We went into a super expensive store in Canmore a few weeks ago and I found a little sweater tank top deal that I loved for $140. No thank you. But I thought, I could make that. So I went to the thrift store and got this lovely sweater for $5. This was the outcome:
I am quite happy with the result and I can’t tell you how fun it was to cut the mamoth sweater into bits. It was really quite theraputic.
We are five months pregnant, so I have been trying to use what I have for clothes and alter here and there as not to buy a totally new wardrobe. I have been really fortunate to have some good friends lend me some things as well.
I saw a beautiful mobile on this website and I thought I would try it out for our new little one. I love it because it doesn’t look like a Winnie the Pooh mobile, but it is still interesting and I think our little babe will like looking at it. I tried to use more manly colors for the birds (since we are having another little man). I found this drift wood on our camping trip this summer and I have been saving it for this occasion.
I have to get some hooks to put it all together and hang it up.
So, it has been almost a week since our officially official compact came to an end. I have been really quite grumpy this week. I am struggling with feeling guilty and mad when about to buy something or in a place where I could buy something. It is really annoying to myself and others around me (ie: my poor husband).
I have discovered through the years that I am an “all or nothing” kind of gal. I think this is where the majority of my struggle is coming from. For the last year, I have thought of shopping as “bad.” Now that it is “allowed” again, I still have it in my head that it is bad and I think badly about myself when I do buy something. There are some things in life that you just need to buy new. For example, my iron has been leaking water for the last… well year. I have tried to find one at a thrift store, but to no avail. So, purchase number one of this new year, an iron. I bought it from Canadian Tire (at least it is Canadian) but, let me tell you people, I don’t think it is possible to find a fair trade iron! This annoys me to no end, because I can’t feel good about my purchase and I just feel like a consumer again. How do ideals and reality come together in life?
I think I am a little broken and I need to give myself a break. I am a conscious consumer. I do think before I buy. I am not going on a huge shopping spree of things I don’t need. I am just having a little difficulty adapting and not living a life governed by strict rules. Not having strict rules is harder for me than having them.
As 2008 drew to a close last night Malora and I both felt very proud and relieved about what we had done throughout the past year. We went an entire year without buying anything new. No shopping malls - No Old Navy. Nothing. We didn’t cheat or break down and we stayed the course for one whole year.
It was an interesting journey and I never expected to get the attention that we got. I think Malora and I have both been significantly changed in the way we view our relationship to money and the stuff we buy. I think we learned to be more generous and view everything we have as a gift from God.
So what’s next? We got an email from a guy who encouraged us to keep the compact going indefinitely. Although I agree that we do not want to end this fast by gorging oursleves on consumption - I think that our year long experiencement of the Compact life is over. Now we have the difficult task of living within (or below) our means in a consumeristic society. It is much easier not to be consumed by shopping when you have rules against it, but the real test is living within that society without being consumed by it.
As we struggle to find balance within the culture of consumption we will continue to write posts about our experiences. The experiment is over for us - but the experience is not because it has deeply altered who we are and how we live in this world. There are definitely certain principles and rules that we will live by now that I will expound on later. We have become conscientious conscious consumers.
Thank you to every one who was a part of this journey with us. Thank you for the encouragement, prayers, emails, comments, and ideas. Thank you for reading our blog and being an integral part of this past year. Thanks for sharing our story. We are very thankful for everyone who has been impacted in any small way by our compact life.
So that’s it. Our year is over - but our new life begins today.
I posted last week that we were going to be on the CBC National news. We got bumped from the program that evening and we were not sure if we were going to be on it at all. It was kind of embarrassing because we told a bunch of people that we were going to be on - then we weren’t. Oh well!
I got some emails this morning saying that people saw us on the CBC news last night. We looked online and we found our cute little story on cbc.ca. It is really cool that we got to be on TV throughout Canada. If you saw it let us know, if not I have posted the video here (still working on it - I have a link to CBC site).
It is really encouraging to hear the stories of people who have been inspired by what we did and now are trying to make small changes in their own lives. I guess that was part of the purpose behind why did, what we did this past year. The encourage others to reconsider how their consumption affects their lives and the lives of the people around them.
We made it through Christmas in our year without shopping. Christmas was the one holiday that I was worried about because it is the most obviously consumer based holiday (next to groundhogs day). The music, art, and spirit of Christmas are all bound up in the trappings of gifts and shopping. No more ranting on that.
It was the first Christmas in a long time that Malora and I did not get the “Christmas blues”. The feeling of disappointment that Christmas is over and that it didn’t live up to the hype. It is so nice to bind Christmas up in Christ instead of what presents we can give and get. When you focus on the true meaning of Christmas instead of the consumeristic meaning of Christmas - there is absolute meaning to the holiday.
We have less then a week left in our compact life and I can feel the temptation coming back to shop. I sort of wish we could continue this little experiencement on for the years to come, but I think we need to take a sabbath from our sabbath. Malora and I will both share some closing thoughts in the days a head. But for now I have a qoute from a really good book I am reading by Shane Claiborne called Becoming the Answer to Our Prayers:
The moment that we are no longer tempted by the “pots of meat” the empire offers, we should be concerned - for if we can’t feel the temptation , we have probably already given in to it (pg. 45)
We are supposed to be on the CBC National news tonight at 10pm. It is exciting to share our story with all of Canada. I will try to upload the video after it airs.
I have been a busy little elf trying to get Christmas gifts ready for one and all. Well, not really all. A few. I wanted to show my new Christmas card I created that I am really quite pleased with. I was able to reuse brown paper bags from some mushrooms and from Planet Organic (I forgot my cloth bags the other day). And I re purposed some magnetic poetry that I haven’t been using for a while. Here is the end result:
I used some fun green thread the fasten the brown paper to the card. It was super easy and I think they are cute.
Here is Noah’s Sock monkey thus far. I still haven’t committed on the cape.
Also, I found this wonderful idea on the Wee Wonderfuls blog. It is a cute little bookmark which I think everyone can use. So, here is my simplified version of her fabulous idea:
So there you have it. A few super simple little gifts for Christmas. I have a few others, but a certain someone may be lurking on here and find out what he is getting before the designated time;)
We were featured on CityTV’s Breakfast Television. The host, Dave Kelly, interviewed us about our past year and our eating habits while driving. He was a really funny, nice guy and I think we will definitely tune into BTV more often (once we get rabbit ears that are not broken). It was a lot of fun being on the show and I am glad we can share the video online.
Noah stole the show - as usual. Especially the outro with him waving! Click on the picture to go to the video or click here
We are coming to the end of our experiencement of not shopping for one year. Only three more weeks to go but we still have the largest brick wall ahead of us: Christmas.
Ask any kid and they will tell you that the true meaning of Christmas is getting presents. Sure, when asked in Sunday school they might say Jesus, but we all remember being kids wondering, hoping, and dreaming about what we would get for Christmas. Even as adults we still make the focus of Christmas about what presents we are going to get for our kids. Even though the wise men had a good idea in bringing presents for the new born King, I think we have really messed things up with our focus on what we can get and give.
Luckily there are some people who are trying to bring the real meaning of Christmas back. Bringing back charity, hope, kindess, justice, love, compassion, and Christ into this ridiculously crazy holiday season.
The Advent Conspiracy is group who is trying to encourage people to spend less on presents and more on those in need. By reducing the amount of presents that we give we are able to support the efforts of those working with people in need. Building water wells in Africa, homes for homeless families in Mexico, and reaching out to those around us in need. Started by a community of churches in Portland including Imago Dei, the Advent Conspiracy is striving to reduce suffering by reducing our consumption this Christmas.
Buy Nothing Day is an international day of protest against consumerism observed by social activists. It was started by some Vancouver artists and Adbusters magazine. It is usually celebrated on the day after American Thanksgiving or Black Friday. Their goal is to encourage people to find any alternative to shopping on that day.
This video is from the Philadelphia BND celebration. The guy dressed up like a clown on stilts is one of my heros, Shane Claiborne. He started the Simple Way a community of people dedicated to living and loving like Christ. He is crazy and awesome and I love him. When he was in college he called Mother Terresa and asked if he could come to Calcutta to help for a summer and she said yes so he came. Check out his books (link).
Buy Nothing Christmas
Buy Nothing Christmas is like Buy Nothing Day except it is for Christmas time. This website was started by a bunch of Mennonites from Winnepeg. I like the picture - I liked it so much I made it my facebook profile (that is true like).
There are a lot of other people out there who are trying to make a difference in this world by changing the way that they shop. I have found that if we can refocus ourselves, especially at Christmas, from thinking about our own needs and start thinking about the needs of others we can make a tremendous impact.
It is going to take a community of people willing to go against the grain and try something new and different this Christmas.
Do you know any other stories of people or groups who are providing an alternative to the rampant consumerism that generally resounds during Christmas? Share them in the comments section.
It is simply appalling that our greed has reached the point where we will literally trample people to death to get a deal on something. When the stuff that we consume, consumes us and turns us into robots with no concern for anything other then what we can get, we have become a hopeless society.
If you watched this video or have read the news reports about this worker in a New York Wal-Mart who was trampled to death you have no doubt been struck by the absolute absurdity of this situation. Shoppers ripped the doors off of their hinges and then proceeded to trample an employee of the store. None of the savage shoppers stopped to help him and continued to shop despite the fact that a man had lost his life in the mad dash. Police finally ushered shoppers out of the store with their possessions in hand.
People continued to shop! What have we become? This is absolutely insane!
There was also a shoot out at a Toys ‘R US in California which left two men dead. When did we become so lost that we were willing to murder other people in the name of capitalism. The other horrific stories which do not make it into the main stream press are the effects which our chronic consumption has on the environment and the third world countries which produce the stuff we buy at Wal-Mart.
Now is the time to stand up and say “Enough!” It kills me when people point out that the Wal-Mart is the only company that is able to grow in the midsts of this economic melt down. That is becuase Wal-Mart exploits more people around the world then any other company. It is the biggest company in the world and thus the most harmful and evil company in the world. I wish that this slumping economy caused people to buy local instead of filling the bank accounts of Sam Walton’s kids and the Chinese manufacturing companies who make the plastic crap at Wal-Mart.
I urge you to boycott Wal-Mart this Christmas. We as a family have not shopped there for a long time and we have not missed anything. Buy local. Help the local economy by turning your back on Wal-Mart and supporting local smaller businesses. There is always an alternative but the choice is up to you.
Nobody should loose their life over consumerism. Nobody should be trampled to death becuase of a sale. Nobody should have a shoot-out in a children’s toy store. We must change or there is no hope left for anyone. Change your consumer habits and it will change the world.
