LIES... ALL LIES!

Lead paint has lead us to attempt boycotting all things Chinese (except food). More and more things are being found unsafe and in an effort to do our part, small though it may be, we are trying not to buy things that are made in China. Now, that is easier said than done.

First of all there is the cost issue: Yesterday Fundi spent double what he would have paid for a Chinese pair of boots on an American made pair of boots. American made products are more expensive because we don't use slave labor (or we aren't supposed to) and we have minimum wages. I'm sure there is more to it than that, but I don't know and frankly don't get into all the economics of it.

Secondly there is the availability issue: EVERYTHING is made in China. Of all the steel-toed boots in the store that Fundi was looking in, only seven pairs of boots were made somewhere other than China. Of those, only two pair suited his needs. One pair was made in Dominican Republic and one pair was made in America. He got the American made pair.

Thirdly there are the LIES: at Target the other day, Fundi and I were shopping clearance clothes for the kids (we don't buy full price anything for clothes). While there we were looking at all the cute clothes. Most of them were made in China. Then I began noticing something: some of the tags said "Made in China", some said "Made in Thailand", some said "Made in Malaysia", some said "Made in Vietnam", and some said "Made in Indonesia." Thing is... they were all on the same clothes, just different sizes of those clothes. Is this all a lie? I highly doubt that they would send the same fabric and pattern and everything to five different countries to get one particular pair of pants made in different sizes. I don't believe this. How are we supposed to know where things are coming from? This was the case on more than a few of the items that we were looking at purchasing. If that is the case they shipped a lot of fabric all over the world to get different sizes of clothing made. I DOUBT IT!

Fourthly some things are necessary: the bottles that we bought yesterday were "Made in China" but "Made to Gerber Specifications". I don't know if this is a real comfort. I'm sure the other toys were made to the vendor's specifications but some manufacturers were hiring out and ended up hiring people that used products that weren't to the vendor's specifications. Thing about these bottles is that they are BPA Free.

Today we are going over to a local toy store to see if they have toys that were "Made in America". At this point I would be willing to buy things that were "Made Elsewhere" but maybe that is a lie too? We also bought lead test kits (available at Hardware stores... for sure at Menards in the paint department) to test the toys that we already have to make sure that they aren't lead based. I should check... I wonder if the tests were made in China.