Simple Suggestion #188... Live within your needs (Buy Nothing Day 2013)

Do you remember Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos' wife Imelda, the woman with 3,000+ pairs of shoes? No? I guess I'm really dating myself!

We've all heard the phrase "live within your means," meaning, don't spend more money than you have, be frugal, choose sensibly, and only buy that which you can afford. But Imelda could afford all those shoes -- she was living within her means even though she had rooms and rooms of shoes and clothing at a time when most people in the Philippines were living at subsistence level. (Really, they were unwittingly bankrolling her and her shoes -- until they ousted her hubby.)

Ever since a little quotation out of the writings of a fellow named Nilus of Ancyra landed in my inbox last month, I've been thinking how it would be better if people like Imelda and our present day celebs -- and all of us, too -- lived "within our needs" instead of our "means." Here's what Nilus had to say:

We should remain within the limits imposed by our basic needs and strive with all our power not to exceed them. For once we are carried a little beyond these limits in our desire for the pleasures of life, there is then no criterion by which to check our onward movement, since no bounds can be set to that which exceeds the necessary.

Nilus was an abbot in charge of a monastery in Ancyra, Greece, early in the third century. From all accounts, he was a wise, spiritual and thoughtful man... who would probably shake a finger at Imelda (whose aide got caught last week selling a Monet painting that went missing when Ferdinand's dictatorship ended with the People Power revolution in 1986). Nilus would also roll his eyes at all the other excesses with which we surround ourselves now, shake his head and say, "People, people, when will you wake up?"

The abbot of Ancyra was the kind of man who would encourage us all to join the Buy Nothing movements that have recently appeared in social media, simply because our "onward movement" -- toward the pleasures of life in the form of addiction to our possessions -- is running our earth (and many of our brothers and sisters in the developing world) to ruin. Would Hurricane Haiyan have been so powerful if we weren't spending so many of the earth's carbon resources to ship unnecessary "stuff" all over the planet?

What do we really need in order to live a joyful life? Love, food, shelter, and clothing. Too much more than that gets in the way of our joy because it demands that we spend less time with those we love and more time working to buy, own, maintain and defend what we own. Once we have our basic needs covered, do we really need to buy anything more? How many of those 3,000-some pairs of shoes did Imelda wear more than once? She probably couldn't even remember each pair!!! And most of them have been destroyed in the last few years' floods in the Philippines...

Mention of Black Friday, November 29th, the big kick-off to Christmas consumerism, has been lurking around for the past few weeks, but I prefer to think of it as Buy Nothing Day, a holiday from consumerism. The day after American Thanksgiving needs to become another day of gratitude for and awareness of our fulfilled needs rather than an all-out-gimme-gimme-consumerfest, no matter what stores have planned for us that day. News coverage of Black Friday the last several years seems to indicate that we take shopping far too seriously in North America, and could all use a shopping-free vacation! Imelda included.

To be honest, most days of my year are Buy Nothing Days (except for groceries), so my contribution to the Buy Nothing movement this year is spreading the word here, and sharing this little poster (feel free to copy and paste all over the internet, or email me under my profile and I'll send you a PDF file for printing and posting anywhere your heart desires).

And here's the challenge to all my readers: try living within your needs. Why not observe Buy Nothing Day on Friday, November 29th? Feel free to check out the Buy Nothing Christmas website on my sidebar (click on the top bar titles ("Alternatives," "Resources," "Stories," etc. if the links on the page don't work for you). See what the next seven days as a Buy Nothing Week feels like. And the Ultimate Challenge -- make 2014 a Buy Nothing Year!

Looking for more Simple Suggestions? Click here.

And click here for a few Simple Christmas Ideas.

Simple Suggestion #30... Avoid shopping malls

Warning: if you love shopping, this moodling was not written for you. Or maybe it was, to offer a little food for thought...

Suggestion #30 could be simplified to "avoid temptation." Honestly, if we NEED something, it's okay to go and buy it. But it's important to understand the difference between NEED and WANT. Going shopping is one of life's necessities in a society where we lack the capabilities to grow all our own food and supply all our own clothing. But going to a shopping mall to while away the time is silly because the retail world is designed to suck us in and fill our lives with stuff that we really don't NEED. Shopping malls seem to ensure that we come home with more than we need. Just walking through one to get to the grocery store when we need food is an exercise in self-control. Heck, walking through a grocery store is, too, because a lot of retailers' business is selling unnecessary items along with necessities.

We've reached that point in the year where my daughters could use some summer clothing, and this past weekend, we had a wedding to attend that required we spruce ourselves up a bit more than usual. So I did the unthinkable and went clothes shopping three times in two days at two different malls. It actually worked out quite well in the end because we got what we needed (two dresses and a pair of sandals). The problem is the things that we didn't need. I really didn't need a string of faux pearls... and my daughter really didn't need that pair of cream-coloured high heels. She has nothing to wear them with -- unless she goes shopping some more. Of course, they were a deal, on sale for just $15, and who can resist a deal?

Retailers know that a good deal is a hard thing to resist, so you see 10 to 90% OFF! signs everywhere shoppers collect. Or, buy one, get one free! Or any number of other sales options. Our Pavlovian response of buying stuff that's on sale fills our homes and lives with a lot of incidentals that take up our time and both physical and mental space. They also take up Earth's valuable resources -- unnecessarily, a lot of the time. Could I live without that string of faux pearls that I'll only wear maybe once or twice a year? Definitely!

I was lucky to escape the malls this weekend with nothing more than those beads and their reminder of my own recently neglected shopping rules:

1. When shopping, take a list and stick to it.
2. Go only to the stores that may have what you need.
3. When possible, try second-hand stores or garage sales first.
4. Avoid places where too many stores are in close proximity, as temptation to go overboard is greater there. Support small businesses instead.

There's more shopping ahead of me this week as someone still definitely needs some basic clothing items. But this time when we go, I'm sticking to my rules.

P.S. Looking for more Simple Suggestions? Try here.

If you like shopping...

...don't watch this video. There, you've been warned. People who have seen it like to curse me in a cheerful sort of way when they do go shopping. Some of them report that the song has helped them to cut down on mindless consumption. You know... seeing something, and buying it without really thinking. My sisters especially don't like this video because it has a tendency to be an earworm...

You can blame the whole thing on the Master Composter/Recycler course I took from the City of Edmonton in 2007. I had to go for an interview to prove I was worthy Master Composter/Recycler material, and sometime after that, this little ditty started playing in my head. For the course's final assignment, my sister helped me make my little earworm into a simple video. This final version was posted on YouTube two months later, and since then it has been really interesting hearing from people from all over the world who find the song interesting and helpful (in spite of my warbly voice and amateur guitar abilities).

I used to be one of those people who got upset when my husband gave me a "practical present" instead of something frivolous or pretty. I remember feeling really let down one Christmas when he bought me a coffee maker (even though it was a very good one). Likewise, I hated buying him things that he really needed (he's forever wearing out his wallet) -- I wanted to give him something more exciting and interesting. But he's not someone who needs or wants anything unusual or extravagant -- it was my ego that insisted upon the brightly coloured sweater and Star Trek tie that he only wore once (even though he was a Trekkie at the time)! Since we've embraced Voluntary Simplicity, we see that meeting each other's needs is more valid than buying wants that aren't essential and only take up space in our lives. 

The thing about shopping -- not just at Christmas, but anytime -- is that it's too easy for people to get caught up in the consumer mentality of wanting everything we see rather than purchasing what we really NEED. Stores and advertizing are designed in such a way that they don't encourage us to think in terms of what is necessary or what is sustainable. The markets are built on the idea of continuously increasing sales... but our homes can only hold so much, and our earth's resources (not to mention our landfills) aren't infinite either.

So next time you go shopping, do like my friend Suzanne and sing this refrain when you run into something attractive but unnecessary:

Do I need it? Or just want it?

Who convinced me that I need it, and why do I want it?

Will it make my world a better place, or will it end up taking up landfill space?

Do I need it? Or just want it?

And if you want to curse me in a cheerful sort of way, I can take it!

Christmas gift considerations

These days, we're doing our little bit of Christmas shopping in preparation for our family gatherings at Christmas time. I find shopping to be hard work because of the overwhelming choices out there. Walking through a mall on Friday, I wondered if there isn't more clothing in the world than human beings can actually make use of, and why we continually have to buy new clothes if we're not really wearing holes in most of them. When I think about these kinds of things as I shop, malls get tiresome rather quickly! And those sorts of thoughts are unavoidable if you care about the earth at all.

But I do like it when I find the right item for the right person. And these are some questions I use to determine what is right:
 1. Will the recipient really use/enjoy this gift?
 2. Is it beautiful and long lasting, or will it break down and be forgotten over time?
 3. What impact has the making of this gift had on the planet and its resources?
 4. How does this gift reflect my care for its recipient?
 5. Would Jesus give a gift like this one?
 6. Does the purchase/creation of this gift empower people or corporations? How and why?

I didn't have a lot of luck at the shopping malls with regards to these questions, so I'm hoping to pay a visit to a different sort of store later this week, and perhaps I'll post some moodlings about it. Stay tuned. 

In the meantime, here's another set of shopping criteria that I think is quite brilliant if you like acronyms (paraphrased from Lynn A. Miller, author of a book I'm trying to get my hands on called The Power of Enough: Finding Contentment by Putting Stuff in its Place, and whose RULES were quoted in “Whose Birthday is it, Anyway? 2008”):

R = recyclable – will this gift and its packaging ever return to natural elements?
U = used – why buy new when something used can be just as good, and often nicely “broken in”?
L = local – can a local variety of gift strengthen the local economy and save fossil fuels?
E = enough – how much of this gift will be used, and how much is too much?
S = sustainable – does this item add to or subtract from our planet’s sustainability?

Of course, it's not always easy to find gifts that meet all these criteria, but the closer I get, the better the gift, and the happier I am to give it!