I realize now I misnamed the blog--it should be my year without shopping for new stuff, since second hand is still fair game. Had some great second scores on the weekend. On sunday we hit a garage sale and got a cooler and a phone. Inspired by that Bill and I headed to Value Village where I got myself a summer wardrobe and Chris jeans and t-shirts--badly needed in his case as his work jeans have not much more room for patches. On monday I found an ironing board in the alley, which is perfect as some of my new summer wardrobe needs ironing. Then we headed back to the thrift stores where I got some flower pots and a pair of shoes that I can wear on the rare occasions that I need to look quasi dressed-up. I have been looking for the perfect pair of shoes for two years now with no luck, but for $7, good enough can sub in for perfect. Then, two more great found items-- flower pots sitting by the road in a pile of free stuff (so much for the yoghurt containers) and three large bobby pins that Bill spotted on the ground. And today as I was checking out some clothes beside the dumpster I fished out someone's reclycables and scored a trashy magazine--not something I would buy normally but it did for my magazine fix.
I was checking out Michelle's blog on the weekend and she asks why so many people have blogs about stuff they buy or stuff they have that they want to get rid of. Interesting question. I don't know the answer but it did get me thinking about the role of trade and the fact that human civilization is based on making stuff and trading it. Civilization got started when humans began to produce more stuff than they needed to stay alive and then started hoarding and/or trading it. Philosophy, literature, music and pretty much everything we take for granted came from making and trading stuff. Its hard to think about anything I do outside of taking a walk along the river that isn't based somehow on trade in material goods. It blows me away to think about it. A lot of it's bad but it also sustains much of what I think is great about human beings. Even though I am trying a year without buying anything new, I'm not anti-consumption, I just think we need to learn more sustainable consumption--part of that for me involves not throwing away perfectly good things and buying second-hand where feasible.
I have a theory about the wanting to get rid of stuff. As indicated above, I think that trading and acquistion are pretty natural human activities. But, I figure that until fairly recently (say post WW I) most people owned very little. The rich had lots of stuff, but the rest of just had pretty minimal possessions. That worked out pretty well because the rich also had servants to take care of their stuff. But with the rise of mass production stuff became cheap enough that all of us could buy as much stuff as the rich used to have but we had to look after it ourselves. Our age and place is unique in being able to afford lots of stuff without also having servants to tidy and dust it. Hence we feel overwhelmed.
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2 comments:
... and a lot of us move a lot, and urbanites lack storage space (unless they can afford big houses ...)
...and some of us get overwhelmed with passed on kids clothes, toys, and books. I think I'm drowning. I'd like to pass on half of the books (the ones that I can't stand reading--like Disney books. Ugh!) and most of the kids' toys. I mean really, what do they play with the most? Containers, bags, cardboard boxes, and in the case of Kim paper and pens (to the point where I raid the recycling boxes at the library at Concordia for paper for her). I bet if I passed on a toy a week to one of the organizations here in the pointe that could use them, the kids wouldn't notice. I think I'll try it.
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