Did we accomplish anything?

Did our family accomplish anything by not buying anything for Lent? Yes, I think so. The most important thing is influencing our child. Most 7 year olds don’t consider what their consuming does to the earth but Aspen is very aware. We teach her but she teaches us to.  She loves to think of new ways to use something rather than throwing it out. Sometimes this drives me crazy because I want to get rid of the clutter.  She is very happy getting used toys, clothing, etc. and is aware that this is a great way to recycle.  Probably when she’s a teenager she will be totally rebelling against us but now and I think again as a young adult these things matter to her.

Do these small efforts make any difference.  There was a great debate on treehugger.com as to whether Earth Hour made any difference at all considering backup generators kicking in when the electricity was turned off and the air pollution of millions of candles being lit. I think small efforts do matter to get people to think about their actions. Aspen wanted to “practice” for Earth Hour all week and I think that makes a difference.  She calls it “playing Laura” as in Laura Ingels from Little House on the Prairie.  The other night she turned off all the lights because we were watching a movie. I said “It’s just like Earth Hour” and she said “No, Mama the TV is using electricity.

As our “Not Buying it” project comes to an end I have in mind some things I want to go out and buy – new sneakers for Aspen, a nose hair trimmer for Tom, a cute convertible skirt/dress for me, some gin for gin and tonics. But some things that I would have gone out and bought have come and gone. For instance – I wanted to buy some clothes pins but was waiting til we were buying again, in the meantime I have found some things around the house that work just as well. You may think that a few clothes pins don’t make a huge difference in the world, but think of the packaging, the shipping and other treasures I would have found when I went shopping, it does add up.  If more people “made do” with what they have then we all would save the Earth one clothes pin at a time.

One should be able to see that things are ultimately hopeless, and yet be determined to make them otherwise.

-F. Scott Fitzgerald

Having a hard time not buying it…

This wasn’t a good time of year for us to decide not to buy anything –

-It’s Spring Break

– We’ve had a lot of visitors

-It’s My Birthday

-It’s Everyone and my sister’s Bday!

Last year we did it for Feb. (the shortest month) and that seemed to be a lot easier. I read a book “Not Buying It: My year without Shopping” by Judith Levine. She got a lot of criticism for her exceptions. But I think she did awesome considering she did a whole year and I am struggling with one month. This week my difficulty was my 7 year old daughter claiming that “Not Buying” was my rules not hers. So she scraped her money together and bought books at the Book Fair at school.

We have more company coming this weekend so we’ll see how we do with them. We are doing pretty good not buying “stuff” it’s just the other rules we inflicted upon ourselves that we are struggling against. Like no going out to dinner or paying for entertainment or buying alcohol.

Times are tough, and I’ve got too much stuff. -Jimmy Buffett “One Particular Harbor”

Still Not Buying it..

We haven’t been doing that great. We aren’t buying any unecessary consumables but we have been going out to dinner and going to events.  My family was visiting earlier this week so it was hard to say that we couldn’t go out to dinner. We tried to offer making dinner at our house, but it was my sister’s B-day so we went to dinner and then breakfast the next day. Last night we went to a baby shower at work. I knitted baby hats for presents but then I ended up buying mixings for margaritas for the party because it was Friday and everyone had a rough week. Oh well, We’ll do better this week.

Not Buying it…

For Lent this year which started last Tuesday, Our familiy decided to give up shopping.

Here are our rules:
-No buying stuff
-For groceries, no buying processed food except bread, and tortillas. So basically just buy ingredients and do our own cooking.
-No going out to dinner
-No buying wine or beer
-The hard thing is we have some plans already in place where we are buying tickets. Since it’s not “stuff” we are going to make exceptions to our prior plans. Which includes skiing this Monday with my family.

When I used to give up something for Lent – The idea was that every time I had difficulty with my promise I would think about Jesus and his sacrafice. At this point in my life I’m not doing this for religious reasons so I figure everytime I’m tempted or need to adjust my plans or thinking then I will think about the earth and the sacrafices needed to balance the give and take in our environment. Right now I think the taking is outweighing the giving.