I miss my Dwell Magazine. I thought that by renewing our Walker membership in February I would automatically get my subscription extended (my last issues was December/January), as complimentary subscriptions to Dwell are a brand new membership benefit. Here I am and it’s nearly April… STILL NO Dwell. Seeing Tom’s Cook’s Illustrated come yesterday caused a twinge of jealousy, so I broke down and called customer service. I was originally planning to just inquire about the status of my subscription; then they told me it could take “120 days” before any word from the Walker reached them. 120 days sounded like a really long time. Do you think they’re trained to say things like that? That is, to make me feel like that? Anyway you know what happened; I renewed. I even asked them for the back issues that I missed. I even paid the news stand price for one. I was a little desperate, I guess. Tom chuckled a little at this, but not wanting to suffer saver’s remorse, I decided to say, “why not?!”

In the Home & Garden section of this week’s New York Times, there’s a short article about people who’ve decided to get rid of their refrigerators. 

For some this means switching to a freezer-only or a mini fridge in lieu of the “normal” giant American fridge, so they’re not totally giving up cooling food. Still, it seems like a decent idea given the energy suck that is the refrigerator. I grew up in a house with not one but TWO of them, so it’s also a pretty radical idea to me.

Today, we have a new fridge in the apartment because I requested that the landlord install one. While the new fridge still has issues that more expensive ones wouldn’t (running water down the back, caking ice in the freezer), I don’t miss the old fridge. Like the one of the women quoted in the article, we do the “easy” environmentally friendly things well-known to most people. I try to replace our incandescent bulbs with the squiggly energy saver ones (even when it looks awful) and we recycle all glass, plastic, cans, and newspaper. Most of the time, we use reusable bags at the store… and when we do get the crappy most-people-throw-away plastic bags, we reuse them instead of buying trash bags. While it’s easy to “do our part” in these ways which don’t inconvenience us too much, I’m not sure I could give up the fridge. In fact, I really wish we had another debatably earth-friendly appliance: a dishwasher. 

Could you get by in a household of 2+ people with just a college dorm fridge?