Three month update

Three months into our year-long challenge to buy nothing new brings interesting new experiments, challenges, and emotions.  Although our family feels we’ve mostly been coasting through this exercise without much conscious effort or painful withdrawals from patterns of consumption, we’ve started to come across some funny little moments where we’re questioning the boundaries of this challenge and if they make sense.

Because our aims are to reduce cost as well as materials, and in turn environmental impact, as well as raise our consciousness about our behaviors and decisions, we’re discovering some new questions. For example, this past week, Peter’s dress shoes had worn out not just the soles but also the heels.  I called around to cobblers and found that to ‘re-build’ the heel and re-sole the shoes would cost $75 and take a few days.  Now, I’ve never actually been to a cobbler before, so I wasn’t prepared for this price.  I couldn’t help but take the shoes back home and think, it would make so much more sense to buy new ones.  I thought, even if they re-heel and re-sole these shoes, it’s only a matter of time before the rest of the construction wears out, right?  So, maybe it’s worth it to buy new ones.  And I questioned our year-long challenge.  I knew, in that moment, if we weren’t doing this challenge publicly and explicitly, we would just go buy new shoes.  But, in the spirit of following through, I dropped off the shoes and picked them up a few days later.

After a trip to the cobbler and $75, here are the re-heeled and re-soled shoes

Now, while I am surprised and impressed with the cobbler’s work, I still question whether we’ll do this again after this year is out.  Perhaps for shoes we love that are super nice shoes, we can consider minor repairs and re-soling, which, by the way, here in Melbourne costs more like $45.  But, I’m not sure we’ll justify this decision on a regular basis.  As a side note, we haven’t figured out the running shoes issue yet.  Barefoot running doesn’t seem to be catching on for us yet, so we’re just continuing to wear out our existing shoes.  Moving on…

Some things are working quite well, and we’ll probably stick to some of these habits, even post-challenge.  We’re finding that packing the kids’ lunches in old bread bags, berry punnets, and other wasted packaging is working quite well for us.  At least we’re giving that very wasteful packaging a brief second life, instead of consuming more plastic or other raw materials.  Now, a better choice would probably do what my friend Gina and her family are doing, living plastic free.  But, this is more of a challenge than we’re ready to take on in an absolute way at this point.  Although, we are trying to change some habits!

The kids’ school lunches with reclaimed packaging!

We’ve also started trying to go a bit more home-made.

My mom and dad visited recently and brought me my mom’s old sewing machine.  It seems like such a wholesome and creative way to replace some spending habits on clothes.  But, then, on reflection, buying new patterns and new fabric would seem to go into the category of things that are “new”.  For some reason, this felt counter-intuitive to the spirit of our challenge.  I think because the process of making something ourselves cuts out whole production lines of manufacturing and distribution.  This makes a homemade outfit, teddy bear, or blanket a drastic environmental improvement over a cheap K-mart (or Wal-mart) purchase.  When I look at the fabric store, I really have to wonder how they manage to make, distribute and sell something for $5 at a profit margin that justifies their existence…someone is getting the short end of that deal.  Anyway, I haven’t reconciled my feelings about this yet.  We had to work out a trade while the grandparents were here, because I was tempted to just buy that stuff new, as it seemed different to buy raw materials.  While my parents visited, they were very generous and left us with a children’s dress pattern, fabric, and some sewing odds and ends, like bobbins and thread.  So, we have projects and materials to get started, but I do feel that if we want more fabric, we’ll have to find it second-hand in spirit of this year’s challenge.  However, after this year, I think we’ll feel that buying fabric and making something with love is far better than quick and cheap consumption of a product that we know has a much higher “cost” than our hand-made piece.

Sewing lessons with my mom

We think this weekend we’ll try some home made beauty and cleaning products, maybe even try homemade glue.  The girls are particularly interested in the glue, hair masks, face-masks, etc.  So, we’ll report back on that.

Inspiration for a yogurt-based face mask

We did start using some basic cleaning recipes to test out alternatives to the packaged chemical cleaners from the grocery store, and we were pleasantly surprised to find that our 5^th grade science teachers were onto something with those baking soda and vinegar volcanoes.  Check out how easily they scoured our pans!  Very little elbow grease involved, and we sprinkled cheap baking soda, dipped our sponge in a 1 part vinegar to 4 parts water mix in a bowl and lifted tough baked on stains off in a minute.

Before home-made cleaning

Baking Soda and Vinegar

1 minute later… a clean pot!

So, we’re making some cool discoveries.  But, we’ve now encountered the Christmas and holiday season marketing.  We’re in active discussions with the kids about lots of Christmas details, and, yes, we’ve got some interesting challenges.

The kids want to know…what about a tree?  Hmmm…we don’t know what we’ll do yet.  We’ve typically bought a fresh tree the past couple of years, but we think this year it definitely falls into the “new” category.  So, we’re talking about building a tree out of found materials, but aren’t convinced on how we might do this.  Any ideas out there?

We’re also a bit sad that the wrapping paper (some of the most exciting stuff at Christmas) won’t be what it once was.  We’ll use what we have, find newspaper and recycled paper and reclaimed bows, and we’ll get over it, I suppose.  But, I think that part of the magic of Christmas is that magic and joy of waking up on Christmas morning and seeing all the beautiful wrapping that Santa and his elves have done to leave you breathless as a child!  We’ve had to talk about how we also have to ask Santa to respect our challenge and bring us things that aren’t new.  Charlie is trying very hard to go with this one but wants to know why Santa can’t bring us whatever he wants, since we’re not buying it.  Good question.  We think Santa would like what we’re doing and want to join us in our challenge at our house…

A past Christmas under the tree…a reminder that we certainly should save money this year!

It’s probably the time of year when the most consumer instincts and spending temptations kick in.  You see shiny Christmas ornaments, flashing lights, satin ribbons, dancing light-up singing electronic reindeer, an ugly snowman sweater with lights and bells…and you think, “I just have to have it!”  As we’ve walked past the shops the last few days, we’ve been tempted and had slight feelings of deprivation, which we haven’t felt until now.  It’s really fun to see Joey’s face light up when she hugs a giant teddy bear.  And, it’s hard not to wish, on some level, to just get it and see the joy on Christmas morning.  I know it’s not about a giant bear, but something about the holidays brings up those aspirations and ties them to gifts, neatly wrapped under the tree.

We’re also wondering about some of the gifts we think would be great that are hard to find second-hand:  crayons, socks, hair clips…and for us an S-hook to help hold up our hammock…seems we lost one of them in our move this year, and without something so small, we haven’t been able to use our hammock in its stand.  As we embark on the holiday season, I think we’ll be looking for all kinds of creative alternatives.  We’ll see what we find, how we adapt, and what good ideas the kids come up with.  As always, ideas and suggestions very welcome.  Especially about what to do about a tree…