Better Make It A Double

Compact Update

I’m probably overdue in giving an update on how the Compact is going.  We are still going strong, over halfway there now. With few exceptions, it has become an ingrained habit to buy used, go without, or wait. We did buy a brand-spanking-new rain barrel the other day. It was through a county program that saved us over half off the retail cost, and since re-directing our rainwater is a worthy thing to be doing for the environment and a rain barrel lasts a good long time, we thought that made sense. We bought a wireless router for $50 – the exact one we needed was unavailable, and we can’t get internet access without it. We spent a bit of money in the Netherlands. . It was technically a gift, as a family member gave us some Euros. We bought a few mementos, some authentic “Made in Holland" clogs for the boys to match the ones J and I received before our wedding, and a used bell to be hung by our back door. Other than that, we’ve stuck to the plan. It’s nice to know that this is possible for so long – that we can live with adding so little stuff to our house and using so few resources compared to before. J and I haven’t made any decisions yet about whether we’ll continue after January, but I have a possible plan forming in my mind. I’m thinking that maybe we could spend the whole “compact year” making a careful list of what we might eventually need to buy new, and then take advantage of the sales in January to purchase those items, like new shoes, or a computer part we can’t find used. Then we could do the compact for the rest of the year. I’ll have to see what J thinks about that.

We’ve gotten through some gift-giving situations pretty well so far, I think. It helps to be able to just tell people what we’re doing. For Caro’s daughter’s 3^rd birthday, we grew her a basil plant from seed and put it in a nice pot we had, and made her a nice batch of homemade play dough (which, by the way, is vastly superior to the “real” stuff, and easy to make, even if it does require a dust mask for gluten-intolerant me). We put it in a yellow Tupperware container and decorated that, and made her a homemade card. It all seemed to go over fine. I’m already thinking about Christmas. We’ll probably be at my parents’ house in New York,but even if we’re not, we’ll need to bring gifts for whoever we are with. I’m not the craftiest person. I might see if I can dry some of the mint and chamomile in my garden and find some pretty way to make gifts of tea. Maybe I can sew some nice bags for it out of extra fabric I’ve had sitting in my closet for years. Thankfully, we can buy “consumables” as well as charitable gift certificates and services. Some combination of those will probably work – maybe some nice soaps in a basket we already have, shaving cream, a donation to the Heifer Project, a massage gift certificate, etc. Just nothing that ultimately increases the “stuff” most of us are getting buried under.

I’ve been actively working to increase the amount of trading, borrowing, lending, and bartering I do with people, and the biggest challenge seems to be making “equal” trades. I am making progress in swapping childcare and "date nights". A friend from church and I are now doing this on a regular schedule, and we live  close by, so  we can either drive a short distance or walk. A few people have been amazingly generous when it comes to lending or even giving us needed items when they’ve heard about what we’re doing. I have also been able to pass a lot of stuff onto other people, as well as lend items so that people don’t have to buy them. I don’t expect anything in return when I give something away – I figure I’m “paying it forward” – but I do struggle with not giving anything in return to the folks who’ve given us stuff. I have to take it on faith that they feel just as I do when I pass on stuff – happy to get it out of the house and to someone who can use it. I don’t know why that’s so hard, but it is. It’s pride, really, but I do think we’re better givers (or Servants, in the Christian vernacular) when we are humble enough to be receivers too. Allowing the give and take of giving and receiving, trusting that if we are humble receivers and generous givers it will all work out in the end, is part of creating a community. That’s much easier to believe in principal than in practice though. The cultural forces that tell us that we’re all on our own, that we should never receive anything that we didn’t earn ourselves, are powerful. 

lean

What’s harder to talk about, do you think: money, or sex? I find it interesting that even as people have a hard time being frank about both of these topics, we are literally surrounded by media blather about them. Sex sells, and money will make you happy, or so go the messages most of us are bombarded with every day, from billboards, magazines, TV, even ads staring at us while we pee in public bathrooms. Both topics also involve a lot of secrecy. People are, in most middle-class circles anyway, probably about as likely to talk about how much they make as they are likely to spill what they do (or don’t do) in the bedroom.

But, this is a blog, and it’s what’s on my mind, and I know that I’m not alone in struggling with the issue of money even if it feels like I am. As I’ve said, money has been tight. This fact has been extremely stressful and preoccupying for me lately. It has been very difficult for me to relax since our savings account got as low as it has. We have made some pretty major changes, cutting out everything from the Y membership to babysitters. Doing the Compact is helping some. Basically, we don’t spend money on anything we don’t have to right now. J is down a few piano students, and it’s a tough time of year to find new ones. Our property taxes are up (though our house value is significantly down), the cost of health care and prescriptions has gone up tremendously to over $600 a month, we’re paying off an assessment, and the cost of food is way up. The cost of both natural gas and gasoline are also way up. All at the same time. Sound familiar, America?

We talked with a financial adviser recently who convinced me that while our budget is quite lean, we’re not in crisis, and we should be OK if we increase our income a little. We’re working on it – doing a little advertising, looking at various options for J’s musical talents. We’re going to have to do it with no childcare, and that’ll always be hard. There are a few other factors playing into my stress, though; factors that are easier to ignore when the savings account is more flush. I come from an upper-middle-class background, and while I certainly don’t expect to live that kind of lifestyle on our income, it is always staring me in the face. I spoke with my mom the other day, and she asked me how things were. I told her about our recent calamities involving a couple of thousand dollars we do not have to spare, and she told me that she had a crappy day too, because the lawn chair cushions she had ordered custom from a tailor came out wrong and needed to be re-done. At no charge, mind you, but the chairs look so bare. On the veranda of their 2^nd home. Conversations like that make me resentful and somehow a little ashamed –a fact that I’m not proud of. The expectations that I was raised with: that I would either get a job that pays very well or at least marry well, die hard. In subtle and not-so-subtle ways, I was raised with the idea that hard work = money, and that a responsible person has a flush savings account, maxes out their retirement inputs, and has money left over to save for their kids’ college funds.

In the abstract, I do know that people with less money most often do not work less hard, and that people can be “responsible” and still struggle. Furthermore, many of the people I personally know that don’t make much money are in that situation because of their values –because they are committing their lives to working with kids, or doing nonprofit work. J and I work very hard, with no childcare:  me half-time at a nonprofit working with community benefit programs and hospital patient families and J teaching piano and playing piano for church. I could work more at a different job, but the cost of daycare would likely offset any increase in income. We don’t spend excessively; right now we don’t even buy anything new. We’ve never just put things we want on credit cards, taken vacations we can’t afford, or started January with massive holiday bills. Doing the Compact has been fairly easy for us because we were already pretty frugal.

Lately, though, it hasn’t been enough. We’re still spending more than we take in, and the changes we’ve had to make have been a bit more painful, involved a bit more humility. One of those changes involves going back on WIC. We had WIC when the boys were babies, and I was off work for a few months after months of bed rest. I recently figured out that we still qualify, and we can get vouchers for all of our milk, cheese, peanut butter, and beans until the boys are 5. I knew that would help quite a bit, but to be honest,  I cringed at the thought of going back into that office. Two years ago, my “worker” was a 22-year old fresh out of a rural college, full of pep and passion for educating the disadvantaged about nutrition and literacy. Her assumption seemed to be that you’d only breastfeed, feed your kids real food and read them books with her chirpy enthusiasm as your guide, and she had a complete lack of understanding that the sooner she quit giving me a breast-is-best pep talk (not that I’d ever indicated I was thinking of stopping), the sooner I could get home and feed the babies that were squawking next to me. It was an exercise in tolerant humility—which is undoubtedly a good thing for me to have endured—but it didn’t make me look forward to going back.

Thankfully, the “lesson” I was to learn this time was not the same one. If last time I learned a little about how it feels to have one’s lower income conflated with not reading to one’s children or giving them proper nutrition, this time I learned a little more about my own assumptions. As I was buzzed in the entrance door, the first person I saw was another church member with her own two kids. She smiled warmly and we greeted each other, though she was called up right then and we didn’t get a chance to talk. The boys played sweetly with the other kids in the waiting area until we were called up by our worker, a 30-something Somali woman. We joked easily as she weighed, measured, and finger-pricked my boys, and when we went over the options for our food “package” (you can make different choices based on your family’s preference), she shared some helpful tips based on what she did for her family with her WIC package. Of course, I thought. Anyone in her position with more than one kid probably qualifies for WIC – as will my old chirpy 22-year-old worker someday, unless she marries someone who makes a lot more than she does. My own values – or rather, my ability to live up to them –were staring me in the face. I work with the “disadvantaged” myself. How are my assumptions affecting those interactions?

Really, I need an attitude adjustment about as much as we need a bit more money coming in. I need to remember that whatever my background, I am in solidarity with people who struggle in all kinds of ways, and that solidarity is often borne of direct familiarity with that struggle. I also need to remember that we’re doing our best. We’re not spend-thrifts, we’re not trying to keep up with the Joneses, and we’re certainly not lazy. We’re just part of the struggling lower-middle-class, like millions of Americans are, especially in this ailing economy. And really, we’re doing a lot of things right. We get to spend a lot of time with our kids, even if the four of us are rarely together all at once.  Our boys eat really well, and they’ll be going to a great preschool. We may get all our clothing used, but they have nice, neat clothing to wear. We may not have money for fancy Lego sets, but used blocks, books from the library, toys given as gifts and even chickens provide plenty of entertainment. We live in a culture of tremendous excess, and in some ways it is our lean budget that helps shelter the boys from that. It is connected to our decision to grow some of our own food, to go camping for a vacation, to explore some of the wonderful free events around town that the boys enjoy as much as they’d enjoy a trip to ChuckECheese or a bouncy house warehouse. It is also connected to teaching them about institutions that promote interdependence: libraries, parks and playgrounds, public transportation, even seeing their Sunday School buddies in our local WIC office. I’m all for these things, and not just for “other” people, not just in theory. Usually, that’s not too hard to remember, but I admit that it is frustrating sometimes to be around people who assume everyone enjoys their standard of living, who invites you to lunch at a place you can’t afford, refers to off-brand clothes as “cheap-looking”, or ropes you into a group gift that’s beyond your means.

I also know that, responsible or not, many Americans are heading into real financial crisis. Many hard-working people are losing their homes, their savings, or their retirement funds. I doubt the economy has bottomed out – in fact, as we’re moving into a real global energy crisis, I’m not sure that concept even has meaning in the same way is used to. Peak oil is happening (or has happened), with no real solution in sight, and the economy of the last 60 years has been built on the availability of cheap oil. I think it’s quite likely that we’re looking at a rapidly changing world, a major restructuring of the world’s economy*. It’s scary.

This is a time when we really need to be looking at things like frugality, growing food closer to home, using fewer resources, and less energy. It is also, as I have been reminded lately, a time when solidarity and interdependence will even more important than they've always been. Skills like cooking from scratch and growing and putting up food are again becoming important as the cost of fuel and food rise. A lot of these skills have been lost over the last couple of generations, but at least where I live, there has been an explosion in community gardening, Farmer’s Markets, cooking classes and the like. Our local light rail is hugely popular and packed to the gills, and even our Republican governor couldn’t resist the vocal demand for an expansion of its lines. Garage sales are doing a brisk business, as are bulletin boards like Craig’s List, as people get better and finding each other to reuse and re-sell all the junk they’ve accumulated. The re-sale value of cars with better MPG are going up, and used SUV’s are getting harder to unload. Lean times have a way of teaching us better habits, and I’m personally amazed at how possible it is to live well on less money.  It seems like I have all kinds of lessons to learn.

It isn’t living like this that’s making it hard for me to relax – it’s not having enough of a buffer against unforeseen events. I'd take the Scandinavian trade-off of really high taxes and a real safety net any day, but we don't have that option in this country. If we could get our savings account back up to where it needs to be, I think I could live like this indefinitely without feeling so stressed by it. Meanwhile, I guess I will have to accept that our buffer is not our savings account, it’s our community and the institutions that help make it possible to live well on less actual money. People who live and grew up in true poverty are probably much better at this than I am, but I’m learning, and we do at least have a fair bit of “social capital”. And while I would absolutely hate to resort to it, I wouldn’t be honest if I didn’t admit that we could get help from family in a true emergency.

I really hope these rather lean times pass someday, but at least I will always have the skills and perspective I’ve gained from them. My treasure is not in my bank account.

What have you done to survive lean times?

*For more information about this, consider renting The End of Suburbia.

state of the Compact

I was recently asked if we’d managed to stick to our goals with the Compact so far, so I guess it’s time to give a little update:

We’ve done pretty well except for the chrome detailing on our Focus, the ornamental lawn jockey J brought home “on sale”, and the monogrammed tea towels from Macy’s that I couldn’t resist.

OK – early April Fool’s. Actually, we’ve done pretty darn well so far, and we’re going into the fourth month. I have bought sandals for the boys, but these are on our exception list, and I paid for ¾ of them with a Gift Card. Our only real “lapse” (as in, nonessential and not on our exception list) has been a $10 USB cord, which was very frustrating, because I found the original the next day after over a week of fruitless searching. It was exactly the kind of purchase I’d been trying to avoid, but nobody’s perfect.

Honestly, the Compact hasn’t been very difficult. Over time, in fits and starts, we’ve made major progress as far as getting rid of stuff, and I’m enjoying using my foraging instincts at the library and through the use of a little ingenuity here and there.

The other day, I realized that while mulch from Home Depot might technically qualify as a consumable good, buying it in bags didn’t really fit what I’m trying to do. I also just want to stay out of Home Depot. Literally as I was thinking about this, I noticed that there was a good sized crew of men pruning the gorgeous oak tree across the street. Hmmmm. I tapped on the shoulder of one of young men with ear protection on, and after apologizing for surprising him, asked what he’d charge for some mulch in our driveway. Nothing, it turns out – it’s good PR for them and saves them a trip to empty their dump truck. We now have a mountain of lovely oak and pine mulch in our driveway, where it can sit as long as it needs to since we don’t park inside our garage anyway. I can use it for the garden and for the chicken run, as well as share some with neighbors and family. Awesome. Were it not for the Compact and the fact that I can’t imagine trying to get through the season sans mulch, I probably wouldn’t have been bold enough to ask. I’ve gotten rid of about 2/3 of my clothes since January, and I’m a little short of items in a few categories. At my MOPS group a few weeks ago, we were talking about decluttering and Spring cleaning, and the idea of doing a toy, book, and clothing swap came up. Last week, I got rid of trunkload of stuff and came home with some new toys and books, a brand-new pair of Bjorn shoes that someone had incorrectly mail-ordered and not returned (but fit me perfectly), and a nice bag of summer clothes. I made sure to actually try all the clothes on before bringing them home. All the extra from the swap went right to a charitable program in the basement of the church.

I have noticed to two major psychological effects of doing the Compact over time. One, I am just more aware of all the ways and times that we’re advertised to. I can’t help but see it differently when shopping isn’t an option – I can better see the advertiser’s claim for what it is when considering its worth is out of the question. When I see an ad for a makeup company product that promises to “improve my look, improve my life”, I don’t have to ask, however semi-consciously, whether that’s true and whether I should consider putting it in my mental shopping cart. My reaction is more likely to be along the lines of “That makeup company is promising to improve my life! The nerve! Hilarious!” There’s something a little surreal about the billboards these days.

The other major effect is that I’m not so constantly overwhelmed by having to make choices. My tolerance for being in Target or a major grocery store is actually lower, and that’s a little inconvenient when I do have to buy sandals or a USB cord (yes, that woman who was staring blankly at the size 10 sandals at Target for 20 minutes was me), but overall, I think not having to constantly make those yes/no/maybe shopping decisions is freeing and less stressful than shopping all the time is. I think that type of evaluating can rob us of creative and intellectual energy. Instead of asking “which political party” or “which alternative energy source” or “which word choice” or “which color of oil paint on my canvass”, it’s possible to use up all that energy on making consumer choices. It’s kind of like the questions all get asked for us, and they’re all “which” and “how many” questions instead of “why”, and “how” questions. I’ve been writing a lot, and I think part of the reason is that my brain is a little less full of shopping noise. The irony, of course, is that we shop to relax, or at least we think we do. I don’t think those trips to Target were as relaxing as they seemed, and they certainly didn’t give me any real creative energy.

I know this all sounds rather rosy and cheery, but I’m being honest when I say it’s pretty much all been good. I really did expect it to be harder. I think this has a lot to do with my particular personality: I am just a lot better at turning the switch to “OFF” than I am at checking my shopping habits through constant evaluation. I like the “OFF” setting – what I’m actually most concerned about is when the Compact is over. I hope some of my new habits will really stick long-term. Another factor that has made the adjustment so doable is the fact that I already bought almost all of the boys’ and most of our clothing used.

I think one area where I could use some work is on non-essential on-the-fly consumables, like coffee from coffee shops. I’ve gotten a bit looser about this kind of expense since my spending is so limited in other areas right now, but I’d like to be better about it. J and I are also looking to take better advantage of my job’s public transportation subsidy and save on fossil fuels and increasing gas prices.

J and I are considering getting another laptop computer, as since we now have 24/7 access to municipal wireless, J could make more efficient use of downtime if he could drag it with him some days. Plus, we’re always using the computer one at a time and then not hanging out together because we need our “turn”, which is a bummer. Laptops are available used, but we’ll need a small, lightweight one with wireless. The one we have is big, heavy, and more powerful than he’d need. Anyone know of good sources of used laptops and maybe a laptop backpack that’s not too conspicuous when walking home from the train late at night?

Too Little / Too Much

I read an essay recently that talked about finding the balance between Too Little and Too Much. I’d venture that most Americans are far more acquainted with Too Much than Too Little when it comes to material possessions, even if most of us worry at least a little about major expenses like retirement and health care and last I heard, a full 10% of American kids are actually short on food for some of the month. It’s occurred to me that this isn’t just a problem of all of us wanting too much stuff. A culture that values excessive and conspicuous consumption is indeed part of the problem, but like health care and social security, it’s partly a problem because of our lack off effective cooperation. We feel like we have Too Little because in order to get anything done around the house, take care of our kids in an emergency, learn about how to accomplish something new, anything, so many of us are on our own. Family is the one welcome exception, but for most of us, that’s really about it if we even have that at all. Too Much is a half-baked illusion of an answer to Too Little of something other than the material goods that are filling up our basement, attics, and storage spaces.

There just isn’t much between Too Much and Too Little when you have no support, when you can’t just borrow a tool, pick a good friend’s brain about a parenting dilemma, borrow an extra car now and then, or even a cup of flour or an hour of two of babysitting in an emergency. Without support from a larger network than immediate family is usually able to realistically provide, we tend to spend our efforts creating fortresses that aim to avoid Too Little. Unfortunately, these fortresses just serve to reinforce habits of non-cooperation. So many of us have half a car more than we need or really want to pay for, have arsenals of tools virtually identical to that of our neighbor’s and friends’, buy things we need once because borrowing just isn’t really done in this culture. Libraries are a wonderful exception, but I am amazed at the amount of avid print readers I know that rarely, if ever, set foot inside one.

One of the areas I really want to work on in this year of the Compact is for our family to find cooperative solutions to some of our needs and to better share some of what we have to offer. We have supportive and helpful family near and far, but we would both benefit from and have something to offer to stronger, more extended networks.

My wish list:

• To find a few trusted people to swap childcare with on occasion. My sister-in-law and I already do this for date nights, and a group of us from my church that live in the same neighborhood are looking to set something up together. I’m excited about this for several reasons, not the least of which is that my kids may grow up knowing the kids they see every Sunday much better than they otherwise would. We have a practical need for a few hours of this kind of care a month, and we’d rather do a swap than pay for a regular babysitter.

• To find cooperative ways to take care of kids some of the time in a more “tribal” way. For example, a couple of friends and I could trade off watching our 6 kids together and gardening and doing yard work at each other’s houses once a week this summer, sharing a simple outdoor potluck meal together afterwards. Every week, one person could make a big main dish, another bring a salad and another a side dish, making dinner prep simple for two out of three of us. The “host” could weed, dig, whatever, while the other two watched the kids, maybe helping for a minute here or there, engaging the kids in helping, or taking them on a walk or trike ride up and down the block. If it rained, we could set up an indoor craft project and have one mess to clean up that day instead of three. If a baby was particularly clingy or something, one of the other parents could pitch in with some weeding or watering at the host’s house. Three moms or dads with 6 kids between them could probably watch all 6 more efficiently than three parents with 2 kids apiece, and weeding and whatnot is a lot more fun when you have company. Kids could help when interested, and play with “new” toys and each other. No obsessively cleaning the house beforehand allowed – nobody loves the parent of young children who raises the bar!

• To find some socially acceptable and not-too-complicated way to let friends know what we have to lend and find out what we might be able to borrow so that we aren’t caught in the trap of buying stuff we rarely use and better share the stuff we already have.

• To share some of our home-grown produce with the food shelf this summer. I just found out that I can drop it off right at an enormous former Victory Garden and current community garden that’s on my route to here and there anyway. I’m actually on the waiting list for a plot in this garden. It’ll be great when the boys are four or five and are more able to both help and play on their own. Frankly, even with three big raised beds, I’m out of land. I could easily just do beans and tomatoes for canning on my home plots and do the rest at the community garden. Maybe then I’ll find someone to trade some watering of my plot for chicken manure.

• To share excess chicken compost (we’re getting three more pullets in a few weeks, so the amount we have now will be doubled) with someone in exchange for some pile-turning, which is a killer with my bad back. I think J's youngest sister, who has a community garden plot of her own less than two blocks from her apartment this summer, has agreed to do this at least once, and we’ll fill a couple of landscape bags and deliver it to her plot. I was actually contacted by an organic landscaping company about manure, but I’m not willing to part with as much as they need.

Though we’ve never lived in an intentional community or anything, J and I actually have a fair bit of experience in "cooperative living". Either J’s youngest sister or our friend D have lived with us on and off for years, always offering house sitting, babysitting, yard work, cooking, and good company in return. J’s family is close by, and they’re a wonderfully helpful and cooperative bunch. Their willingness to lend time, skills, and goods are a wonderful example to me, since I didn’t live near extended family for most of my childhood, and live far from them now. Last summer, my father-in-law was kind enough to indulge my crazy idea of building a backyard chicken coop, and now my in-laws get first dibs on eggs.

My Christian denomination (Mennonite) has a rich tradition of mutual aid, and we share everything from time, to talent, to money and resources within the congregation. When I was pregnant and on bed rest, both my church and the church where J works brought us meals for weeks. That continued after the boys came home with us, along with a regular group of baby rockers. People I barely knew gave us gifts, and one kind soul even dropped a giant box of newborn diapers anonymously on our front steps. By now, with three year old twins, I'm finally feeling like I'm not just surviving, like I can offer that type of love to other people again. All of the support our family has from friends and family makes it possible to resist filling up our home (and working even more to pay for) an arsenal of stuff to fortify us against ever feeling like we have Too Little. We have time and talents, and things to lend and exchange, as well as a wealth of community to draw upon that should only become richer as the years go by. All we have to do is stay put and put a little effort into engaging with the people that are in our lives.

unstuffed

I cleaned out my closet yesterday and put about one-third of them in the throw pile to be given to charity. I went into it determined to be ruthless, and I was. I had way too many clothes I didn’t wear, and couldn’t access them all properly simply because my closet was too stuffed. Having too many clothes makes it too easy to focus on the kids’ laundry and let my own go. I wanted to, as a recent article I read suggested, group most of my clothes into ready-to-wear outfits with also-matching shirts or pants next to the complete outfits.

So yesterday, during a rare couple of hours at home without kids, I pulled everything onto the bed and did the first purge. Anything with anything at all wrong with it – worn, missing a button, anything – went. Then I started grouping and hanging up the complete outfits. The hardest part was sorting what was left – I liked some of the pieces, but didn’t have much to wear them with. I did what another tip in the same article suggested: I imagined if I’d ever miss it. That was really helpful, because the answer was almost always “no”. When I was done, all the outfits hung in neat, ready to wear rows, all the knits were folded in manageable piles on the shelves. There is room to spare, and for the time-being, I’ve left the closet open, because I smile every time I look at it. We’ve already gone through the socks, and I went through my underwear drawer with the same ruthlessness, chucking a fair bit of the drawer’s contents.

This morning, J put a bag the size of a large ottoman inside the car to go to Saver’s. I pulled a few things out for friends – nursing tanks, nursing pajamas, some never-worn underwear that was a tad too small. The rest is gone, gone, gone.  Today, I went to Saver’s and used the 20% off coupon I received in exchange for my donation to purchase a few summer clothes for the boys. I even found summer pj’s for them.

I’d gotten stalled a bit. Fatigue got to me over the last few weeks – I’ve been working on a few things from home, and I’ve been busy and a bit overwhelmed. The kids have been high-maintenance, and I’m often just a bit deflated by the time they’re in bed. When I get like that, I need to remember how good it feels to streamline, to purge, and to no longer live a life stuffed to the gills.

fear

So, a little more about Lent. I’m losing a bit of momentum with the cleaning and purging, and part of what’s standing in my way is fatigue. I’m so tired at the end of the day, and so I do more sedentary stuff. But, I also go to bed too late, either because I start the cleaning and purging and organizing too late, or because I actually stay up too late in front of the computer. I’m not immune to getting sucked into a screen even without the TV, and I think the main “suck” is blog reading. I really don’t want to give this up, because I’m a blogger myself, and unlike TV, I really value all the relationships I have in the blog world. I enjoy it and I am enriched by it. You guys mean the world to me, and are a legitimate part of the community in my life. Nonetheless, I know I’d go to bed earlier,  get more sleep, and have more energy to tackle the clutter and the basement if I spent less time reading blogs.

So, for Lent, I’m giving up my super-long Bloglines list. I created a separate one with just 10 blogs on it (and no, I’m not telling), mostly family and friends who don’t post much, but if I want to read anyone else, I’ll have to look them up for the next month and a half. If I’m not commenting in your neck of the woods and did, I’m sure I’ll be back, but I’m going to take this time to find a little more balance and get a little more rest. I’m also going to use a timer for my computer usage unless I’m actually writing. I really need to clean up some essays and articles and get some queries out there, and while blogging is a wonderful and enjoyable form of writing, it competes with the time I have to write essays and articles. It’s so much easier, with so much more immediate reward and feedback, to write a blog post than an article. I don’t know if I’ll be blogging less during Lent—I’ve really been feeling like posting lately, and I feel like writing about the Compact is an important part of doing the Compact—but I might.

And the truth is, I’m also afraid. I lack confidence as a writer sometimes, and I think I find a lot of safety and support in the blogging format. It’s not just more work, it’s also a lot scarier to send a perfected version of something out there and have it possibly be rejected, and it’s harder to have to wait for a response or receive no response at all. But I think I just need to do it anyway. I want to write, to be a writer. I don’t have an English degree or any fancy letters after my name, and that holds me back sometimes. Pursuing a more well-rounded education in English or writing is such a distant dream I don’t even think about it most days. It simply isn’t possible anytime soon, and may never happen. Instead, I start thinking that other writers have all this context and knowledge about writing that I don’t have, which is probably true, and there’s this little voice inside that chides me for even thinking I can do this.

But what’s the worst thing that could happen if I put my writing out there a bit more? It’s not like I’m trying to publish a novel or write for the New York Times right now. Rejection isn’t the end of the world. Fear is a big monster to tame, but if that’s possibly the biggest thing standing in my way, even if I do have a lot to learn, then I think it’s probably worth taming. So, during Lent, I’m also trying to whisper kind and encouraging thoughts to myself, the same kinds of things I often whisper to my children: One step at a time. Keep working at it. Practice. Keep trying. Be brave..

desert time

It’s Lent. I appreciate the purpose of Lent so much; I almost think I’d participate on some level even if I wasn’t a Christian. This time to really reflect on the purpose of one’s life, a whole 40+ days every year along with other Christians who also find meaning in this ritual is a wonderful thing.  Lenten time is spare, introspective, simple, and quiet. It can be dark, it can be painful, and it can be transformative. We wait together for the resurrection, for the revealed promise of Jesus’s everlasting covenant with us, and we hopefully come into the annual celebration of that resurrection a bit more able to know our place in the world as Christians, how we want to spend the time we have left on earth and emerge together into a Spring of eternal hope. We hopefully come out of Lent, which represents Jesus's time in the desert, a bit more ready to know where our treasure is, to serve God instead of money and things, to joyfully serve each other instead of the competing impulses and drives that lead us away from God and each other. I need my time in the desert every year, confronting temptation and reflecting on what kind of person I want to be.

This year, I kind of feel like I’ve already been in a bit of an extended time of Lent. I’ve already given something up through the Compact, and I think it is having the transformative effect that letting go of something or fasting  during Lent is supposed to. And it is a bit painful at times. I am frustrated by how much of our time goes to serving our stuff – in shopping, cleaning, sorting and maintaining, instead of having our stuff serve us. The rare (extremely rare) free time J and I have together during the day usually goes to cleaning and sorting. I have so much work to do before I’ll feel like I’ve really gotten somewhere.  I’m starting to see that the simplicity I seek will only come if we just get rid of a whole lot of stuff. This purge, if you will, is painstaking work, full of negotiations and drudgery. J and I have some talking to do about this, and we don’t always agree. It is satisfying, deeply satisfying at times, but it’s not always easy to stay motivated. I am so determined, though, to see it through, to take full advantage of this Lenten year I’ve chosen, to pare down and embrace what’s most meaningful to me and help make that more possible for my family.

I realize that not everyone who reads this will find this meaningful, but here is some scripture that I’ve been reflecting on lately. The bible has quite a lot to say about money, gluttony, and the sharing of resources. So much, in fact, that I’m kind of struck by how little Christians talk about it all, both in church and outside of church:

Luke 16:13 (NIV) "No servant can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money."

Matthew 6:19-21 (NIV) "Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal.For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also."

Luke 8:14 (NIV) "The seed that fell among thorns stands for those who hear, but as they go on their way they are choked by life's worries, riches and pleasures, and they do not mature."

 

Entertainment

I’ve been thinking a lot about the concept of entertainment. What is it exactly? Why is it valued so much above other things? The often cozy marriage between entertainment and consumption is interesting to me, and I hope you'll forgive my working my thought out on this, because I don't have as many conclusions as I have observations. What I observe is that our kids are trained, by us, to seek entertainment from birth. They're wired to seek connection and knowledge, but trained to seek entertainment. Press a button and hear the little song. Watch the screen. Beg for the new toy. The younger the person in this culture, the better trained at seeking entertainment they’re probably going to be. My own generation is trained like seals at the zoo, and this rides on a false dichotomy in this culture that says that the opposite of entertainment is deprivation. I think that’s a dangerous and devastating lie. Unfortunately, it’s a lie that’s fed to us daily in many small doses, and I'm as guilty as anyone of swallowing that lie at times.

In order to define what I’m trying to get at, I’ll try to lay out some definitions. To me, it’s helpful to think about the concept of entertainment in terms of pure entertainment versus engaged enjoyment. I would say that something that involves some creative part of oneself, perhaps some spiritual edification, some connection to another person or people, or some form of learning are all forms of engaged enjoyment. Making music together, listening to live music, watching a film about something that interests you and talking about it afterwards with your companion, gardening, playing board games, playing softball with friends, taking a walk or having coffee with someone, making block towers or playing make-believe with kids, are all forms of engaged enjoyment. In other words, it’s not just painting canvasses, visiting museums, or writing novels that I’m talking about. Examples of the other extreme would be gambling alone at a slot machine, watching most television programs (especially alone), reading celebrity mags, or for a kid, playing video games or pressing buttons to make the lights flash and the song play. Obviously, there’s an awful lot in the middle.

As I see it, the problem with pure entertainment, at least in any kind of extreme, is that if we partake regularly of the media that offers its continual siren song, we tend to get stuck in that mode, that need and desire to be constantly entertained instead of engaged and thereby edified in some way. This desire seriously affects how American kids and adults spend their time. Households with a TV in every room and every member of the family silently watching alone are common. Households where kids spend far more time watching TV than talking with family members are extremely common, maybe even the norm. Some kids start begging for entertainment the moment they get up, watching TV before school and on the way to school in the car. Kids and adults alike play video games these days, and we go from place to place in our Ipod bubbles and our cars, tuning out the noises of our surroundings. Water cooler talk at the office often revolves around whether this or that source of entertainment is a good value. Kids in this culture can have an intense fear of boredom, of inadequate access to entertainment, and managing that desire is an exhausting chore for a lot of their parents, sometimes dominating their daily interactions. Camping, singing or talking in the car, reading books out loud past age 5, and board games are actually becoming quaint pastimes that are made fun of on TV. We are stuck in a culture of treats and amenities, and extras that make us feel falsely nurtured. If we are stuck in this mode, we will never win, because it will never feel like enough. And that’s the point: to keep us in a constant state of the desire to be effortlessly entertained and to consume.

Consumerism competes directly with citizenship, and the contrast between this intense desire to be entertained and the lack of movement towards changes that would really benefit Americans is striking.. What if we put all that energy into demanding things that might make us feel less vulnerable, like universal access to a good education and affordable health care? We live in a society where even as we have tremendous wealth, almost nobody isn’t vulnerable to disaster, even the rich. Almost anyone can lose access to health care under the right circumstances, for instance. The average American household has a negative net worth and thousands of dollars in credit card debt. A medical crisis can put even the most responsible American middle-class household into bankruptcy. What if we dealt with our insecurities and our feelings of lack and want by making sure that our collective basic needs were better taken care of? Is it possible that there’s a connection between that stress and vulnerability so many of us feel and the need to consume, to be entertained, to be nurtured by an economy and social system on whose tides we all rise and fall? The real needs of people, to feel connected and secure, are obscured by a gaping maw of lack an want.

For me, part of doing the Compact is trying to think more about entertainment’s role in my life. I’m trying to let go of the desire to be constantly entertained somehow, a desire that I admit has a tendency to affect how I spend my time. I’m trying to remind myself more often that we weren’t born with some kind of inborn desire to shop and be mindlessly entertained. What is it exactly, that I really desire when I think I want those things? What is lacking, spiritually, when I drown out the voice of God with busyness and noise in order to avoid the questions that come in the quiet? What do I fear?

Even in starting from a position of strength, I have a long ways to go, though I have a lot of interests and hobbies, and a lot of friends and family to connect with. Going on my fourth year of mothering my boys, I am thankfully emerging a bit from the cocoon of early childhood, integrating more fully once again into the larger community. I was pretty involved in all kinds of stuff before the boys were born. While I was on bed-rest for 13 weeks, my whole world was about entertainment, television, and reading crappy magazines, because thinking about reality was just too difficult and painful, but that part of my life is over now. I am trying to be a part of the growing local sustainability movement by connecting with other people with similar interests, organizing and attending get-togethers around these issues through church and other venues, helping to raise awareness of the importance of mutual aid and human networks. Food issues are a natural fit for me in that regard, with my love of the outdoors, gardening, and even urban poultry-raising. And while that is “work” to some extent, it is joyful, engaged work that involves a creative part of myself. There simply isn’t time for that and pure entertainment, and when I think about what I want for my children, I just want so much more for them than the tyranny of the desire to be entertained. I want them to follow God, to find out what gifts God gave them, and to be able to be joyful in using those gifts. Because that’s what they are: gifts. I want my whole family to work together to be able to, as Frederick Buechner put it "respond to that place where the world's deepest hunger and our deepest joy meet. "

the shopping brain

With no small amount of sheepishness, I confess that I’m kind of amazed at what I’m not buying, and even more, how often I nonetheless still catch myself mentally “browsing” whenever I’m anywhere that sells anything. Passing a vending machine (I can't even eat 90% of what's in there). The display rack at the car wash. The gift shop at the hospital when I get a candy bar. The kids t-shirt display at the Rec Center.

I mean really, shouldn’t I be able to just turn off “shopping mode” at places like this, places where I’d never intentionally set out to shop? It’s ridiculous. I’ve tried to keep a mental tally of the kind of stuff that I end up buying that I haven’t, but I’m quite sure I’m missing some of it.

Since just last Thursday morning:

2 cute kids “Mpls Pa*rks Department” t-shirts, half off at $10 apiece, to support Rec Centerscholarships. (I tried to just give $5 to the scholarship fund, but they had no idea how to take my check without giving me a shirt.)

All natural car smell spray (just get rid of the stray snack bags and open the windows for a couple of hours, for Pete’s sake) at $3.89

A few ornaments at the hospital gift shop for next year at 75% off at about $1.20 apiece (let’s say $4.80 for 4)

A lovely $12 lunch tote with cardinals and blossoms on it from the W*edge, presumably to inspire me to bring my lunch from home more often ($12)

Some coloring books for the boys ($5)

not spent =$45.60, not including tax

That’s a lot of stuff we don’t need, and the only thing I really even remotely coveted was the lunch tote. Still, I’m clearly a sucker for the “deal” under $20. Those “deals” can add up fast. I think that because women do so much of the shopping for the family, we are more trained to shop.Well, stated like that, that sounds pretty obvious, but more so, I think we're also trained to "scan", to mentally consider our options wherever we go. I am sure there are women out there who don't have this nasty habit, but I'm equally sure that some women are even worse than I am. I have a friend who once fell into the habit of spending 3-8 hours a week shopping online. She only bought a few things a week, but it took hours out of her life and put a few thousands onto her VISA. She felt a lot better, and slept better at night, when she cut the cord, stored her credit card far away from her computer, and used a timer for her internet usage. I'll never forget her description of falling asleep with the scrolling bounty on the screen still burned into her retinas.

I've started saving time too, lately. I made one big Tar*get trip to get TP and kitty litter, toothbrushes and the like, and I tried to get enough to last a few months so I can just stay out of there for a while. The weekly Tar*get trip had become as much of a routine as grocery shopping. I've been staying away from Saver's too, since even though I can technically buy used while Compacting, I'm trying really hard to clean out our junk before I bring more stuff into the house. At some point, I'll need to buy the boys shorts for summer, but I think we're pretty set for now.

I’ve been thinking a lot about how very many decisions we all have to make every single day in this culture. The amount of variety we have to choose from everywhere we go is so stressful and overwhelming for a lot of us, even if it is disguised as forms of freedom and abundance. If find that I am more and more resistant to stores that have a gazillion options, even if those same stores might offer the best value on paper. It costs a lot more to shop at the co-op, and my main reasons for shopping there have more to do with being able to find gluten-free items, healthy items, and supporting local companies and farmers. Garbage in, garbage out, as they say –and this applies to the business as well as the product and its consumers.

But another reason is more subtle. I’m also just happier choosing from 4-6 kinds of tomato sauce than I am choosing from 20, and so on for my entire shopping list. At my co-op, they do a nice job of selecting quality in general, I can special order something if I need it at a case discount, and they always appreciate feedback. The cost is high, but it’s another incentive to simplify and pare down in other areas, cook more from scratch, and buy in bulk when items are on sale. Now I need to stay out of co-op’s vast and increasingly in-your-face gift section, because for the next 11 months at least, I have no business browsing there.

And all of that is part of the point, I guess. Who do I want to serve in a day, anyway? Not Ta*rget, and not "stuff". I am more than a consumer, and the time and energy I devote to being a consumer should be more in proportion with what I want for my life. I want to serve God,  my community, my friends, my family. I want to cherish  the natural world, the creative world, and time with other people. Every minute I spend looking for a "goody" while waiting at the car wash or mindlessly trolling shopping websites for "deals", not to mention working to pay for it all, takes away from that.

It is my hope that after this year, my “shopping brain” will be a lot quieter.

 

 

 

bullseye

An interesting and welcome revelation has been sinking in lately. I'll get to that, but in order for that to make any real sense, I have to explain two things about myself, both of which require me to be very honest.

1. I like to shop. No, I've never liked malls, but I don't like bright, loud flashy places even if they don't sell stuff. I hate sports arenas too, for example. I've never been the type to go shopping with friends, but I do however, enjoy a good "bargain", I enjoy imagining one or another of life's problem's solved, and I enjoy the idleness of considering all the possibilities.

2. I've never been a great sorter and purger. Stuff goes in, and not enough stuff goes out. I'm not a hoarder - I can let go of stuff just fine if I can sort it properly and just get it to where it needs to go. It just doesn't happen nearly often enough. Having two kids was a killer: we both had waaay more stuff ending up down there and a fraction of the energy left to deal with it. Until recently, our basement was quickly filling up for lack of attention to sorting and purging.

Now for the revelation: It turns out that I actually enjoy sorting and purging more than I enjoy shopping and acquiring. This is news to me, and I wonder what took me so long to realize it. I mean, it's not as if I really always have time and energy to do both. I think there are a few reasons. The biggest by far is that my back is often sore, and all the bending involved in cleaning out the basement makes it worse. Another is that while going to Tar*get is clean, well-lit and orderly, cleaning out the basement is messy, dusty and it's kind of gloomy down there. Another reason I forget how great it feels to sort and purge though, is media related. I'm less vulnerable to this now that we've gotten rid of the TV, but nothing on the TV or in the paper or on the radio is ever likely to tell you that you'll feel great if you just go down there and have at it. No, the TV is pretty much just going to tell you to buy more stuff to put in your basement, and the lovely Real Simple spread or Source feature in the Strib is going to tell you which streamlined organizing equipment you need to get started.

While I've often enjoyed the discovery of a good "deal", there was a downside to that enjoyment. Follow me around Tar*get for quick trip after the boys are in bed to buy cat litter and hair ties. I could be spending time with my spouse, or writing, or cleaning, but I feel like getting out of the house and we really need cat litter. So I go in, I grab that familiar red cart from the row of carts just beyond the sliding doors, and off I go, like a slow mule out of a chute. I am verily gliding down the linoleum, and to my right we have the women's clothing section, which I glance at, wondering if I should make my way back to the sale racks for a quick peek. I decide no. Same for men's clothing just around the corner. I spy all the plastic totes on sale at an end cap and I stop, almost putting one in my cart, imagining a neat row of transparent, labeled totes in my basement. I fail to make up my mind, fretting over the $7.99, and double back through the baby and toddler section. I am vaguely on the lookout for pajamas, but can't find any I like in their size, though it takes 10 minutes of looking through 4 crowded clearance racks to figure that out. Annoyed, I'm relieved to see that sweatpants are on sale, that lovely red sticker beaming an unbelievable $1.99 a pair. I throw two of each of the next couple sizes in my cart, feeling almost rich with the perceived savings. I'm pretty sure we need sweats in the next two sizes, though admittedly not certain. I remember that I have a nasty habit of forgetting what's in the kids clothing totes I have, not being able to see through the sides. I dart back over the home organization section and toss the transparent tote back in. Only I can't find a lid that goes with that particular tote, so I need one that costs the full price of $9.99. I spend a full five minutes agonizing over this before concluding that $2.00 can't possibly be that important. Off go me, my cart, 4 pairs of sweat pants and a giant plastic bin.

As I pass through the yard section, I toss in some packets of 99 cent seeds, as well as a pair of garden gloves. I smile as I think about Spring, subconsciously grateful to Targ*et for reminding me that winter will end someday. I go through the kitchenware department and admire the sleek new line of implements, spending a full ten minutes there despite the fact that I have three canisters of wooden, metal and silicone implements and I have no intention of getting more. By now, I am in a daze, gliding through various departments, my head darting back and forth in a shopper's game of no, yes, or maybe. I go past the book section and select a couple of coloring books for $99 apiece. I glance at the NYT bestseller's display. I glance at my watch and am shocked to find that a full hour has gone by. What did I need? Oh yes, kitty litter. I find it, and rather than adding the two boxes that would keep me from needing to come back anytime soon, I add only one. After all, I'm already spending quite a bit, and there's not much room left in my cart.

I wait in line, not stopping my game of yes, no, maybe even in the checkout line. I add one more item  - a 49 cent little flashlight for my key chain that will somehow never makes it's way home. Neither do the hair ties I needed, because I forgot to get  them entirely.

Walking to my car, I am slighty elated at the thought of organizing the stuff in my basement, the thought of washing the nice new sweats, and also vaguely nauseous. I try, not entirely successfully, not to think about the following: Did I really need a single thing in my shiny red bag other than the kitty litter? Can we afford this trip when you add it to all the other, similar trips? If I'd only purchased the kitty litter and hair ties, would I feel even a teensy bit more deprived the next day, or even the next hour than if I'd left it all on the shelves at Tar*get? Will J be asleep when I come home? What will end up in my cart when I go back for the hair ties?

Back to our basement. Since joining the Compact, I've been making a real effort to get rid of something every single day. Some goes to the garbage, some to the Thrift store, some will go to family members and friends with younger kids, and some to the clothing closet at work.  I still don't always like getting started. Today, my back is killing me, and I popped a painkiller before sitting down to write this. But I feel almost giddy at the thought that I may soon have no more than we really use, that I might be able to find what I need right where I left it. I love seeing the open space downstairs. I love knowing that doing this is keeping me from wasting and spending needlessly.

Every single time I walk out the back or front door with a bag or box full of stuff, I feel great in a lasting, liberating way that shopping has never brought me.