Country of Origin Scavenger Hunt

So we went around the house tonight and surveyed everything that had a "Made in _____" label. Here are the results:



Household Objects (primarily kitchen)

China: 23*
USA: 12
Thailand: 10
Mexico: 7
Taiwan: 2
Japan, Malaysia, Portugal, Vietnam: 1

*(one older IKEA light was credited to "People's Republic of China"...)


Conclusions? Go to Mexico for knives. Cheap appliances that you get free with your credit card reward points come from China. Cookware was solidly USA, though. One nice old cast iron pan, all our copper-bottom Revereware pots and all the Pyrex baking stuff is made in the country you and I live in. Turns out we still make things after all - or maybe we just have really old things. Pretty much everything except the appliances came from Goodwill.


Made in China


Thailand


USA!



It's a fun little game. We pulled everything out of the cupboards and went at it with a clipboard. I'd recommend it sometime. I'm not really trying to moralize about it right now - it's just interesting to know where stuff comes from.


Mexico


Portugal



Food was a very different matter. More diverse, a little more equatorial. You see our local food bias come out stronger here. Also, we have hardly anything in the fridge right now.

Food Items

USA: 10
Mexico: 4
Canada: 2
China: 2
Costa Rica, Ecuador, Madagascar, Italy/Greece/Spain, Switzerland: 1

Madagascar was vanilla, Switzerland veggie bouillon. Costa Rica coffee, Ecuador bananas. China was packaged mushrooms and seaweed.

Food really should be a whole other post, with its own metrics, that someone else more knowledgeable than I should write. But there it is.


Enjoy the holidays and don't buy cheap shit that no one really wants (wherever it comes from).