Category: Non-consumer train

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Clutter’s Last Stand

 

This is the title of Don Aslett’s de-cluttering book – one of my library books for my summer reading. I‘ve talked before about how important I think it is to take the time out every now and then to reflect on the ideas in de-junking books like this. For most of us our obsession with owning more and more things has been with us since our childhoods – it is not suddenly going to disappear overnight because we want it to, we need lots of support and inspiration from others – some may even need professional help!. This year I have decided not only to continue with my non-consumerism train challenge but also to start de-junking my life so I can actually enjoy and use what I consider important enough to keep after my de-junking clear outs. When I met my husband 12 years ago I could fit everything I owned in a car. In those days I didn’t even own a bed, I figured it was just as easy to sleep on the floor – hubby didn’t share my views and after a series of carpet burn incidents our first purchase together was a bed. Twelve years later we now own three beds despite the fact that the inhabitants of our household (myself, hubby and two cats) all share the same bed. De-junking challenge starts tomorrow…….

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Buy Nothing Day

Saturday was international Buy Nothing Day  – personally we didn’t do that well with this challenge as the weekend is our time for supermarket and farmer’s market shopping. However we did manage to hire or borrow a number of items over the weekend rather than purchase them. As November comes to a close we have once again managed to spend less than we did last November which is very encouraging given the economic changes that have taken place over the year. November and December is always the time of the year that hubby likes to start spending for some reason – he is in to his PlayStation obsessed phase at the moment. However on the plus side he is happy for now with his old Play Station 2 and buying and selling second hand games on Trade Me so I guess I can’t complain too much.

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Treasure in the garage challenge

My treasure in the garage challenge for August was slightly disrupted by my resignation but it has still been chugging along. I have changed the theme to ‘Shop in your house’ as I have found it is not just a matter of finding treasures in the garage – they are everywhere in your house once you start looking. Last week’s treasure was resurrected from my mother-in-laws garage – she had been storing our old records for us while we had been building our house. I then rearranged furniture in the house to get a bookcase to hold our records, dusted off the record player and hey presto had a new entertainment/library area. We are really enjoying listening to old memories – a lot of the records are from our teenage years, over 25 years ago, with some not so wise buying decisions along the way! My mum visiting yesterday commented on our new bookcase so I had to explain my shop in your house philosophy. It is a great way to get a new feel to your house without spending money.

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Treasure in the garage challenge – Week 1

Browsing through old magazines last week I came across an article which talked about the Buddhist philosophy of accepting what you have to work with in life. Inspired I went out to the garage and started to look through some of our items stored out there. First thing I came across was a long forgotten answer machine which died on us a few years back just before we began to renovate. Rather than throw it out I had put it away with everything that went into storage while we rebuilt our house. An hour on Sunday tinkering saw it come back to life and we now have a ‘new’ answer machine just in time for hubby and his business taking off. It has been lovely all week to come in after work and check for messages – you get the thrill of something new by reusing an item you haven’t seen in a long time. Of course there is also the bonus that every time I see it I am reminded that I was right to keep it and hubby was wrong when he wanted to throw it out years ago! So having started so well I have decided to set my own personal challenge this month – it is to uncover the treasures that may live in our garage and resurrect them. Why don’t you do the same – it doesn’t need to be a garage – it could be a spare room, even just one drawer!

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Let Go of Clutter

is the title of one of my library books this week by Harriet Schechter. My house isn’t particularly cluttered – it’s just that I’ve found over the last year that reading a few de-cluttering books every now and then is an essential part of getting on top of my finances. I’ve found that regularly suppressing that impulse of ‘I have to have that’ is an important part of saving money and is a major part of good de-cluttering books. This paragraph may be a bit new age for some of you but I think it’s actually the key to saving money when we are constantly bombarded by advertising telling us we need things. 

Visualize an endless, flowing river. Imagine that it’s composed of information, opportunities, and objects. Picture yourself dipping into this river whenever you choose to, at your own pace, anytime you feel thirsty. You’ll use a teaspoon, a glass or a cup, but not a bucket – after all, you’re not trying to bail it out. That would be impossible. Know that this river will never run dry, so you can relax. You’re not going to miss anything; there will always be more stuff flowing by. ……Let it flow, and let it go. (pg. 155; 2001)

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It isn’t just a simple dollar

One of my library books this week is ‘Coach yourself to Wealth’ by Martin Hawes and Joan Baker. Often from a whole book you may only find one idea that really strikes a chord with you but that one idea can often be a real light bulb moment. Although I have been working hard to get our finances into a surplus situation each month I still have been seeing each dollar as simply a dollar. Hawes and Barker promote the idea of thinking of the cost of an item not just in dollars today but as dollars in the future. Working out what a dollar spent could ‘earn’ you instead in terms of investing it or paying off your mortgage can help you work out the ‘real’ cost of your spending. Every dollar you don’t spend can be put to work for you 24 hours a day every day while items you buy are depreciating rapidly. This way every time you decide not to spend you can see it almost as a mini pay increase which makes it a positive action than you want to carry out. Working out what an item can cost me over a 20 yr period would seem to be another good strategy to help slow down impulse buying.

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New Year resolutions

As we all head into a new year of promise I thought it was an appropriate time to revisit the Non-Consumption Train list again. In our household we don’t always live by the list but it is becoming more and more part of our lives.

  • Is this purchase something I need?
  • Do I already own something that will serve the same purpose?
  • Can I borrow one instead of buying new?
  • Can I make something that will serve the same purpose?
  • Can I buy a used one?
  • Would someone be willing to split the cost and share this with me?
  • Can I buy or commission one made locally?
  • Can I buy one that was made with environmentally responsible materials?
  • Can I buy one that serves more than one purpose?
  • Can I get something human powered instead of gas or electric?
  • Can I compost or recycle it when I’m done with it?
  • What is the impact on the environment of the full life cycle of it?
  • Does the manufacture or disposal of it damage the environment?

http://www.care2.com/greenliving/get-on-board-the-non-consumption-train.html

My favourite question at the moment is “Do I already own something that will serve the same purpose?” It is amazing how asking that one question can significantly reduce the need to shop. 

 

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Another monthly challenge

The december challenge is to see if our household can refrain from buying any Christmas gift wrapping or Christmas cards this year. One family group is getting their gifts in a Santa sack and we will then reuse the sack each year to house their gifts. I received the sack as part of a present a few years ago and have never really found a use for it until now. Other family groups are getting reused wrapping paper from last year that was carefully flattened and put in our gift box. Some are (hopefully) getting gift bags that I’m going to make next week out of some left over wallpaper remnants. Small presents are going to be wrapped in lovely calendar pages that we’ve kept over the years given to us as gifts originally). Some of the Christmas cards we are using I recycled after Christmas last year, others are from the Christmas box – my collection of left over cards from card sets over the years. Will keep you posted on how it goes on the big day!

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Renting vs Buying

Renting instead of buying is not a new idea. However the British Waste & Resources Action Programme (Wrap) believe that renting could be the secret weapon in fighting climate change and is calling for a fifth of all household spending to be converted to renting by 2020. In Britain it is predicted this change would result in a reduction of 13 million tonnes of CO2 a year. (Source Dom Post: 6/11/2009). In our household we tend to keep items for a long time and buy a lot of items second hand so we wouldn’t be great candidates for renting but I think lending is also a good way of reducing waste and saving money. Often family members live close together and each own the same item – it would be easy to lend items and just one household purchase the item. For instance we were given lots of glasses for our wedding years ago. When family members need extra glasses for special events they borrow ours rather than purchase glasses. We own a slow cooker which my mother borrows rather than buy her own as we both don’t use it full time. Items such as big cake tins for cooking the Xmas cake are often used only once a year, very easy to share around families. Two families in our family unit share a cat cage – it is an item used very few times in a year. It doesn’t work for everything as some items wear down with frequent use and other items require people to use them very carefully but it may be worth looking at for your family. Of course some families have people who don’t look after items or forget to give items back!

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Not trying to keep up with the Joneses

With not a lot of spare money at the moment our house renovation has been sort of left three quarters finished. One of the areas not yet completed is the laundry. I’m embarrassed to say that I stupidly let the fact it wasn’t finished be this huge burden in my mind rather than just face up to reality and get on with doing something to make the room more useable. A few weeks ago the light bulb finally went off in my brain and I spent the afternoon tidying up the laundry which had become a dumping ground for everything. I found some colourful plastic cubes in the garage that we had used in the old house and these now neatly hold the dirty rags, clean rags etc. I resurrected a tall formica bookcase that my hubby had tried to get me to throw out before the renovation – it is perfect for holding all the various laundry things. Another small formica bookcase (also from the garage!) has made a great place for growing plants and seedlings as my laundry is a sun trap. Three week later I still love walking into my ‘new’ laundry and I’m even happy to leave the door open for visitors to be able to look in. It didn’t cost me a cent to improve my laundry – all I had to do was take off my “If only….” blinkers and use what I already owned.