Recently I switched my shaving habits. I have become accustomed to razors with disposable cartridges with ever increasing numbers of blades, each successor promising a closer shave than the last. These cartridges and their technological advancements are pretty amazing when you look at how one is designed, manufactured, and assembled. Springs, spacers, lubricating strips. This all is intriguing. I find myself, however, marveling at how the makers of these little marvels find more ingenious ways to separate us from our money while giving us fewer cartridges for more money every time they add some innocuous doo dad to the overall design.

I was talking with a friend of mine at work one evening that mentioned that he went back to basics. Well, not all the way back to the straight razor but back to a good, old-fashioned safety razor. He, too, was becoming annoyed at the rising cost of the disposable cartridges. The safety razor uses a double-edge razor blade, the kind you may have seen in the movies, often shown being used for more nefarious purposes than shaving. The safety razor, or handle, usually twists open to either open the head or separate part of the head from the rest of the razor to allow the insertion of a new razor blade. I looked for one in the store and, of course, could not find one on the shelf in the stores, at least in the United States. While in Europe, however, I found myself in need of a razor after traveling and forgetting my cartridges, with all of their fanciness, and found, instead, an inexpensive safety razor and blade combination in one package. I opted to give this a try.

I must admit the use of this new razor took some practice. I occasionally nicked myself shaving, especially around the chin, but I soon got the hang of this and moved on. I was pleased with my new shaving regimen and the fact that, instead of tossing out a cartridge every week or so for the next twenty to thirty years (I should live so long) I would just be tossing an extremely thin piece of steel or stainless steel. No added plastics; one less thing off of my environmental conscience. The initial attraction to this new razor, for me, was the low cost with the added peace of mind that comes from not taking part in this cycle of use, throw away, buy more, and use, then throw way tiny pieces of what will one day become archeological marvels. When or if society implodes and is then reinvented, when archeologists, if that is still what they call themselves, may wonder at the tremendous amount of waste that we piled up in the industrial age. This age of “designed for the dump” may become a serious puzzle for another age of humans or possibly some extra-terrestrial race that delves into our past. If people perish from this earth, we will be outlived by mountains of plastic bits and pieces that will outlast even the concrete and steel buildings and highways and landmarks only to leave one to wonder what, exactly, we were thinking about when we went through this phase, assuming this phase of disposability will pass. I would like to think that it will.

After months of using this inexpensive plastic handle for my double-edge razor blades I decided I wanted something a little more lasting, a little more elegant, and, maybe, something that would give me a better shave and more control over the blade. I searched the Internet and found what I consider to be a very nice razor. It cost me a pretty penny, but I wanted something elegant. Something heavy. Something with a touch of class and, most importantly, would remain useful and work the same for the remainder of my natural life. I ordered the razor and, when it arrived, I couldn’t wait to get it out of the box and see how it felt in my hands. The new razor was everything I was hoping it would be. It is weighty, well designed, and elegantly functional. I fitted this new razor with a fresh blade, lathered up my face, and began to shave, starting on my right cheek where I always start. I was impressed with the way it handled. I loved the way that it felt in my hand, the way that it glided over the various curves of my face with ease. I even found that it controlled the blade depth and consistency much better than it’s plastic counterpart. I had no trouble, even on the chin where I occasional take a nick. This new razor was a thing to enjoy.

Enjoy, now there is a strange word to apply to the shaving ritual but shouldn’t it be enjoyable? When I fill the sink with hot water and get my washcloth soaked with near-scalding hot water to soften up my beard to be removed shouldn’t this be a sacred moment? After all, I will soon pass an extremely sharp object over my skin just fractions of an inch from my jugular.

I started shaving with a straight razor when I was a teenager because that is what my father used. Later on, while working and becoming increasingly more hurried, I tried an electric razor. Horrible invention, the electric razor used by people who hurry off to work with seemingly no time to shave. The electric razor may be useful for the hurried and hung-over but I never found one that gave me a shave as close as a blade nor did I ever find one that didn’t rub my face raw by the time I got what I felt was as decent shave. I went through a progression of cheap disposables, then, as I made more money, reusable handles for the latest cartridge. I marched on, content to follow the whims of the cartridge manufacturer, or switch up my shaving habits when a new handle for a new product would come in the mail, a practice that I don’t think is used anymore but was very effective. Give me the handle and a couple cartridges and, if all goes according to plan, I will be assimilated into a new order of buy, use, toss, buy again, use and toss again for all eternity while the prices for these devices soar higher and higher.

With my new safety razor I have found something else I did not expect. Of course, I save money and of course I am keeping thousands of little plastic marvels out of the landfill, but I got something else from all of this. I take a little more time shaving than I used to take. I enjoy shaving much more than I have been for years. This may sound strange to some, or to any women who might be reading this, but the shaving ritual is very personal. Of course, shaving one’s legs or other parts is equally important, but I only shave my face and neck. The time I spend in front of the mirror is an intimate encounter with myself. I must look in the mirror, meet my own gaze, come to terms with any transgressions I may have committed, take note of any new marks, wrinkles, spots or blemishes and watch the unstoppable march of time play across my face day after day. Being in my middle years, I am increasingly introspective. I appreciate anything that helps me with this process. My relationship to my new razor has made me think about other areas where I might have been content to march on and be led by the nose in whatever direction that the makers of various products have wanted me to go over the years.

I believe that this disposable revolution has depersonalized the shaving ritual to a great extent, but I would like to take this argument a step farther. Years ago I stopped buying paper towels. The price keeps going up, and the uses for them grow more myriad every day and they all end up in the trash. I don’t use paper napkins, either, and haven’t for many years. I use dishtowels and cloth napkins. They can be tossed in the laundry with the towels washed again and again and reused. I would bet, on reading this, that a lot of Americans will cringe and think of how seemingly unhygienic this seems, but this is just a result of decades of marketing to your fears. I don’t have any problems in my kitchen, and I love my kitchen and spend a good deal of time there.

The makers of these disposable products have taken your personality from you. You no longer get to choose your dishtowels or napkins save from a few simple patterns from which you may choose. This disposable lifestyle has brought us to a point where we throw ever-increasing amounts of stuff into landfills every day. The other effect this has had on us is that very few things are built to last. This is by design, believe it or not. This “designed for the dump” culture has forced us to spend more and more of our hard-earned money on worthless, cheap, mass-produced gadgets that will break, go out of style, wear out too quickly, or be ‘upgraded’, like the disposable razor cartridge promising better results, cleaner kitchens and bathrooms, and, my favorite, ‘more’, the unquantifiable word that advertisers use to make us feel like we are missing out on something if we don’t ‘upgrade’. This lifestyle, this culture is not just unsustainable but is, in fact, quite insane. On one planet with a finite cache of natural resources we continue to march on into oblivion and build mountains of trash that will be here long after we are gone.

My new razor gave me my ritual back. During this ritual, which I now enjoy much more than I have in years, I thought about my place in this world and my responsibility to do my part to insure that my daughter doesn’t have to clean up my mess. Our mess. In using long-lasting articles such as dish towels, cloth napkins, reusable shopping bags (and please let’s not got there in this piece) and doing away with as many weak devices and products as I can I have also saved a small fortune over the years. This is increasingly important to me in my middle years. I would much rather all of that money allow me to travel, enjoy a good meal at a nice restaurant, let me retire early (unlikely) or maybe even help me save up for the bicycle that I will tool around the neighborhood with during my golden years when I might stop shaving altogether.