My twin daughters have a birthday later this month. So, I'm making plans for how to celebrate and what little gifts to buy. While I know I can't solve the world's economic or political problems all on my own, I've made a sort of deal with myself concerning the gifts I'm buying.
2020 and now 2021 has been a year of discovering the very worst about a couple of countries and many corporations. I feel compelled to use my wallet to make my voice heard. I won't buy items from countries whose governments are participating in egregious treatment of human beings and I won't support a corporation that supports organizations or industries that violate my conscience.
So, with that in mind I went out shopping for a couple of small gifts yesterday afternoon. As if shopping with a mask that kept bumping up into my lower eyelashes wasn't stress enough to deal with, I was checking every single label on every single item in three sections of the store looking for the specifics of each's manufacturing info. If I were in store security, I'd have been monitoring my own curious shopping this afternoon.
What really stunned and saddened me was how few goods are actually made in the USA any more. When did this happen? Do we not make anything in this country any more? I spent several hours shopping and came home with just a couple of small items. Even many books are no longer printed in the US. Books are just paper and ink. How is that we can't do paper and ink any more?
I had an idea for a bunch of spa items for each daughter. Wow, the print on packages was so tiny! Most of the items were made in China, a couple in Taiwan, one in Egypt, and a couple in Indonesia. I had really wanted to support manufacturing in my own country, as I see us getting deeper and deeper into an unemployment hole right now. I wanted a shower cap, a scrubbing brush or loofah, maybe a bath bomb or two and a couple of hair accessories. A big fat "nope" on the shower cap, brush/loofah, and hair accessories. I checked every package. Brands that I thought were surely American-made are now all made some place else. In the end, I found a couple of USA-made bath bombs, bath soaks, and a chocolate bar each. I also checked the clothing department of same store and found nothing my daughters would ever wear from the paltry amount of US-made items.
We did this to ourselves. We were so eager for bargain prices that we didn't notice that products weren't being manufactured locally. We knew that sometimes what we were buying didn't last as long as it should have or that we had known previous purchases had lasted. We didn't care. So long as it was inexpensive, that's what mattered. And deep down, we did know that many of our products were made elsewhere. It wasn't as if someone was fooling us. But we just didn't care enough, or I didn't care enough that I was buying products made somewhere else. Like I said, I felt saddened by this realization, like I sold out.
The good news is that there are American companies out there. They're not the big names that we've grown up knowing as American, but instead, small cottage industry businesses. You won't find many of their items on the shelves of the big box stores. You have to search out these small businesses. When I got home, I spent time online looking for shower caps made in the USA. After a lot of google searches, I finally found several sellers on etsy. They're a lot more expensive than what I saw in the big box store. But maybe the higher price means that the worker made a fair wage for their time with my purchase. Plus, I think these are much cuter!
If I could, would I go back to not reading packages or caring where my money was going? I don't think I can. I can't un-know what I've learned this last year. But I hope that intentional shopping won't always feel this stressful.
Rant over.
