My mom called me after last week’s entry about my struggle to keep my wallet open for local and organic products. She thinks buying local and organic is important too, and she brought up a really excellent point. Buying food organic and local is expensive. Buying everything you consume local and organic is even harder and more expensive. Sometimes you can’t do it all the time. But making that commitment, and being conscious really changes the way you think about the things you buy. How, you might ask?
You have to think about what you actually need.
It’s true. Flashback with me, if you will, to last week as I gleefully bounded through the Danger Veggie Dollar Store, tossing bag after petroleum-based plastic bag full of veggies into the cart, my house soon to become a cornucopia of delights where my friends would happily feast themselves into a contented slumber.
Now, flash forward with me, squinting at price tags and carefully picking the tiniest yellow pepper I can find, and fastidiously calculating the number of tomatoes I’ll use in a week—will we have salad three nights or four?
Since deciding to really try to buy local and organic, I’ve definitely noticed a change in my mentality when I go to the store. First of all, I go more frequently. I buy things for dinner that night, or at the most for the next day too. I only get what I know I need and will actually use. That’s not to say that I didn’t buy what I needed before, but buying organic has made me reevaluate the meaning of “what I need”. And I’ve discovered that maybe I don’t need as much as I thought I did, or even as much as I think I do now.
I remember going through my parents’ closet as a kid and a teenager, trying on everything I could find in there that I thought was interesting. Most of the time, it was stuff my mom wore when she was younger. There was tons of awesome stuff from all points of her life. Remember when people used to be defined by their clothes? When they had one favorite jacket they wore for years? Now, when I find something in my closet older than two years, it means I bought it used or got it from my mom.
In America, everything is disposable. Clothes, furniture, handkerchiefs, and even buildings aren’t made to last. When things are disposable, everything can always be shiny, new, and immediately improved upon. You can buy things for now and replace them with better things later. Not only does it deprive our life from some great visible personal history, but it changes the way we care for things. Plus, it drastically increases the amount of waste we are comfortable producing on a daily, monthly, yearly basis. Even worse, it changes our thinking from more long term to the short term. It is this very short term thinking that has really led us adrift without a paddle. Actually, it’s more like all of us are adrift without a paddle and without food after spending a few decades eating bon bons on a cruise ship with 24 hour all you can eat buffets. And bingo.
What I’m getting at is this: we produce a lot of crap. To produce crap we use oil. If we used less crap, and used longer lasting crap, we’d also use less oil. Which is good. And necessary. And which we will have to do pretty soon anyway, for reals, and without much choice in the matter, so why not quit while we’re ahead?
In any case, I’m going to see how long I can go without buying anything new besides food, bath products, and kitchen things. Today is day one. Anyone with me?
P.S. Watch this movie.
P.P.S. Think Long Term.