One of the things we can rail up against the most? The crazy sizes of houses in some countries which require buying a whole lot of stuff for no reason other than to occupy space. When Lis lived in a low-economic area in Nairobi the women there taught her the expression that if you don’t have much, you don’t have much to worry about. It’s life changing when you apply it.
We all need some things. But generally speaking, physical goods don’t bring us happiness, beyond the basics. Experiences do. And this is one area where we can really bring environmentalism and “zero waste” into line with budgets. The less we buy, the more money we have!
We’re fighting marketing, advertising, and design, we’re filling unhappiness with consumption and we often seem to be spinning wheels in jobs we don’t want to afford all this stuff. There’s a lot in the system we can’t quickly fix individually at all but in our own lives we can absolutely address the issue of our personal “stuff”.
It takes a lot to make a product. Plastic is made up mostly from oil. Everything else generally needs resources to be dug out of the ground, trees to be chopped and animals to be used. Nearly everything you touch and see required natural resources extracted from our planet to make.
That stuff then needs to use a whole lot of fuel to get somewhere where a whole lot more people need to work on it to mould it into what we’re buying. Then it hits the road once more and often turns up taking space in major stores that require lots of land and energy to keep going. And then it travels to our homes, needing maintenance, taking up space and gathering dust.
Let’s think deeply when we’re buying something that isn’t of life necessity. Is it made with quality and craftmanship? Will it bring long-term happiness? What else could I do with the money? Has ethical labor crafted this? For the things you already have but don’t need – do you know someone who could benefit from it? Is there somewhere you can donate it to? Could you put it on your local buy nothing group?
Have you got any tips to share?
