Living Our Values in the Day-to-Day

It is so very easy to lose sight of the big picture, particularly when it comes to making mundane, daily decisions in an ethical way. Budget, convenience, location, aesthetics, all of these factors have interfered at one time or another with trying to live our lives in a more sustainable way. There's also the fitting-in factor; its not uncommon to see people towing their groceries by bike in the city but it sure is weird out here in the suburbs.

As I reflect on the past few years of our life as a family and focus my energy on the forthcoming year, I find myself feeling sheepish at how much we've slipped away from our intentions. Its an ebb and flow, really, and we're not totally lost. Our ideals are still there, the intentions, the discussions - the foundation is solid. Its in the day-to-day that we really screw up.

I took the trash out two weeks ago and was gobsmacked by how much we had accumulated in one week. We're some of the most "sustainable" people we know and yet we throw out so.much.crap. I stumbled upon zero-waste blogs through an article about a Paris capsule wardrobe and I've gone down the rabbit-hole. I cannot stop thinking about ways to reduce our waste and remove poorly-made, disposable or shortly-lived items out of our lives.

I read somewhere that the practice of sustainability is like a table, held up by concepts like frugality, simplicity and some other good stuff that I cannot remember for the life of me now but I'm sure I agree with. Reading the article, I thought "yesssssss". Gardening, permaculture, and the big picture concepts are what turns Jay's crank when it comes to "greening" our lives. For me, its the smaller details that get me going: buying less and buying with quality in mind, choosing fair trade and ethical products, thinking of how our daily choices impact the earth and other people. That $5 t shirt is a bargain for me, but it sure costs a lot to the earth and the person who made it. Minimalism and simplicity appeal because life with young children is chaotic and my brain naturally hums along at a good clip; I crave space and peace and time not spent consuming or cleaning what has been consumed. Jay and I will each play our part in holding up our sustainability table, by focusing on what we are naturally drawn to. That's a comforting thought.

I've been furiously "Pinning" and scribbling notes in my notebook as I come across ideas, blogs and articles. I've decided to organize my thoughts a little bit. Going forward, here are some of my areas of focus (noting that its all connected, buying less is minimalist but its also frugal and sustainable)

1. Making our upcoming renos more sustainable. Some materials have already been purchased from big-box stores, but other purchases can be made more mindfully while staying in budget.

2. Slowly moving away from plastic and disposable items. We've done without paper towels for a few years now (which people think is SO WEIRD when they come over), but there's so much more we can do. Kiss your Spider-man toothbrush goodbye kids, its going to be bamboo from here on out.

3. Buying less, buying in bulk, buying second-hand and buying items with non-toxic ingredients. Buying only what's needed, repairing what we can, making what cannot be purchased frugally, mindfully or fair-trade.

Daunting? Perhaps. Inspiring? Hells to the yes.

This blogger is my spirit animal

I discovered, and devoured, a new blog last night over a glass of wine.  Called Paris-To-Go, it is written by an American living in Paris (jealous), who is passionate about minimalism, sustainability, fashion, travel and healthy living. Pretty much all of the things that really get me going.

I was so very happy to stumble upon this gem because I sometimes feel a bit lost in the world of "green living", permaculture and sustainability. Although I know this is silly, it sometimes feels as though there isn't a place in that world for someone who feels naked without a good red lipstick. I've often had to encourage myself to find a balance between the side of me that loves being stylish, having a nicely decorated home, and eating delicious food with the side that is passionate about homemade things, sustainability and minimalism. Its nice to see an example of someone who is really living those values, something I'm still and always striving to do.

Its worth reading the blog simply for the author's writing style. A sample, about eating out gluten-free "I have one rule when dining sans gluten - it should taste like gluten. I don't go out to eat healthy. I eat out so I can press the skin on my arm down afterwards and feel coagulated blood." 

Amazing.

I don’t want that

source

I’ve felt subtle shift in how I view making purchases in the last few years but even more so in the last few months, since embarking on a journey to blow up our debt.
Just the simple act of asking myself a few questions: “do I really need this?” “how much is there left in the home/grocery/clothing budget for this month?” “Is this exactly what I’m looking for or am I just looking to buy something?” has really made an impact not just on how much I spend but on how much I want to spend.
I don’t really want to buy anything anymore. This is very strange for me.
I was recently in a store I love that was having a70% off sale. Much to my surprise, I didn’t want to buy anything. The prices were amazing, the clothing was lovely as always, there was a lot of things I liked. I just didn’t want any of it.
So weird.
I’ve been chewing over this for the last week or so. In the past, just driving up to the store would have made my heart beat faster and I would have felt excited. I would have swept through the store, accumulating a huge pile of things to try on and would have had a hard time convincing myself to leave any or all of it behind. I would have had a totally distorted idea of what I needed. So this experience was a real shift for me.
Its made me realize how much this money saving and simplicity journey has impacted my motivations and values as well as my choices. I’m not restricting myself consciously from buying things anymore – I’ve just started intuitively turning away from buying stuff all of the time. Its really quite refreshing, if unfamiliar.
It will be interesting to see how this evolves over time, especially when our debt is paid off and our disposable income increases by several hundred dollars a month. Will I go back to wanting to buy all the time or is this the new me?

“That’s Just Psycho” : On Being a Hippie Weirdo In the ‘Burbs

Sometimes I forget that we’re a bit “different” than a lot of folks in our immediate community. We don’t have cable, so we aren’t exposed to a lot of advertising. Some of our friends share a bit of our weirdness and those that don’t are used to us by now. Our families will sometimes ask questions, and our neighbors did double-takes last summer when we turned our front lawn into a garden, but overall I don’t often feel like the way we live is that far outside of the “norm”.

Don’t get me wrong, we are by no means cutting-edge in our approach to life. Our commitment to environmentalism, simplicity, frugality and breaking free of consumerism is deep and true, but in practice we are still refining things and finding our own way. We are relatively new to this urban/suburban homesteading thing.  There are far “greener” families than ours, that’s for sure. 

So I was really surprised a few weeks ago, when at a housewarming party for a work colleague, another colleague referred to me making my own yogurt as “psycho”. I don’t think she meant the comment to be terribly negative, but I found it odd that such a thing would be considered all that weird. The next week at the office, I overhead a group of women talking about it: “Did you know Kathryn makes her own yogurt?!” “Really? WHY?” “I could never do that”.

Last week my oldest son didn’t eat his school lunches. As it turns out, one of the other children told him his quinoa burger looked “weird” and “gross” and wondered why he didn’t have a “normal” lunch. Never mind that my son had been scarfing down the quinoa burgers like they were chocolate while helping me pack the lunch. He wanted a “normal” lunch too, which he informed me was things like chicken nuggets (store-bought), cheese strings, yogurt tubes and the like. He’s only 4. I thought I had more time until this stuff came up.

Last summer we put a garden in on the vacant lot next to us, with permission from the owners. You would have been forgiven for thinking we were planting pot, if you’d gone by the neighbors reactions. People looped around the street twice in their cars, slowing down to stare. People stopped us and asked us about what in the heck we were doing. Did we own this land now? Why would we put a garden in there? Does this mean anyone was allowed to eat the food ? People dumped their garbage in the garden. The by-law office was called because we used wood chips as mulch and someone didn’t like the looks of that. We were a bit flabbergasted – it wasn’t a meth lab for goodness sake, how can a garden be so controversial?

I’m not trying to sound self-righteous. We are by no means a family of eco-warriors, although we do aspire to be. We’re a two car family (for now) and we make many choices that are less than ideal from an environmental perspective. And while I do understand that some of the things we value and ds are not, shall we say, mainstream, its a little bit strange and isolating to feel so different from my peers. Moreover, I really worry about our kids feeling different as they get older. I believe in what we're doing, wholeheartedly. I truly feel that the only way we're going to make an impact on climate change is to stop trying to make everything convenient and easy, and rather re-learn some "old" skills like frugality, gardening, and cooking and most of all, learn to consume less. Its going to take a radical shift in values but its the kind of change that's actually achieved in small steps in our day-to-day lives with those little choices, like whether to bike or drive to the library or whether to make some yogurt at home or buy a 12-pack of disposable little containers of it.

Its a journey not a destination, and I don't think anyone should be criticized for whether they are on that journey. While I do think we are all going to have to change whether we like it or not because, lets face it, our current levels of consumption are completely unsustainable, we'll all have to find our own way in our own time. I'm in a much different place today than I was three or four years ago and I'd like to find a way to use my experiences as examples to my peers, so that growing much of one's own food on a suburban lot while working and raising young children doesn't seem totally impossible. I've spent a lot of my life trying not to be different or weird or anywhere outside of the norm. Its a silly and ultimately futile exercise anyway. Perhaps now is the time to just accept that as a family we do march to a different beat and that's ok. Hopefully we'll get some folks to join us along the way.

Paid in cash

We bought a new car, and we paid for it in cash.

So what, you may ask? And I'll be honest, its a "new-to-us" car rather than a brand new one, but this is a big deal for us. We have a good family income, but previous debts from our school years and from some foolish spending in our early 20s have been haunting us for awhile. The debt cycle is a vicious one and we often found ourselves paying off one debt and immediately incurring another, foolishly paying interest every month, and lamenting the amount of money we bled towards debt repayment that could have been used for savings or vacations.

A key factor in the decision to sell our bigger house and buy a smaller one was to facilitate the repayment of these debts. We were able to pay off a few of them and increase our payments towards the remainder. We were also able to buy what we needed for the new house in cash, as well as this car.

It feels great.

So good, in fact, that its bolstered our resolve to continue this path of decreasing the "stuff" in our life, buying less, saving more, and getting rid of that debt. Its a short-term goal now, rather than something we hope to do down the road. We have to be mindful of how easy it is to fall back into the credit trap - throwing something on the credit card because we feel we "need" it RIGHT NOW, promising ourselves to pay it off immediately, and instead just paying minimum amounts while we spend the money on other stuff. Yuck. No desire to go down that road again, so for now we'll be proud of this accomplishment and pledge to continue down this path of financial responsibility.