Food and Other Things

Bought caps for Ben's gun today. Worse: bought a washer/dryer, oven, stove, and refrigerator. Seriously. It's no wonder I haven't been posting of late.

I think I can declare June a failure for blog postings. I don't know what happened. I was inspired to think about and reflect on buying (and not buying) things for the first two months but for some reason in the third month I was less motivated. Perhaps it was because I knew all those appliances were looming on the horizon. We're renovating Joel's family cabin and need to get a kitchen. We spent several days in the middle of May looking for used appliances but it's hard from a distance. And then I found a good "remainders/and dents" appliances site and we thought we could use that but it didn't work either. Now we've put it off until the last possible moment and just bought everything NEW. Urghh. It makes me despair. I haven't bought hair elastics for 3 months and it has been driving me crazy and yet in a single day we buy all those huge metallic not-easily-recycable things. It does make me think about the small things vs. the big things. There are both the gradations of small things we do (elastics v. appliances) and then the things we as individuals do v. the things that corporations and big companies do. We can be careful individually but does it make any sort of impact when so many larger enterprises are not the least bit watchful about waste?

The caps I bought for Ben because he did well on his report card and he's struggled so much at school and there was nothing he wanted more in the world. So twice now Ben has got caps. A small thing that represents (for me) a big thing.

Yesterday mom sent me a new cotton shirt/dress in the mail. I could not have been more thrilled. It was my first new thing in almost three months and it was perfect. I opened it, put it on immediately, and wore it again today. The great thing (I've said this before) is that buying no-more-new-things does make me appreciate the specialness of new things so much more. And it's not just the thing, but the whole experience. In the case of this new shirt/dress: opening the package, unfolding it, the feel of the material, trying it on, and the pleasure of wearing it. I think I used to often overlook all these little parts of the new-thing experience before.

As for food, one thing I have paid more attention to these past few months is food. Food items are on the permitted list and I found myself often gravitating toward food to satisfy buying desires (to the extent that they existed--which was less than I expected). I also enjoyed food more than usual (and I usually enjoy food a lot!) And, needless to say, I also gained weight! Oh well.

I told the kids yesterday that there were only 7 more days of no more new things and they were both excited but also lowkey. They'd actually forgot all about it. Not buying new things has become a habit for them as well and that's the best result to come out of the last few months.

I'm hoping that the remaining six days won't be filled with more new purchases!