Nemesis Found

The hard drive in Spencer's computer croaked during a recent power outage, so yesterday we ventured into a store so he could buy a replacement. The problem: the store was Office Depot! And here I thought I was so impervious to the allure of products. But the pens! The labels! The post-its, envelopes, and planners, all in such beautiful colors!

Well, I made it out without buying anything -- barely -- but they didn't have any hard drives in stock so then we had to go to... Office Max!!! The minute you walk in there you're faced with the row labeled "Writing Instruments," and indeed the pens reach to the horizon, their plastic packaging gleaming into infinity. I managed to walk down that aisle only once, not to touch anything, to avert my eyes from at least some of the stationery, and to drool only a little over the folders.

But I learned an important safety tip: stay far away from office supply vendors during any and all months of not shopping.

Good News for Forests

As of April, shoppers can no longer buy the Christian Science Monitor on the pulped corpses of trees. Time for the rest of the newspaper industry to follow suit, don't you think? Come on, NYT, you know you want to...

Only Three Days Left!

Here we are, almost done with October already. A mere three days remaining for no shopping seems like not enough. It's an open question, though, when the shopping will begin again. November 1? November 5? And what will be the first items purchased?

Of course the bigger question is, do we retire the Sneezer once the month is over? Or do we refuse to rest on our laurels and attempt the big daddy of not-shopping months, the mighty beast of December itself? Preparations would be essential, which many consider cheating. On the other hand, keeping shopping out of December might make the holidays less hectic and more celebratory. Let us know if you have an opinion!

From the Local Paper, Oct 23

"Get ready for some pre-season retail training with a shopping day at The Art Center at Fuller Lodge’s Fall Arts and Crafts Fair, held from 9 a.m.-4 p.m. Saturday.... This year’s fair is sure to be a great way to ring in the upcoming holiday season." -Los Alamos Monitor

Retail training, retail therapy... what other retail terms are out there that I don't know about? And I can think of much better ways to ring in the holidays than shopping. Not that it's anywhere close to time. It isn't even Halloween yet, for heaven's sake!

Obama Made Me Do It...

...but it still felt ghastly. Today, in full knowledge that it is still October, I walked into Radio Shack and bought a cell phone battery ($50!) and a cell phone charger for the car ($30!). Yuck. Justification: I am a team captain of a Get Out the Vote team, which means that until the election I will need at least four hours of battery life at a time on my phone, and my year-and-a-half-old battery could muster 20 minutes at most. But still, yuck! What a rip-off, for stupid plastic gadgets ensconced in stupid plastic packaging! I feel icky, oh so icky.

So what's the treatment for shopping nausea? Well, this is a start:

He's My Boyfriend and Ellen Can't Have Him

For two reasons: his attitude toward shopping and, more importantly:

Only Nine Days Left, Already?

Mom says she's having so much fun not shopping that she "may never buy anything again!" Ha ha ha, good one, Mom.

But she got me thinking: October is actually going to end before long. What are we supposed to do then? Go out and, like, buy things? Just like that? Weird... There may have to be a decompression period after Halloween lest we develop the shopping bends.

The Opposite of Not Shopping

The RNC ponied up $150,000 for CLOTHES for She Who Hates the Polar Bears. Was this supposed to be "retail therapy" for the campaign? Or an attempt to procure a convincing Halloween costume for the Half-Baked Alaskan so she could play dress-up and pretend to be a feminist?

Opinions & Rationalizations, Please

Does a contribution to a political campaign count as shopping?

Not Shopping List: Toothpaste, Garbage Disposal

I can no longer squeeze or scoop any toothpaste from the beleaguered tube, so I have switched to baking soda scented with sprigs of peppermint. But here's the thing: our tap water has flouride added to it and my teeth feel squeaky clean after a baking soda scrub & floss, so why buy toothpaste at all? Anyone know a dentist to ask?

The other thing I am not buying is a garbage disposal even though ours sprang an unfixable leak. For now we're catching the water drips with a bowl, but I'm not sure I want to replace the thing when November rolls around. I compost pretty much all the kitchen scraps, so the only reason to buy a new one is that it would be easier to replace the busted one than to re-plumb the pipes under the sink. Luckily there are still two weeks to mull this one over.

Heresy Alert Level: Vermilion

"Each year, approximately 30 million trees are used to make books sold in the United States -- 1,153 times the number of trees in New York City's Central Park" -- The Green Press Initiative

And those trees are mowed down from virgin forests which ought to be left alone in order to drink up carbon dioxide, pour out oxygen, and carry on providing habitat.

Yep, we need to buy way fewer books. That ought to be primarily the library's job, anyway, not the individual's. And let's face it, when you buy a book it spends the vast majority of its life parked on your bookshelf. Why not let it be parked on a shelf where other folks might read it too? Writers may get their undies in a bundle at the suggestion of this sacrilege, but there's a great big internet out there for lots of kinds of publishing.

So how's this: only buy a book if you will read it at least three times and subsequently loan it out to friends & relations. And if it was printed on recycled paper.

JoJo Joins Mom in the Confessional

I made my first purchase of the month: two tubes of silicone sealant due to the rainstorm that swamped our kitchen with dirty water and sheetrock dust (sheetrock paste, more like) through a stubborn and elusive leak.

I considered--very briefly--not buying the sealant but came to my sense quickly. Then I decided to pay attention to how it felt (note the money idiom: pay attention). And it felt completely neutral. I handed over some money, they handed over the sealant, and I walked out of the store. No guilt or remorse, no thrill or pleasure. In fact, the times this month when I've chosen to not buy something were much more fun and enlivening.

Relationship Therapy: Money & Me

Money is a medium of exchange. That's all. Why, then, do we saddle it with so many unrealistic expectations? Here are some of the things I have unconsciously demanded money provide:

-security
-sustenance
-respect
-success
-happiness
-beauty
-love

Notice how these are all partially or primarily states of being, inner attitudes. Money might be able to help manifest intangibles, but it doesn't directly provide any of them. It can't. It can provide a book; it can't provide happiness. It can provide a new shirt; it can't provide beauty. It can provide a diamond ring; it can't provide love.

And what have I done lately for money? Not much. But I can start to ease up off it. Accept it for what it is and quit yammering at it to fix everything. It isn't money's job to fix anything. That would be our job.

Visitor from Sleepy Hollow

Check out Sal's cool new banner! I'm sure the horseman is excited about the stop shopping project. You can see it in the jaunty way he holds the punkin.

Checking In With Sal

JoJo: What are your not shopping rules?
Sal: I can buy food and toilet paper and sandwich baggies which are to Dotty as toilet paper is to me.

JoJo: How does Dotty feel about not shopping?
Sal: I don't think she's noticed. It hasn't really altered my activities. The only thing that has changed is that now I see things everywhere that I cannot buy.

JoJo: What's the most fun thing about not shopping?
Sal: Telling people about it and then having them tell me how wrong-headed it is.

JoJo: What do they say?
Sal: That it's unnecessarily extreme and punitive and puritanical and why not just try to do your part with moderation.

JoJo: What will be the first thing you buy in November?
Sal: Maybe a bottle of champagne to celebrate President Obama, except that's groceries so it doesn't count.

JoJo: Who are your stop shopping heroes?
Sal: Mom because if she needs pickles she makes pickles and if she needs jam she makes jam and if she needs a quilt she makes a quilt. On the other hand it's not Mom because she loves to shop in spite of these good habits. Part of me wonders about the ethics of ceasing to share my money in the marketplace because I have money in my pocket and there are people who need money in their pocket, so sitting on the money in my pocket feels a little selfish.

JoJo: Is it selfish even though you haven't changed your habits?
Sal: It's not like committing a sin, but the philosophy of saying I won't exchange my money for your wares feels like a selfish
philosophy. Before, when I wasn't buying stuff in the absence of a philosophy, that didn't feel selfish. A boycott is a different thing than when there's no need for a transaction.

JoJo: Who are we boycotting?
Sal: Everybody except people who happen to be selling something you eat or wipe your butt with. This is an interesting experiment but is it really the moral thing to do? Not everybody can sell food.

JoJo: I don't feel like I'm on a boycott. I think we're talking about three states of not shopping which are, in practice, the same: not buying anything because 1) you don't want to, 2) you're boycotting, and 3) you're examining your own attitudes and behaviors. Are the moralities different even though the actions are the same? Even if they are, the question of temporarily not giving money to "innocent bystander" merchants is dwarfed by the immorality of consumer culture: packaging waste, sweatshops, predatory trade practices, pollution, emissions, and crap ending up in landfills, for instance.
Sal: Yeah. That. What you said.

Update from Mom, Back in the Saddle Again

JoJo: How is it going, not shopping?
Mom: Very well thank you, I haven't bought anything since that yard sale but I talked to Sue today and she doesn't think that counts.

JoJo: What's the most fun thing about not shopping?
Mom: Saving money.

JoJo: Is not shopping hard?
Mom: No, I bought groceries and that's all I need.

JoJo: What do you miss most about shopping?
Mom: I was bringing in my geraniums and thought I'd buy plastic things to put under them and then I thought nope! I've got Joanna to answer to!

JoJo: In that case, is there any chance you've changed your mind about voting for Obama?
Mom: No.

If only I could make her watch this, by way of political indoctrination:

As the Apple Tempted Adam, As the Serpent Tempted Eve

Things I have thought about buying since October 1:

-potting soil
-yarn
-knitting needles
-a 5/8" masonry drill bit
-toothpaste
-a book
-aluminum foil
-an airplane ticket
-mulberry trees
-an apple tree
-a plum tree

Interesting to observe how the mind grasps at its desires. It's almost a physical impulse to grab on and "own" things. Then there's the sensation when you let go of the coveting--a feeling of lightness, almost floating.

Tyler Durdon Weighs In

Watched Fight Club last night in honor of stop shopping month. Here are some of Tyler's gems I had forgotten about:

"Things you own end up owning you."

"You are not your job. You are not how much money you have in the bank, not the car you drive, not the contents of your wallet..."

"Reject the basic assumptions of civilization, especially the importance of material possession!"

One Week In and All's Well

The first week without shopping was too easy, too easy! I thought maybe we needed something more challenging to spice things up, so here it is: the Center for a New American's Dream campaign to convince us all to cease and desist drinking bottled water due to its hidden evils including the corporations who want to control the global water supply. Take the pledge by clicking this handy dandy graphic:



Not that this will be difficult either. You'll find free public water everywhere when you start looking for it (locally: drinking fountains in the lobby of the library and the movie theater, hidden behind the Hi-C spigot on the soda machine at Ruby K's) and it turns out that we don't need to drink 8 glasses a day anyway. So there you go. Consider it level 2 of not shopping, in case level 1 was too boring.

Not Shopping as the Economy Hits the Crapper

I have only the dimmest comprehension of the financial paroxysms going on out there in the wide world, but it does seem clear that stock markets are plummeting while prices have achieved liftoff. Seems like spending money could only be stressful in a climate like this. Kind of like watching one's savings evaporate.

Regardless of all that, a theory is beginning to emerge and here it is so far: when the impulse to buy something comes up, the unimaginative response is to drop everything and plunk down the plastic. An enlivening and creative response, on the other hand, is to chew the impulse over, to carry it around for awhile and see if any alternatives present themselves. When shopping isn't automatic, space opens up, room for the focus to shift from purchases to projects, and projects are more fun than the short-lived pleasure of acquisition, which also happens to be addictive and expensive. I think this is tying in somehow to the idea of creative culture mentioned previously.

Sister Beth Has Joined the Game!

And most welcome she is. Here are her parameters on the experiment, in her own words:

"If I need deodorant or shampoo or something, I'm gonna buy it. I'm not going around skanky. Used books are also ok. Anything used is fair game. In fact, it's noble."

For an Example of Synchronicity,

see "The Age of Unbridled Consumerism Just Ended" by Lisa Wise.

More on Money

Last night I was thinking that spending money can be a spiritual act if it's motivated by love and the impulse to give, rather than a knee-jerk reaction to demons such as boredom, fear, depression, or feeling unloved. Then I happened to pick up a book called Facing the World with Soul by Robert Sardello (one of the Smarty Pants quoted earlier) and found a chapter called "Economics and Money." I wish I could mind-meld the whole thing to you, but instead here are a few highlights:

- In ancient Greece, economics meant "the care of the household of the world." It wasn't until the time of Luther and the Reformation (and the emergence of capitalism) that economics started referring to the pursuit of personal gain.

- "Modern economics comes to the foreground of life as the mythic, imaginative, religious manner of living with the world recedes."

- "The psychic starvation brought about by removing soul from the world produces insatiable greed."

- "Finance operates out of an analogy to war and to imperialism, and thus it is violent, aggressive, and if left to itself will destroy itself." (Sound prophetic?)

- There is a "hidden life force" within economics, "a soul force" that Sardello calls "the gift economy: that is, all that adds to the life of the economic body through the act of giving without seeking return."

Hope that gives you a taste of his ideas. For more revolutionary thinking, check out this documentary about the essentially false nature of money and the inherent dysfunction of a profit-based economy. It's two hours long but highly recommended, especially to fans of The Matrix. Thank you, Keith, for sending the link! (Here it is in a bigger window, in case this one is too tiny to see.)

The Cheapskate Thang

One of the reasons to stop shopping, or at least tap the brakes, is the great chain of backwards causality: the less you buy, the less money you need; the less money you need, the less you have to work at a job; and the less you work, the more time you have for things you might rather be doing. Things the world as we know it does not see fit to reward with cash. Poetry leaps to mind.

So regardless of this month's experiment, living frugally has been a pursuit of mine for awhile. The question, though, is how to keep from taking frugality so far that it twists into miserliness. How to spend consciously and mindfully rather than compulsively and without considering the options. Got no answers tonight, no how-to's. It's just on my mind as I sit here hoping NBC will post the latest Tina Fey skit.

Breaking News: Mom Cracks!

Just got off the phone with Mom, whose spirit is willing but whose flesh is like unto jelly. She said she had VOWED not to buy anything this month but then there was this YARD SALE where there was a BAG OF BOYS' SOCKS and a ELECTRIC SHAWL YOU CAN PLUG IN TO KEEP SUPER WARM! And it was MOSS GREEN! She spent $20 then called in a spasm of guilt to confess. So much for all her big talk about buying nothing but milk.

Sal: What was going through your mind? Had you forgotten, or did you remember but decide not to do it?
Mom [small, penitent voice]: I was rationalizing.

JoJo: How did it feel to buy those things?
Mom: BAD!!!

She was duly absolved and admonished to go and sin no more. It's not often you get to lord things over your mother like this. I think I could get used to it.

Day 3: Temptation!

The temptation started on day 2, actually, but it's been festering for hours now. Last night Amy emailed that a local non-profit is offering gardening classes in October on growing vegetables in the off-season, and on heirloom & unusual fruit for our area. Sign me up! But wait--tickets are $15. Even though the classes are about food, I don't think you could keep a straight face while arguing that buying the tickets is either a food or an energy pruchase. Unless you were Sarah Palin, in which case you would accompany the whopper with the kind of manic winking normally encountered in truck stop waitresses who wear lime green eyeshadow and banana-bunch earrings.

So I'm not going to the classes. But I just called the non-profit's office and they are going to collect copies of the handouts for me, and possibly post the information on the web. I think we can chalk this one up in the success column.

But anyway, speaking of winking:

Consumer Culture, Creative Culture

Ok, consumer culture is neither sustainable nor desirable for a happy life. But it's impossible to live without consuming, if only food and water. Maybe we've just lost the balance between consumption and production, between passive and active, between wanting things and participating in their creation.

So how to participate? Ideas are welcome here. Get around under your own power by walking & biking? Grow your own food? How about this: pick your favorite consumable, then figure out how to make it. If you love movies, film a youtube video. If you love video games, design your own. If you love clothes, learn how to sew. If nothing else, the extra time it takes to make your own anything is time not spent at the mall.

There! Problem solved. Now we can go back to trying not to think about the vp debate tonight.

This Just in from Sal:

"Mom is going to wipe the floor with our stanky asses!"

Mom is playing the stop shopping game this month along with Sal and me, and the intensity of her competitive streak is matched only by her hostility toward computers. So she won't be blogging with us, but she has prepared so thoroughly for the month that she plans to buy nothing at all but milk! We have clearly tapped into her enthusiasm for food storage. And for triumphing over her daughters, who didn't even realize it was a contest.

Woops!

Last night, at about 12:30 AM on October 1, I was brushing my teeth and musing over who poses the greater danger to the United States, Osama bin Laden or Sarah Palin, when I glanced down at the counter and saw this:



Uh-oh! The shopping has stopped, and I'm almost out of toothpaste! Well, No Impact Man uses plain old baking soda for his dental hygiene, and I suspect I'll be doing the same before long.

Incidentally, along with her neat idea to ban books from the Wasilla library, this is what scares me most about Palin:

Another Smarty Pants

Catherine Ingram, from her book Passionate Presence:

"Contentment is perhaps the most underrated aspect of happiness in our culture. Mostly we are conditioned by advertising and society to equate contentment with boredom. From an early age we are inducted in the message that happiness means wanting and getting things. About a week after the destruction of the World Trade Center and the loss of nearly three thousand lives, our government and media called upon its citizenry for their help. What they suggested was not to count our blessings, or to realize life's uncertainty and be more kind to one another, or to diminish our dependence on foreign resources. No, according to the government and advertising media, the most important and patriotic act for us in the face of the national tragedy was to purchase products. Spend money. Get back to consuming.

...It's a pyramid scheme on a large scale. Unfortunately, the players are slow to notice that this is not leading to happiness and that the runaway train of consumption is killing much of life on earth. If we were all more content, we would consume less. Contentment therefore becomes one of the most revolutionary acts a person in Western culture can experience." [italics added]