Underconsumption: it’s not a trend, it’s a lifestyle – The Tribune

I didn’t realize a recent CNN story would attempt making me feel guilty about my annual father-son bonding ritual.
Each summer Gideon and I cut a series of radio commercials for my day-job employer (the local farmers cooperative), with the intention of having a little fun and, well, selling some stuff.
(Kids, don’t try this at home. No, seriously. The radio station insinuated the recordings we did at home circa 2011 exhibited the acoustic qualities of a dying calf in a hail storm, so we have since dutifully trekked down to the high-tech studio.)
Now CNN reports on a TikTok trend called “underconsumption core” (which, as a catchy phrase, ranks considerably below “dying calf in a hail storm,” in my humble opinion).
Much to the chagrin of leading retailers, consumers fed up with the shop-’til-you-drop mentality are rebelling.
Instead of making trendy purchases to “keep up with the Joneses,” they assemble a trustworthy collection of sensible linens, clothing, cookware, electronic gadgets, grooming products and the like to last them for years.
(Or at least until the mob of factory workers and merchants they put out of business come searching for them with some trendy tar and feathers.)
I must admit being decades ahead of this phenomenon.
The Tyree family has added a toilet snake or two here and there over the years, but the core of our tool kit is what my wife got from her grandfather prior to his 1993 death.
Early in our married life, my brother and his wife gifted us a second-hand upholstered chair that we dubbed Momma Kittie’s Chair because it was the only spot our half-feral feline matriarch felt safe.
We still have Momma Kittie’s Chair, even though Momma Kittie exhausted her ninth life more than a quarter-century ago.
We have new kitchen towels, but they share space with old-timers so threadbare you could read the fine print on an over-the-counter medicine package through them.
When my sneakers are no longer wearable in public, I wear them while operating my push mower. When they’re no longer up for lawnmower duty, the tongues make passable automotive mudflaps.
Having survived a lifetime of recessions, layoffs and bad investments, I am now pretty much immune to impulse buys. (Sales pitches of “Wouldn’t it be neat?” are met with “Only if your definition of ‘neat’ is ‘adding to the teetering pile of junk that will eventually pin me beneath it.’”)
I don’t aspire to be the pride, greed, wrath, lust, gluttony or sloth of my neighborhood, so why should I want to be the envy of the neighborhood?
As for the newbies jumping aboard the “underconsumption core” train, I wish them well, whether their motive is to get out of debt, declutter their domicile or reduce their carbon footprint.
I just hope they will remember that the furniture salesmen, jewelers, florists and other retailers who support this fine newspaper are people, too. (People who are polite enough not to mention that clinging to an eyeglasses prescription written by Ben Franklin is probably not a good idea.)
Like the characters in the cartoon panel “Pluggers,” I’ll keep on keeping on. Granted, if I save enough with my frugality, I may splurge on a vacation.
Maybe out to the Great Plains, where — my tried-and-true encyclopedia informs me — inexhaustible herds of bison roam freely.
I’ll check the weather for hail first.

Danny Tyree welcomes email responses at tyreetyrades@aol.com and visits to his Facebook fan page “Tyree’s Tyrades.”