Today, I made a rustic breakfast -
1 egg, scrambled with thyme in the rendered fat of 3 slices of platter-style pork bacon. Served on a cracked wheat English muffin toasted in the pan.
- and thought again how much my life would be improved with the addition of a toaster. I’d consume less rendered pork fat, for starters. Sandwich time wouldn’t always end frantically balancing on tippy toes on chairs under smoke alarms. A toaster would be wonderful.
So, I determined to explore the toaster landscape. In particular, I wanted to find a quaint toaster, something I wouldn’t have to clean ten times a day, but could leave out on the counter.
I found a few I liked, all of which were prohibitively expensive. I got lost in the Cyber Toaster Museum for an hour. Eventually, in my frustration I added a DualIt 2-Slice to my wish list and walked away.
And here I drown in the morass of first-world problems. The problem is not choice. I could have my pick of $19.99 plastic toasters. According to the reviews, they all “work just fine.” I could throw them out when they got scratched or otherwise icky. I could pretend I didn’t understand the larger socio-economic systems that allow the creation of a $19.99 toaster. This is what a lot of people do, every day. I would end up with a house filled with crap, in a burning, flooded world lightly populated with people who don’t know how to grow food. Or I can spend $250 on a toaster presumably made of enamel and metal, but which is otherwise not really much different in terms of selfish-unfairness and environmental damage and guilt.
Where is the cute craftsman-made toaster, assembled by a middle-aged hipster with a passion for engineering, selling for some ridiculous amount of money but a product I can trust to be a good and earnest result of hands and knowledge and love? I go to Etsy and its cousins and find silver wire earrings and throw pillows. I go to boutique stores and find only bowls and candleholders. Why is no one challenging the status quo in the segments of useful objects?
It turns out that making a toaster is very complicated, which is surprising, I think. The core function entails establishing a set temperature in a space for a certain amount of time. Being a kind person who loves people, I can only assume that the complexities and challenges associated with modern toaster design are embedded in its safety features and exception handling. Or maybe I’m just a daft user who has no idea how things work. Or both! Nonetheless, it seems that it’s much more complicated to make a toaster than it is to make a candle, and the craft community has responded accordingly. But where does that leave me?
Some friends people I stalk recreationally on the Internet resort to living rusticly. They sweep instead of vacuum, make their own cleaning solutions/coffee roasts/granola. I imagine them living in little stone huts in a rolling green field (*JEALOUS*). And I don’t know, you guys… That whole lifestyle has a certain deadly appeal, filled as it is with entire days of mindless busywork and measured out chore lists punctuated by exciting new projects like making mustard for the first time, or growing rosemary. In truth, there’s a lot of evidence that such is the lifestyle most likely to leave the person living it in a condition they describe as “happy,” both because of the physical exertion required to maintain a rustic life and the satisfaction of meaningful work.
But it all seems a little odd, that lifestyle, don’t you think? And difficult to maintain. How will I be able to ensure sufficient time to keep up with Sherlock, watch classic movies, read the Internet, and mope over my romantic condition? How soon before I become one of those cold, grim-faced women who would rather not be bothered by your foolishness right now, when there are potatoes to weed? At what point will I realize that I am working not to attain anything, but just to stay in place? My aching back, my calloused fingers, the cuts and scrapes.
I didn’t buy the toaster.
