Live with Less

The past year or so for me has really been an attempt to leave my preconceived notions of comfort and necessity behind. As I progress, I notice that more and more of what goes on around us is cultural and consumer myth. Today, I want to talk about living with less stuff.

I have helped or seen a lot of people move lately, and of course I’ve moved myself. I really trimmed down my holdings (I had a lot of stuff from my grandparents and mother, too, so it was like three generations of stuff!), and I feel a lot better now. I have developed a few key principles in my quest to live with less.

1) If someone else could use it better, let it go.

I am leaving for France, and I won’t be able to take a lot of stuff with me. I have to keep everything I’m not taking in storage, so I evaluated possessions to either keep or donate. For the most part, I gave things away. For example, a set of kitchen utensils. I would assuredly use this set again someday, but is it really worth storing for a few years before this happens? I feel that it would be much better for these to have a new and worthy home.

Sure, my new (or gently used) utensils in the future will have to come from somewhere (energy), but that energy consumption needs to be weighed against the loss of utility in sitting in storage for a few years, or perhaps that the New Home of the utensils would have bought utensils new if they hadn’t found mine. I do not believe that you should hoard possessions once you decide that you don’t need them.

2) Really, it’s the Middle School Cafeteria Scenario.

The Middle School Cafeteria Scenario is the sensation of feeling all eyes on you, when in reality everyone is too self-absorbed to notice you. Basically, once you realize that this is merely a sensation and not fact, you are freed from the burden of trying to live up to others’ expectations.

I mentioned a while back that I only own two pairs of jeans. I realized that no one expected me to put on a fresh pair of jeans every day, and it allowed me to reduce my wardrobe. I take good care of my clothes and hang them up and fold them properly between wears, but yes – everything except for undies and some socks get at least two wears. Turns out, this has been great practice for France because I won’t have to spend a ton of time and money on laundering what would have been an enormous wardrobe.

3) Just Say No.

The best principle (and skill!) I’ve developed is to just say “no.” I shop off of a list for everything – clothes, food, household goods – and work to avoid impulse buys that would otherwise land me with junk. Here is a concrete example: I know that I want/need one pair of capris for France, and I want a khaki pair. I will walk into a store with the specifications “khaki capris” and ignore everything else. I also say no to handouts, programs from plays, etc. I used to hoard these, but I seriously don’t want to take anything that isn’t going to be useful for a long time.

These principles help me keep my number of possessions down, and the simplicity of my life up. I think that the biggest cultural myth that we face is that we need more things, newer things, or more expensive things. This is a myth employed to help companies take our money. Once you recognize cultural myths for what they are, you can begin to refute them and build your own principles.

Reduce: Making Things Last

One of the best ways to reduce our footprint on this earth is to simply use fewer resources. This means taking less from the earth, and making the things we do take sustain us longer.

I try to do this in a lot of ways, but one of the changes of mindset that I've tried to adopt over the last year or so is figuring out ways to "make things last." Today, I can use my jeans as a concrete example to illustrate this concept.

I have two pairs of jeans, and I bought them both in Fall of '07. They are both the same, which has saved me a lot of time fanning the flames of my vanity; I don't waste time trying to figure out which jeans go best with which shirt: if I'm wearing jeans, I'm wearing jeans. I bought the simplest jeans I could find and didn't seek anything "trendy". This will make them last longer because they won't go out of style. I also bought them for comfort and fit, and I seek to maintain this pants size, which will also make them last longer. Lastly, I always line dry them in order to keep them from shrinking.

Last week, I wore one of the pairs of jeans when I was painting the set of the musical at school. I tried to be very careful, but I still managed to get paint on them. I got a splatter of white around an ankle, a dash of "Pepto pink" on one knee, and a huge stripe of black along one calf. I knew that I couldn't ditch this pair of jeans just because I had messed them up in my clumsiness, so I sought a way to remove paint from clothing.

A simple "remove paint from clothing" search on Google gave me the answer: alcohol and elbow grease. I poured some vodka on the paint splatters (hand sanitizer was another option available, but it didn't work for me) and scrubbed for five or ten minutes until the paint started to disappear or lighten. The pink and white came out, and the black faded until it is no longer noticeable. I rinsed the jeans and put them in the wash.

Today, I had to inspect the two pairs of jeans on the line very closely until I could say with confidence which pair had originally been stained. Hooray! Not only did I save resources, I saved about $40!