that certain item that bears the "stain of shame"... CHUCK IT!

Books/Music/other 'art': This, I admit, is my weakness. I'm one of those old-fashioned goofballs who prefers to maintain his music collection in CDs - which don't even have to hipster appeal of vinyl - and I think of my books as a permanent lending library established for the benefit of my friends. But even here, cuts may be made. Are you really going to pull out that anthropology textbook one night and dazzle your friends by proving that matrilineal social organization is viable in the modern context? Will you really liven up a party with Bavarian Bruiser Records' compilation "Polka Punks Vol. 4?" Some of you may be nodding. YOU WON'T! CHUCK IT!

The clay sculpture of a frog your little cousin gave you for your birthday years ago? She was so young and cute to give it away as a present AND IS SEVENTEEN NOW CHUCK IT!

Broken-down crap and old parts of things: This doesn't even need to be explained. Are you grandpa? Thrift is great. But if you aren't REALLY going to reuse that stuff, get rid of it. Put it up for sale or rent or in the "just take it for the love of God" section of the classifieds. One man's trash is another man's treasure - the cycle of LCL life. They'll be happy, you'll be free.

Feels lighter already.