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An Overseas Perpsective

Having made a military-induced move to Italy and back, I learned quite a few things while over there. One of them was the fact that we take so much for granted here in the U.S., and the lengths we go to maintain that “for granted” stuff.

Things we consider “every day” and “basic living standard” here are classified as “unobtainable” and “for the rich only.” Some examples include:

· Wall-to-wall carpeting and vacuum cleaners
· Air conditioning
· Screened doors and windows
· Full-size refrigerators and stoves
· Dishwashers and dryers
· Yards front and back
· Closets of any size
· Cars

I have to admit that I went nuts the first year we were stationed in Italy and lived in a rental apartment out in town (“on the economy” in military-speak). Fortunately, I possess a mind that thrives on the necessity of finding alternatives I could live with, and so my journey began…with one addition--the start of questioning my own needs for basic living.

This is where I obtained the beginnings of what I will call my frugal roots.

“What? This place doesn’t have carpeting?” “No air conditioning?” “Where’d the window screens go?” “These appliances look like something a kid would play with!” “Why is there a washing machine in the kitchen and not a dishwasher?” These were the sounds of me apartment-touring. Apartment after apartment, I finally got the hint.

UPDATE: Here in Virginia, there are still washers in kitchens instead of dishwashers--the older homes have pipes that won't handle the excess water from a draining dishwasher. Some clever homeowners replaced the washers with dishwashers, or had the plumbing upgraded to accommodate both machines, but that was a rarity. Out west, the homes have washers/dryers in the garage next to the water heater--here, there is no garage most times, and everything got crammed into the kitchen (washer, dishwasher, and water heater). If a garage is present, it's detached and away from the house, so (legally) stringing electricity and plumbing out there is costly. Basically, the garage is just for the car and lawn toys--nothing else.

My history-buff husband brought me back down to earth by explaining how old this particular town and country was, and that taxes and utility prices were so high that some things were small out of necessity. The tax code, I thought, was rather skewed, too—real estate was taxed by the room, and closets were considered rooms. This explained the armoirs in every bedroom.

After furniture arrived from the U.S. and our new place was put to rights, I began learning how to communicate with the landlord (the military housing office acted as a translator in most instances). By learning basic Italian, cutting out and saving magazine photos of things I wanted for the apartment, and shopping for any materials I could employ for DIY projects, I slowly got most of what I wanted, or thought I needed.

My first lifestyle surprise came when I tried to vacuum the carpet I had shipped over with my furniture. I fired up the vacuum, and a neighbor banged on my door to complain about the loud strange noise. Not being fluent in Italian yet, I opened the door and invited him in, trying to gesture my way through the process of vacuuming. He knelt on the carpet remnant and cried, caressing the plush pile like it was fine fur. He then took me to his apartment and showed me his bare tile floors. He then rolled out his bucket and mop, gesturing the mopping motion.

My first foreign economic lesson: carpeting is for the rich. Apparently so are vacuum cleaners. With apartment floors so completely tiled, the rooms turn into large echo chambers. My little cleaner must be making a racket!

After about a month of trying to sweep the large rug in an effort to clean quietly, I took it out and hung it over my balcony rail and beat it with the broom. I then rolled it up and stored it in a bedroom corner. I became the proud owner of an Italian mop and bucket, some washable slippers from the street market, and began questioning the very need for large rugs—even wall-to-wall carpeting.

Enter history-buff Hubby with a tale of carpet origins…

My next encounter was with the child-size appliances and the onset of Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners. A turkey of any size wasn’t going to fit in the oven, and leftovers weren’t going to fit in the Fisher-Price-sized ‘fridge. One call to the housing office sent Luigi out with an American stove and refrigerator, equipped to run with the Italian electrical plugs and gas hookup. Later that week, he also brought me an American washer and dryer, but had to set them up outside—they wouldn’t fit in the washer niche made in the kitchen. A cold water garden hose spigot and propane “bombola” were my power sources.

Enter the landlady with a bag of clothespins and gestures toward her outside clothesline…and several hung loads later, I began to question my need for a dryer in good weather.

Fans in summer were just not enough to keep sweltering, humid Italian summers at bay, and the flies coming in the double-door swing-in style of windows was just too much for me. I fashioned my own screens out of 48” sheers with a rod through top and bottom casings, then mounted them top and bottom in the window openings. After spreading the material to cover the entire opening, I had pretty effective screens. I did this to all my windows. I began to wonder how I could fashion a screen door for myself, since they didn’t exist over here. Bingo! A magazine photo and two rolls of screen later, my landlady’s brother built a door frame and stretched the screen over it. He even mounted it for me in the marble doorway. I had no spring for it, but oh well. He added a locking latch for security.

Two weeks later, he returned with screens for all my windows, too. I then noticed he had made the same things for his sister, my landlady. I started a trend.

When I got my first water bill, I figured out why nobody had yards. It was too expensive to maintain a lawn that didn’t produce anything. Their “yards” were small garden plots—just enough room for tomatoes, basil, onions, garlic, oregano, and the dog to do his business. Everything else was paved for parking cars on. My landlady felt sorry for me and let me plant things in her old rose garden plot. I got to plant, and she taught me how to properly trim rose bushes and to let God water the plants from the sky.

Since our particular apartment was in town, I found it was much easier to walk to the weekly street markets, the local bakery, the favorite pizzeria, and the cheapest grocery store rather than drag the car out in busy traffic. American cars are so large compared to Italian ones, and their streets are narrow (enter Hubby again with stories of alleys traveled on horseback…) and hard to maneuver in. Buying an Italian car was out of the question because their safety standards are much lower than ours—no safety glass windows, no fireproof upholstery or insulation of any kind, sometimes no horns or blinkers, non-existent pollution control devices, and very dim headlights. I bought an “old lady cart” and walked wherever I needed to go.

This led me to question suburb living. If you have to get in the car to go shopping right back into the same town you moved away from, what’s the point? But now, developers have one-upped us all by moving “town” out to the suburbs. So we move again to get away from suburban sprawl, and the cycle repeats itself. I guess the answer is to stay downtown and walk.

Sometimes we need to “get out of the county”, so to speak, to gain perspective on what it is we call life’s necessities. What may be necessary to you and me might be out of reach for someone else, and questionable at that. Think of how much time, effort, and money we could save ourselves if we merely cock our heads, squint our eyes, and look at things with Italian lenses occasionally and start asking questions of ourselves.

When I got back to the states, I made some long-lasting changes to my own life and way of assessing needs. If nobody else has it, and nobody knows what it is, or what to do with it, do I really need it—even in temporary situations? Just a thought.

Posted by Cute at 7:38 PM

Labels: financial (non-tax), social issues