Organizing and Musings about "stuff"

January 22, 2008
It is freezing, and has been since Friday. Ughh. I have no idea how we survived in Michigan for two years. I guess we just spent so much time studying in grad school that we never went outside. We've made it all winter so far without turning on the heater in the house. We have a wood burning stove in the living room, and it puts out a lot of heat. The only problem is you have to keep the fire going, because once it goes out, it is not only hard to get it started again, but it takes forever to heat the house again. There's no real reason that we have this aversion to turning on the heater--it's really just a weird game we decided to try this winter, to see if we could make it all winter without it. Well, that and the fact that we had a big fight with our propane delivery company a few months ago because they came out to our house and repossessed our tank one day while we were at work. Needless to say, it was their mistake and some kind of a "filing error." We fired them and haven't taken the time to find a new company yet.
This weekend I spent a lot of time organizing all of our crap. Thrilling, I know. But it was too cold to be outside, so I figured it would be nice to finally finish unpacking all of our stuff from our move over a year ago that we had just stuffed into closets and forgotten about. So now we have organized closets. Yea.
Speaking of "stuff" though...it is really amazing how much junk we accumulate. I mean, I try to be really conscious of limiting the material possessions that we collect, and try to buy only the "need to have" stuff instead of the "nice to have" stuff. But still, it really is incredible how we have this mindset ingrained in most of us in American culture that we covet just about everything that is bigger and "better." I have to constantly recenter myself in this regard.
I talked with my friend Chris about these ideas a couple of months ago, and she had some absolutely incredible stories about what she personally is doing to fight overconsumption in her own life. She made a committment to purchase nothing new (except food and essentials like toothbrushes and toothpaste, etc.) for one year. Everything, from clothes, to furniture, to household items were purchased used, recycled, or simply not purchased at all. I think it is really inspiring and I doubt that I could do what she is doing. I have made some changes, though. For one, I buy all of my clothes from resale shops or from places that are committed to fair trade, like Fair Indigo.