A couple of weeks ago I was at the drugstore with my six-year-old. While there, we walked down the Christmas clearance aisle where I noticed a Kinder Surprise gift pack—filled with chocolates and a stuffed toy, and those horrible hollow eggs with a teensy toy inside (the very toys I always curse after my kids open them—another tiny piece of junk played with for two minutes and then forgotten). The original price was $11.99—I remember seeing them before Christmas and deciding they were too expensive. But now they were marked down to four bucks! I could get one each for both my kids for less than one used to cost!
That my daughters have a combined stuffed toy collection of about 100 items, and no child needs more chocolate, just couldn’t compete with the bargain (and the cries from my daughter that she’s “never wanted anything so bad” in her life). Two of these packages came home with us. My husband just shook his head.
This is hard. And I still have 10 months to go—with challenges much more difficult than this to come.
My goal in January was to give things away (after all, in Shane Claiborne’s Irresistible Revolution he writes, “Charity is merely returning what we have stolen”), and buy less. So I went through closets and cupboards, bookcases and kitchen drawers, toy boxes and even toiletries. It felt good to purge—especially at the start of a new year—but there are definitely things that are hard to let go of, and harder still to avoid shopping for what you just gave away.
That said, before I move onto this month’s challenge (skip to the end of this entry for that), I’ve been doing other things that may at first seem unrelated to curbing my shopping whims, but have an impact nonetheless. I signed up with my local CSA—a program that enables you to buy organic produce directly from local farmers. It’s a win-win for everyone. (If you’re in Ontario, here’s a list of farms and more info on Community Supported Agriculture.) Way back in December, I bought the candles for our Advent wreath from Evangel Hall, the Presbyterian mission in downtown Toronto serving the city’s homeless. The candles are made by the mission’s clients, giving them much-needed income and a meaningful task to work at. And when my oldest daughter wanted to join in on the “Elf on the Shelf” obsession, I went a slightly different route—Kindness Elves are built on the same premise, but, 1) You make them yourself (or, you get your mom to make them for you. Thanks, Mom!), and 2) Instead of watching for “good” behaviour and reporting to Santa each night, Kindness Elves leave notes for the kids each morning, offering ideas of little acts of kindness they can do that day.
But what else can I do? In an interview with Christian author and blogger Rachel Held Evans, Claiborne talks about living “with imagination”—to “reimagine who we are and how we are to live in light of Jesus.” So I got to thinking about some different sorts of things I can do that might, in Claiborne’s words, “challenge patterns of consumerism.”
First, I love to bake and I’ve always wanted to make my own bread. It’s healthier, cheaper, and who doesn’t want their house to smell like homemade bread? And I’m not talking bread machine bread, either; no, I mean real, honest-to-goodness, get-your-hands-in-there bread. I’m hoping to someday make it regularly enough that I can kiss store-bought sandwich loaves goodbye. I think I’ll start with this. (Update: I made it! And it was totally delish—and easy!)
Next, a friend of mine makes her own laundry detergent. Yeah, you read that right. The recipe she gave me is way cheaper than the store-bought stuff, and better for the environment and sensitive skin, too. I also want to try my hand at making my own moisturizer. No mad scientist ingredients and no animal testing involved.
Lastly, I want to buy fair trade coffee (always! Not just on random occasions). Fair trade might not be perfect, but it’s far better than the alternative. (Go to fairtrade.ca to learn more, and read a previous post about fair trade here.)
These goals may not seem like much, or maybe you’re wondering what the heck homemade detergent has to do with helping others, but it’s important to remember that so many of our choices as consumers are part of an intricate and far-reaching web of farmers (often poorly treated and poorly paid), suppliers, manufacturers (which sometimes involves child labour), buyers, transporters, retail businesses, etc. So first, learn (doing so might make you re-think how you spend your money). And second, act. We can’t do everything, but in the end, I think it’s the small steps we take towards change that matter—that add up to something that truly does make a difference, somehow, somewhere.
February’s Challenge: “Small things with great love.” Spoken by Mother Teresa and trumpeted by Claiborne, the idea is to let these words become your mantra, every day. Instead of grand gestures, focus on small things done with kindness, care and compassion—things that will make others smile, and feel as though they’ve encountered the love of Christ. More on this idea in next week’s blog!
