great glebe garage sale (2) + "buying mind"

Bought a few small "prizes" for kids for our block party as well as a few small block party games yesterday. Bought no new things today.

The most difficult thing about no-new-things is when it impinges on someone else (birthdays are the best example). Michal was one of the organizers for kid's games for our block party and so we felt we had to buy new things (balloons for water balloons, some rings to play a hoop game, string for three-legged races etc) so that she could organize.

The Great Glebe Garage sale was, as predicted, amazing. Joel was out at 7:00 am and I met him half an hour later. We got our best finds in that first hour but one great treasure trove--a (broken!) chair, old antique wood thing and old quilts all at one place--was found at the very end of the day. I love the festive feel of the day, live music on front lawns and street corners, people's stuff displayed everywhere with that haphazard look of a closet unpacked and spread across the grass. We gave each of the kids $5 to spend and Ben spent his all at once on a stuffed animal that is as big as he is.

The other day Ben went with his friend and his friend's dad to Boomerang (secondhand store with some new stuff close to here). His friend bought a disc shooter and Ben has been longing for one ever since. I told him he could buy something secondhand at Boomerang with his own money and he has been begging me to go ever since. We headed there this afternoon. Disappointment was Ben's first response. There was nothing he wanted! But after looking for awhile he was happy with two things he found (a model car set and a mini-golf game, $6 and $2 respectively). He was trying on (used) shorts when his eye spotted the disc shooter his friend had bought. He asked if he could get it early. I said no. He then came up with fifty or so reasons why he needed it now. His desire and frustration escalated as I kept saying no. I noted two things: 1) it is much easier to say no when we have this no-more-new-things policy. He knows about it and knows it is inflexible; 2) even so, this time Ben--for the first time since we began 2 months ago-- was really really upset about not being able to buy something. And I wondered if he was in some sort of "buying mind" space: just so completely focused on buying something that he couldn't be logical and couldn't let go of this desire *to buy.* I've often noticed that he sometimes gets fixed on wanting something but that it is more about *buying* the thing than playing with it that motivates him. He can beg and beg for something, Joel or I may give in (before our no-buying policy!) and then Ben forgets about this most-desired item in a matter of hours. Interestingly, as soon as we left the store Ben was fine again. You would have never known he'd been utterly beside himself only moments earlier. The trick, I think, is not to get into this buying mentality in the first place.

Andre wrote a comment on my last post that deserves an entirely new posting in response. I'll save that for tomorrow or one day later this week!

great glebe garage sale (1)

Bought no new things yesterday or today.

Tomorrow is the great glebe garage sale. Under ordinary circumstances, this is an amazing event, one of the best of the year. But under our no-new-things circumstances we are looking more forward to it than ever before. And so I have to go to sleep early in anticipation of our entire neighbourhood selling great used things (no new things! or at least hardly any) starting at 7 tomorrow morning!

The Weather of Buying

Bought no new things today.

In fact, it was too hot to buy new things today (35 degrees). Or to do anything for that matter. Which makes me wonder about the relationship between weather and shopping. Do people shop more in good weather? Is there shopping weather just as there's shopping music and shopping lighting? If so, I would guess that hot weather would not be good for consumer activity (with the exception, possibly, of fans, air conditioners, light shirts, and ice cream). Hot weather is also not good for blog posting alas! It is too hot to think.

Not Needing Much

Bought no new things today (or for the past six or seven days)

The last week has been my first long break from this blog (with the exception of my one "flowers" entry). I was at our cottage and not only were there no new things to buy but I also did not find myself thinking about buying things. I had a backlog of buying-related topics I'd wanted to write on but they all evaporated while I was there.

I did finish the book *Not Buying It* while I was at the cottage. Levine came to the same conclusions after a year that I'd come to after a month (hah!) But I'm sure she probably came to those conclusions earlier on. And she had a much much tougher project. The main point: she didn't need much. Today in the G&M there was an article on a guy who had lost his fortune to Bernie Madoff (a fortune ironically made on selling books about simple living). His conclusion: you don't need much to be happy. It's obvious of course. But we have *felt* the reality of that more from not buying new things than we did when we just knew intellectually that we didn't need that much.

Michal, who has been so good about not getting anything new, recently found out she won a (new) digital camera in a contest for a poster she designed. She receives it tomorrow. And so she is getting one HUGE and unexpected new thing in the middle of this project. She's excited about it. It's interesting to watch. Is it the camera? Or is it winning? Or is it both?

Flowers

Bought flower planters for our porch the day before yesterday; Bought hooks to hang the planters yesterday; Bought no new things today.

Brenda and I are at the cottage now and so I will have a constant stream of “bought no new things today” for the next few days since there are no new things to buy here.

On the flowers front: I debated about the planters. The flowers are biodegradeable; the plastic pots are not. Plus there’s the slippery slope problem: once we had the planters we needed the hooks and who knows what we’ll need next. Well, okay, probably nothing in this case but it reminded me of how often buying one thing leads to buying another thing.

Cut flowers are also a question mark for me. The flowers themselves are not strictly speaking things and seem okay as long as I don’t get them with all the wrappings. There are still the questions of transport, pesticides, using arable land for a luxury item . . . . What else? I’m sure there are other problems as well. But then I’m always reminded of something Ted often repeats (citing mom who apparently is citing granddad): if you have $2 left in your savings you should spend $1 on bread and the other $1 on flowers. I like that.

Stockpiling

Bought no new things today.

Since we started this project a month and a half ago we have bought no new: soap, shampoo or conditioner, dishwashing or dishwasher detergent, tinfoil, saran wrap, handcream etc. This is not because we have gone without these things but because we have *so many of these things* already sitting around the house. Is this normal? Do families usually have multiple bottles of shampoo, trillions of soaps etc? I'm thinking of all the space this sort of stuff takes up (both physical and psychological).

I have run out of little baggies (and not replaced them--it's a category that's a bit on the fence but we can get by without). Tinfoil is another story. We're about to run out (I'm rationing) and I think it should be the same category as baggies--we should get by--but I can't imagine doing so. I ran out of my conditioner but now I just use Joel's (which actually isn't as good). I ran out of my favourite soap but am feeling some satisfaction working through all the other soaps.

I'm thinking about making shampoo and conditioner from recipes I found online when our current supplies run out. I may be taking this too far :) . . . .

Wood (again and again!)

Bought no new things today.

Last night after writing my posting about Joel's wood purchase I turned again to Levine's *Not Buying It* (which I am reading exceptionally slowly--a few pages a day only--because it is not the sort of book one zooms through) and I came across the following passage:

"Paul brings home $500 worth of Mill's Pride coated particle board closet drawers, shelves, dividers, and poles from Home Depot. It's a permissible purchase, since it's part of the new construction" (189).

This is written by a woman, you may recall, who is buying next to nothing for *an entire year*; she and her partner, Paul, don't go to cafes, they don't go to restaurants, they don't go to movies, or music events, or theatre. They don't buy wine! And yet she breezily announces on p. 189 that wood is okay! I almost leapt out of bed to update my blog immediately. I must have missed this exemption when she noted it at the beginning of the book because I don't remember anything about it. We're doing nothing even remotely close to what Levine and her partner did. And yet if we take our guidelines from the strictest, austerest of the strict and austere: wood is okay!

This evening, at any rate, I thought it was more than okay. Joel showed me what he'd been making in the basement and it is truly spectacular. I literally could not believe he'd done it by himself. I'll try to take pictures for another post. Ted, he's even incorporated old windows into our new storage unit. It looks amazing.

Wood

Joel bought wood today (again!)

He's thinking that maybe wood should have been on our initial exemption list (a necessary item we can't live without???). He might make a case for this in some future post . . .

There *has* been a lot of hammering and sawing coming from the basement these past few days.

I bought no new things today. Ben wanted a new book. Michal wanted a new lunchbox. Oh well, so much for quenching the desire for new things.

Time and Money

Bought no new things today.
Someone I was talking to recently said that it must take us a lot longer to get things (seeking out used things, making things, thinking about how to deal with things we used to buy) than it used to. I agreed. I had suggested that point in an earlier post as well (re. bicycles): it takes longer, but I still prefer it. On reflection, though, I don't think we spend any more time getting the things that we need than we used to. But we have saved time seeking out, thinking about, weighing the options on, putting away, things *we don't need*. And so, in the end, I think we spend *less* time getting things than we used to and now we only have the things that we need. On balance, we save time and money!

Less is more . . .

Bought no new things today.
Here are two quotations from architects that I came across today:

"Less is more." Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe

"Less is a bore." Robert Venturi

You choose.

A conundrum: tonight Joel was searching on the internet for a used book for Michal. He found the book used but with shipping costs it was more expensive than it would be to buy it new. I said: buy it used anyway. He said: but it costs more! For me, adding new (and necessary) things to the world trumps cost. Joel's not so sure. To add to the issue: shipping itself involves fossil fuels, labour, packaging. And so at what point does it cancel out the new-thingness of the new thing?

New Habits and a Necklace

Bought no new things the day before yesterday; Joel bought 2x4s yesterday; today we bought small styrofoam balls for Michal.

I think at some point in the past five days or so I have entirely forgotten about buying or not buying new things. That is, it has become a habit not to buy new things. It's interesting. It wasn't that way at first. Even though it wasn't that difficult I did think about it. Weirdly, in a way, I miss thinking about it, noticing my patterns, and being aware of them (although writing this blog does force me to think about it at least at the end of the day). And, on the positive side, my new not-buying habit probably now frees me up to notice different things. I was really intrigued (actually, fascinated) buy how prominent consumption was in my life before this no-new-things project. At that point, I didn't notice how much I was buying and to what degree it was a reflex (I didn't think of ways of doing things otherwise).

About the styrofoam balls: Michal needed them for a school project (she had to make an imaginary planet; she'd already done most of it with papier mache but was stumped by circular houses she needed to make). After some discussion we all decided (with the exception of Ben who couldn't see why caps shouldn't fit into this category) that if Joel and I get exemptions for work-related items then Michal should have an exemption for a necessary school-related item. On the work-buying front, btw, I have not bought a single new thing in the past 40 days (and I don't think Joel has either). Actually, I did buy 2 new books in the early days but haven't since. I had anticipated buying a lot of work-related things (if only to satisfy that desire to consume) but have not even been tempted. Nevertheless, when we run out of printer paper that will be a necessary purchase.

On the Mother's Day front, Michal made me truffles (delicious!), Ben made me a painted plaque (he was sweetly proud of it), and Michal also made me a necklace. Today Michal noticed that I hadn't taken my necklace off since she gave it to me. I told her that since I hadn't had anything "new" for the last while it was exciting to have a new necklace to wear. And that was true! I definitely notice and appreciate this necklace in a way that I don't think I would have before.

Mildewy 2 x 4s

Joel writing here. Barbara mentioned the 2 x 4s story (April 30: "Kijiji addiction") and said I would fill in the details. There's not actually much more to fill in. But it is true that once I started down this Kijiji path, I was surprised to find out (a) how much I liked it, and (b) how incredibly easy it is to find anything used within more or less a 15 minute drive away.

Kijiji, for those who don't know, is a kind of local ebay. You look for stuff people have posted under various categories for sale or for free, but only in the city where you are located. So I use Kijiji Ottawa, but someone elsewhere would use their local Kijiji site. In big cities, it's broken down by areas. Kijiji purportedly means "village" in Swahili. The whole enterprise has a community-building aesthetic to it. It's really amazing how different this is than ebay -- which has never really appealed to me either for buying or selling or giving away. The local aspect means you end up meeting people in your 'hood.

Barbara already told the story of the radiator, but she neglected to say that we had several offers of $130 or more for the rad. The artist who came to pick it up had her check book (cheque book, for Canadian readers) in her hand and was ready to write a cheque for $130. Since, in the name of art, we couldn't think to take that kind of money, we ended up giving it to her for free and she, in return, thanked us profusely and gave us an invitation to the opening of the show. (She was using the rad, by the way, as a sound-making device -- her installation is concerned with acoustics and every-day objects). One other thing about this, in my rambling post here: these rads can weigh hundreds of pounds each - they are cast iron. Vince (our neighbour) and I had one hell of a time lifting it into her trunk - and the back of her car sank almost to the ground when we managed to drop it in. I wouldn't have been at all surprised to see her car do a wheely with the front end up in the air as she drove off into the artistic sunset.

Ok, about that wood. I figured, hey, I've found light fixtures and tools, and I've sold or given away almost anything on Kijiji. Why not wood? So I looked up wood and 2 x 4s. Sure enough, a hand full of ads popped up. So, I contacted a seller who had a pile of 2 x 4s. Unfortunately, after seeing his offering, I was worried it was damp and possibly moldy. That's when I headed straight to Home Depot. Capitalism and breezy exploitation of non-unionized workers means that I can get 2 x 4s for $2.19 each. But given all our recent home-made projects, the whole thing felt entirely without any guilt to me. It all seemed within the spirit of the project.

One last thing: I, like Barbara, am absolutely stunned at how much the kids have gotten into the whole thing. Michal has made more arts and crafts things as gifts and for other reasons than one could possibly imagine. And the recipients of home-made birthday gifts seem reasonably impressed and grateful. These are 12-year old recipients! Sure, their parents go on and on about how special and nice these gifts are, but that's to be expected, but the kids themselves seem genuinely happy about the gifts.

Ben, too, has just taken the whole project at face-value, probably following Michal's lead. Now requests for things like ice-cream or a trip to the candy store have substituted for begging to go to the local toy store, Ms. Tiggy Winkles or to Toys R Us.

I don't think 3 months will be enough.

jw

Junk Raiders; All for Nothing; Michal's sandals

Bought no new things yesterday. Bought ONE new thing today: Michal's sandals (more below).

The other day Bethany told me about an Ottawa tv show called All For Nothing. People are selected to improve/renovate their homes without spending very much money. They're encouraged to buy things on kijiji, find bargains, and so on. The focus of the show (I think) is less on cutting down on things in the world and more on saving money but I'm still curious to see it. It also reminded me that I've been meaning to post a link to reality tv-show that someone we knew did for the Discovery channel in Toronto. The show starts with a large loft in need of renovation; it then teams Gordie (the guy we know) and another guy who are both good at raiding dumpsters, recycling, fre-cycling, and basically finding ways to resuse old things with a bunch of designers and architects. The camera tracks their efforts to do a high-end renovation of the loft space using mainly "found" materials for only $5,000. Here's the link: http://watch.discoverychannel.ca/junk-raiders/season-1/junk-raiders-episode-1/#clip215922

On to Michal's sandals. The purchase of her sandals mark the first really unnecessary new purchase that we've made since we started this project. (Michal could, after all, have found used sandals). I decided to relent since Michal has been so good overall. She was really happy with her sandals (thrilled, in fact--the one plus of the purchase was that no-new-things has made her more aware of the specialness of buying something new).

Bicycle Mode

Bought no new things yesterday or today.

Tonight when I got out of my meditation class it was pouring rain and dark. My first thought was, "I should have brought the car." Instead, I put on my rain pants, unlocked by bike, and biked home. As I was biking I realized that I was much happier on my bike than in the car even with the rain. I could smell (and feel!) the rain, smell the many flowering trees along the canal, be fully in the darkness of the night. It reminded me of what I like about not buying new things. When I'm on my bike I'm much more aware of the world and the same thing holds for this "not buying" mode. (It made me wonder how many other areas of my life are not in "bicycle mode" but could be.)

Riding my bike might be a bit more difficult and take a little longer but it is much more rewarding. The same holds, in general, for not buying new things. Both slow me down and make me think. Still, I know there is a time and place for the car (if I were going to some fancy dress event and it was raining, for example). So, too, there is a time and place for new things (possibly Michal's sandals). But going to an extreme--saying "no new things"--can help bring into focus those times when buying something new really does make sense (even if, in most cases, "bicycle mode" is better!).

a very quick reversal!

Bought no new things yesterday or today.

No sooner did I write my positive monthly reflection on buying no new things than the kids suddenly switched from complacent to complaining. It was uncanny. I wondered if they had read the blog overnight and had colluded together to contradict it! I woke up Sunday morning (after writing Saturday night) and the very first thing Michal said was that her sandals were broken, she couldn't fix them with crazy glue, and she needed NEW shoes. I had been impressed by her earlier in the week because she'd been eager to fix them with crazy glue. But she had now suddenly found the perfect pair of sandals, they were not available on any of the used websites, and she wanted to buy them that very day. Ben then chimed in that if Michal got new shoes, it would only be fair if he got caps for his gun. This conversation went on all day and has persisted through today.

Michal has a point. She now has no sandals. Also, we'd told her she could buy shoes in France but she didn't find any that were right and so wisely waited. I may give in.

We were also stymied yesterday by Leo's ten-year old birthday present. When I casually asked him if he liked plants he looked puzzled and said, not really. The kids then said, hah! told you! We decided to give him a gift certificate to the candy store close to us but this doesn't feel like a great solution. Oh well.

One large (the shoes) dent, one small (the present) dent, in our project. I hope this isn't an indication of a change of mood in our second month.

One Month of (Almost) No New Things

Today marks one month of our no-more-new-things project. I told this to Ben when he asked if he could buy a Lego star wars set he'd found online this morning and he was impressed. "It's been one month already!?" he asked, surprised. (Ben, in fact, asked if Lego "counted" as a new thing. I smiled to myself since for me lego [plastic! expensive! excessive!] is the epitome of what counts.)

This one month marker seems like a good time to reflect on the project thus far. I expected it to be relatively easy to avoid buying new things during this time period and it has, as predicted, been relatively easy. What I didn't expect is that it would have such a palpable impact on the quality of my life. That is, I thought it wouldn't be too hard but I hadn't imagined that it would actually improve our lives in so many unexpected ways. It turns out that it is fun to think about other ways to do things. Often these other ways of doing things are creative (art projects, thinking outside the box on various things) or involve meeting and talking to people (going to other people's houses and buying stuff from them, meeting people who come to our house, and so each consumer exchange is also a mini people exchange [one example: we were selling our old radiators and an artist responded to the ad, came by and explained her art project as we stood outside our house in the rain trying to figure out how to get the rad into her car, told us where we'd see our old rad--as art!--in the show she was doing downtown, enlisted our neighbour to help lift the rad into her car; the whole exchange was a small interlude in our lives that we would not have had if we'd just put the rad in the dumpster--and now our old thing is going on to a new life]). It turns out, not surprisingly, that doing things creatively, thinking about things, meeting people and talking to them, makes life better. And just noticing what we buy and don't buy makes me more aware of how I live my life in general; and that simple fact of noticing and being aware also makes life better. So one unexpected thing was that instead of struggling to get by with fewer things our lives improved with fewer things.

Another unexpected thing was the way that this project spilled over into other areas of our life. Partly it's just our weird turn to a nineteenth-century world where we're making more things now: not just arts and crafts but meals and games too. It started with the need to make presents and then shifted to the desire just to make things (and food) in general. (The other day Michal was baking and we didn't have baking powder [or soda, I can't remember] and so she made it by looking it up on the internet.) Even more weirdly, the kids are watching less tv. The most surprising shift for me, though, is that not buying new things has spilled over into not really feeling like buying anything. I never imagined that. I thought I would be spending lots of spare time in secondhand stores and that my buying desires would be satisfied by used and secondhand stuff but this hasn't been the case at all. I also noted at the outset that magazines would be an exemption since I buy magazines all the time and could not imagine not doing so, and yet in the past month I have bought only one magazine. This new awareness of things has also made me more aware of all of the packaging in our lives and I've found myself seeking ways to minimize it much more than I'd anticipated I would initially.

The last unexpected thing relates to the kids. They have been so great. They have not complained once. And Ben's old pleas to buy something (anything!) on the weekend and when he walked home from school have evaporated. His request for the lego this morning was the first request he had made of that sort the entire time and when I told him that lego was, in fact, a new thing he dropped it and didn't argue at all. I'm still kind of shocked that they accept this just because "we say so." But it is also instructive with respect to the way we raise our kids; they will follow our lead and they don't waffle, as it turns out, when there are clear boundaries.

Final thing: I have learned that, in terms of things, we don't, in fact, need that much.

So this is all very positive (too positive!), I know; we'll see what the next month brings.