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Stylish thrift.

Supposedly thrift is the style now, says the NYT, quoting some wife of a Cincinnati plastic surgeon who has taken to borrowing DVDs from the library and growing her own vegetables, blah blah blah.

Maybe times are hard for plastic surgeons, though. If there's one thing people with real financial troubles can skimp on, it's plastic surgery.

In San Francisco, Cooper Marcus, 36, has started choosing recipes based on the ingredients on sale at the market. Mr. Marcus canceled the family?s subscription to Netflix, his premium cable package and a wine club membership. He uses a program on his iPhone to find the cheapest gas and drives out of his way to save 50 cents per gallon.

?It seems a little crazy,? he laughs, then adds: ?I?m frugal and loving it.?

I guess greenness isn't the style anymore or Marcus would be ashamed to say he was driving a lot more just to save some money.

Kellee Sikes, 37, a consultant in Kirkwood, Mo., no longer uses paper napkins. Ms. Sikes uses organic cloth ones until they get threadbare and then uses them as cleaning rags.

Oh, bullshit. It takes years for cloth napkins to reach the rag stage. They do make great rags, though, but this napkins-to-rags stuff doesn't fit the trend story. Unless that "organic" cloth is really crappy, in which case, it's not to frugal to buy it.

When they are no longer useful, she puts them in the in-ground waste composter in the backyard. She plans to start burying her dogs? feces there, which saves on the cost of sending refuse to a landfill.

Oh, now they've deteriorated to the point where they are not even usable as rags? Spare me. And TMI about the dog shit.

?I recently heard a phrase: ?Never waste a crisis,? ? Ms. Sikes said. ?I love it. This is a chance for us to re-examine what?s important.?

Never waste a crisis... Yeah, somebody said that recently. But it sure as hell wasn't about resisting spending money.

Full post as published by Althouse on April 11, 2009 (boomark / email).