Are consumers really responsible for consumerism?

I recently read a hand-wringing story in The Guardian about the problems of consumer culture. It starts by describing a visit the author, Chip Colwell, made to a huge landfill in Denver and his horror at seeing the literal mountains of trash created by "mass consumption." Feeling the need to do something about the problem, Colwell sat down with his family and worked out a plan for a "slow-buy year." During that year, each of them would purchase no more than five items beyond basic necessities (food, medicine, school and work supplies, and any parts needed for car repairs). They'd be allowed to accept gifts of material objects, though they were supposed to "discourage" others from giving them, but any gifts they bought for others would count toward their five-item limit.

Now, I'm all for being mindful about consumption, but this struck me as unreasonably extreme. I've seen, and even taken, challenges along similar lines, but they were much more limited. For instance, the Dress Retro challenge I'm taking this year requires me to purchase no more than three new garments—but that's only for clothing, and it doesn't include shoes, socks, underwear, or anything purchased secondhand. Under the rules of the Colwell family challenge, none of those exemptions would apply. 

Moreover, it struck me as problematic that the Colwells were taking it on themselves to fix what is, fundamentally, a social problem. It's the same problem I had with the Take the Jump Challenge and its requirement to give up personal vehicles: American society is designed around car use, and giving up my own car won't solve that problem. All it will do is make my own life considerably more difficult. And it's the same problem I had with the Climate Coach's advice to switch to zero-waste personal care products: the amount it would cost me to replace my conditioner, dental floss, and toothpaste with zero-waste versions is simply not a reasonable price to pay for the tiny amount of waste it would eliminate. Car dependency and plastic waste don't exist because of individual consumers making irresponsible choices: they exist because, for all practical purposes, we don't have any better choices. It's big business and big government that have shaped our society to look the way it does, and they're the ones who have the power and the responsibility to fix it.

Eventually, Colwell comes to the same conclusion. Six months into his family's yearlong experiment, when the project has been all but derailed by real life—a hole in his only pair of running shoes, a pen going through the laundry with most of his clothing, a new home—he feels a need for "bigger answers" that "don’t reframe just individual consumption, but how our larger world of consumerism operates." He speaks with scientists who point to the sheer scope of the waste problem (one estimates that there are around 250,000 tons of plastic) and say that addressing it is going to require fundamental changes in business and public policy. Even if Colwell's family produced no plastic waste whatsoever for an entire year, that would be a tiny drop in a very, very large bucket.

This doesn't mean that it's pointless for us as individuals to be conscious about our consumption. Even if my personal choices don't have a huge impact, every little bit helps—and more to the point, it helps keep me sane. When I've been calling Congress month after month about climate legislation with no result, it's a nice change of pace to focus on the little things that are within my control, like buying stuff secondhand. But that doesn't mean that I should beat myself up every time I give in and buy something new from the store. My small decisions aren't going to save the planet, and they aren't going to destroy it either.

The Reverse Kondo

Last week, I came face to face with a real-life example of the sunk cost fallacy, one of the cognitive biases I wrote about in my Money Crashers piece. Based on the recommendations of several YouTubers, I'd ordered a pair of jeans from Fashion Nova in the hopes that they might actually fit both my waist and my butt (despite the 12-inch difference in circumference between the two). Unfortunately, these turned out to be absolutely not what I wanted; they were skin-tight almost everywhere from my belly button down to my knees, except in the places where they bunched up oddly around the crotch.

Even more unfortunately, in my eagerness to seize on what I hoped would be the jeans of my dreams, I'd neglected to check the site's return policy. I wasn't too concerned about the cost of return shipping; the real shocker was discovering that the site doesn't offer refunds at all. The best I could do was return the pants, at my own expense, in exchange for store credit. But since the entire site is definitely aimed at much younger women who like to show a LOT more skin than I do, it was highly unlikely I'd find anything else I liked. Rather than shell out more money to send back the jeans in the almost certainly futile hope of getting something for my investment, it made more sense to write them off as a loss and give them to the local thrift shop, where they might find a new owner who could actually wear them.

Once I'd decided to give away the jeans, it occurred to me that I might as well go through the rest of my closet and see if there were any other items in there that would be put to better use on someone else's back. And while I was at it, I asked Brian if there was anything he wanted to get rid of, and he ended up trying on everything in his side of the closet and ditching a sizable percentage of it. By the time we were done, we had one big box filled to overflowing with clothes to donate, and another small bag of stuff in such crappy condition it was fit only for textile recycling. (The Repurpose NJ boxes we've used in the past are no longer available, but it turns out they offer textile recycling at H&M stores, and maybe they'll have some jeans that fit me.)

Now, if we'd been following the principles of the highly trendy Marie Kondo as we went through this exercise, we'd have needed a much bigger giveaway box. In fact, we'd probably have ended up with almost nothing left in our closets. Her standard is that the only items you should have in your closet are those that "spark joy" in your heart when you touch them, which seems to me like an awfully high bar. I mean, I wouldn't say any single pair of underpants I own sparks joy for me, but I know I'd miss them if they weren't there.

So instead, we hit on a standard you might call the Reverse Kondo. (The Odnok, if you will.) We weren't going to insist that our clothes spark joy, but at the very least, they shouldn't spark annoyance. Any item that we felt bad about every time we saw it in the closet, for any reason—guilt, frustration, disappointment, regret, whatever—had to go.

Using this standard, we discarded:

• Clothes that were either way too big or way too small
• Clothes we'd both received as gifts and never worn
• A couple of sweaters I bought because I loved their bright colors, but never wore because they made me look like a fuzzy beach ball
• A skirt that I used to wear a lot, but no longer felt enthusiastic about
• A couple of wool neckties Brian had inherited from his grandfather and never worn (on the maybe two occasions per year when he actually wears a tie, he prefers a silk one)
• Items that we never wore because they were duplicates of other items we liked better (like Brian's less-favorite pair of beige pants)
• Most difficult of all, but necessary: a dress I'd bought as my all-purpose, go-to dress for any kind of slightly dressy occasion in warm weather. I had, in fact, worn it at least once, so I knew it was useful—but I had to face the fact that I'd never really liked it. I felt unsure about getting rid of something that fit perfectly and was still serving a purpose, but I knew I'd never actually be happy wearing it, and that seemed like the polar opposite of sparking joy.

However, under the same standard, we kept:

• A few pairs of pants that Brian wore only occasionally
• Another couple of sweaters that were fairly shapeless, but so warm that on cold days, I was willing to wear them anyway
• A dress that I hadn't worn in years and didn't consider very practical, but that caused Brian to go "Hubba hubba!" when I tried it on

In short, anything that there was a reasonable chance we would miss when it was gone is staying in the closet. Anything we will never notice the lack of—or feel actively relieved to see gone—is going to a new home. And our closet will be less crowded, but will still contain enough clothes to meet our everyday needs, and our less everyday ones as well.

Walking the line with technology

A few months ago, the New York Times Sunday Review ran a piece called, "Save Your Sanity. Downgrade Your Life." The author, Pamela Paul, frames her decision to deliberately go without, or even give up, various high-tech devices as part of her quest for a simpler and more meaningful life. A few examples:

• Trading in the "frantic whir" of her electric toothbrush for an older, manual version
• Sticking to a "stubbornly DVD-based" Netflix account rather than switching to downloads on demand
• Limiting smartphone use in specific ways (no devices in the bedroom; leaving her phone in another room when she's with the kids; not giving the kids their own phones)
• Cutting out not just cable TV, but network TV as well
• Eschewing all personal phone calls and e-mails, preferring to "catch up with a good friend or a family member...[when] we actually see each other"
• Skipping Spotify in favor of "the radio and ye olde compact discs"
• Avoiding e-book readers and tablet computers

Paul argues that choices like these help her minimize "techno-stress—the psychological and physical impact of spending countless hours staring at a screen." She highlights the dangers of constant connectedness, such as online harassment and cellphones cutting into face-time, such as the family dinner hour, and sees "creeping backward toward the 20th century" as her way to resist the relentless march toward a faceless digital society. This is a goal I can certainly sympathize with. But I can't help wondering whether Paul's knee-jerk rejection of all new technologies is really the best way to achieve it.

One of my favorite remarks about the simple life comes from Ursula LeGuin's "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas": "Happiness is based on a just discrimination of what is necessary, what is neither necessary nor destructive, and what is destructive." It makes perfect sense for Paul to eliminate or limit the types of technology that are clearly destructive: the constant clamor of Facebook, for instance, or the siren call of the smartphone screen at the dinner table. And it may even be worthwhile, at least for her, to eliminate some of the "neither necessary nor destructive" forms of tech like her electric toothbrush. But is she throwing out the baby with the bathwater? In her eagerness to eliminate all forms of "unnecessary" tech, is she deliberately making her life more complex and less fulfilling?

Anyone who reads this blog regularly will know that I'm no slave to technology. I've written numerous times about my slowness to adopt various gadgets and services, from smartphones to social media. But I've also written quite a bit about the types of technology I do find worthwhile, like our tablet computer (which gives us access to a wide selection of e-books from the eLibrary) and my online bill payment service. I see no contradiction in this; to me, it's simply a question of deciding which forms of technology are "neither necessary nor harmful." I could certainly live without online bill payment and pay my bills the old-fashioned way, writing out a check and sticking it an envelope with a stamp and putting it in a mailbox—but it's slower and more cumbersome, it costs me money for the stamps, and it wastes paper. In this case, it's the high-tech system that truly simplifies my life.

This is why I have problems with so many of Paul's tech-related choices. I like having my entire music collection at my fingertips on iTunes; I can select any song I want with the click of a mouse and easily put together themed playlists for different occasions. I can't see how giving that up in favor of "the radio and ye olde-fashioned CDs"—which would force me to listen to whatever happens to be on at the moment, including advertisements, or else fumble with a huge collection of physical disks—would make me a better or happier person. Likewise, while I don't currently have Netflix, it seems to me that if I did, there would be no advantage in a "stubbornly DVD-based" subscription that would force me to make my selections ahead of time, wait to receive them, and then have to mail them back—possibly even unwatched, because by the time they reached me I no longer had the time or the inclination to watch them. If you can't watch what you want, when you want, then what's the advantage of having the subscription at all?

Worse still, I wonder if Paul may actually be hurting her relationships with friends and family through her single-minded determination not to let technology "interfere" with them. I have a lot of friends and family members who are scattered across the country; if I insisted on "wait[ing] until we actually see each other" to catch up with them, I wouldn't speak to them more than once or twice a year. Not to mention that I would have trouble arranging to see them in the first place, since it's awfully difficult to make plans to visit someone who lives in another state—or even in another town—without using either the phone or e-mail. (I guess we could use old-school snail mail, but in the time it would take a series of letters to go back and forth between us, we might end up missing the one available weekend when all of us happened to be free.)

To me, it seems clear that if you really want to "simplify" your life, blindly rejecting all forms of technology isn't the way to do it. It makes much more sense to evaluate each new device or service on a case-by-case basis and ask: Would having this make my life better or worse, easier or harder, more or less fulfilling? If the answer is clearly negative, it obviously sense to eschew the new technology; if it's clearly positive, it makes sense to at least look at the cost and decide whether the benefits are enough to justify it. And if you're not sure, there's nothing wrong with holding out until you have a clearer idea of both the perks and the drawbacks.

It's also worth noting that the answer to this question can change over time. When I wrote this article on technology and frugality back in 2010, I said I "wasn't tempted by the new e-book readers," which seemed to have no clear advantage over printed books. But a lot has changed in the seven years since. Today, there are free e-reader apps for tablet computers, so it's no longer necessary to spend $100 or more on a dedicated device that can do nothing but display books; there's also a much bigger selection of e-books available for free or cheap through sites like the eLibrary. Nowadays, reading books in digital format gives us a lot more to choose from, and it lets us start enjoying our new reads right away instead of waiting until the library is open.

Of course, if the book we want doesn't happen to be available in digital form, we still have the option of going to the old-fashioned brick-and-mortar library to check it out. Because that's the other nice thing about new technology that Paul seems to be ignoring: simply having it doesn't mean you actually have to use it. There's no rule against communicating with your friends by e-mail and in person, or playing both computer games and old-fashioned board games. A new technology is a tool, not an assignment.

If your smartphone, or your Facebook subscription, or any other type of technology in your life is causing you stress or sucking up unreasonable amounts of time, then sure, it makes sense to dump it—or at least put limits on it. What doesn't make sense is to throw out things that are making your life better, easier, happier, because you've decided that technology, as a category, is harmful. There's plenty of room in LeGuin's "middle category...of the unnecessary but undestructive, that of comfort, luxury, exuberance, etc."—for the things that we could live without, but we shouldn't have to.

Becoming an EDC woman

Last month, when I blogged about my new refillable roller-ball pen, I gave several reasons why I was so pleased with it. I liked the fact that it was comfortable to hold, laid down a neat line, and most importantly, was refillable. It uses a cartridge system, which is the easiest method of refilling, if not the most ecofrugal—and if I ever decide I'm willing to trade off some convenience for sustainability, I can switch it to a cartridge converter or ink-dropper system. So, ideally, now that I own these two refillable pens, I should never need to buy and throw away a disposable pen again.

However, there was one other thing that pleased me about these pens that I didn't mention at the time: adding this pen to my purse made a great upgrade to my everyday carry, or EDC.

What's EDC, you ask? Well, there are two answers to that question. Your everyday carry, or EDC, is simply the stuff that you carry around in your pockets on a day-to-day basis. This doesn't mean the detritus of gum wrappers and cash register receipts that accumulates over time; it means the items you carry deliberately, because you need them and feel lost without them. Your keys. Your wallet. Your smartphone, if you're like most people, or your little notebook and pen, if you're more like me.

But the phrase "EDC" means something more than that. It refers to a whole philosophy built around the idea of choosing your EDC as wisely as possible. People who belong to the "EDC community"—and yes, there definitely is one—put a lot of thought into what they carry in their pockets every day. They invest considerable time and energy into clearing junk out of their bags and pockets, paring down their EDC to a few basic essentials—and then making those essential items as useful and well-crafted as possible. Their goal is to have an EDC that can get them through any event they're likely to run into on a day-to-day basis, without weighing them down.

I first discovered the EDC community while shopping for my new pens. I went searching for reviews of refillable roller-ball pens, and I discovered that some of the most thorough ones were on the Everyday Carry website (yes, of course there's a website). Because naturally, if anyone's going to put a lot of thought into which pen is the best pen to keep in your pocket, it's going to be the EDC folks. These people pay attention to every aspect of a pen: functionality, comfort, build quality, size, and style. Some of them even write, in all seriousness, about how well a pen functions in "the harshest conditions," as if they were planning to take their pens on an Arctic expedition. (Who knows—maybe some of them are.)

People get involved with the EDC lifestyle for different reasons. To some, it's all about being prepared for emergencies. These are the ones who want their watches to have built-in compasses and their pens to stand up to "tactical" use. (The EDC movement isn't the same as the "prepper" movement, but there's definitely some overlap.) Others, by contrast, like the idea of being outfitted as a proper gentleman (since most EDC'ers are male) should be. These are the types who prefer fountain pens and pocket watches and always have a clean handkerchief.

I haven't seen any articles that specifically talk about EDC from an environmental perspective. Nonetheless, it seems to me that the EDC lifestyle is a perfect fit with ecofrugality, because it's all about choosing wisely and wasting nothing. You choose only the exact items you need to carry in your pockets, so you don't waste space; you choose the most efficient set of items, so you don't waste time; and you avoid wasting money and resources by choosing sturdy items that are built to last, not cheap ones that get replaced often.

So when I purchased my new pen, I privately labeled it as my new "EDC" pen—and mentally, I made a vow to start improving the rest of my EDC, as well. As a start, I went on eBay two weeks ago and tracked down a working copy of my old, much cherished Timex watch, which died after ten years of loyal service shortly after I'd invested in a new, solid stainless-steel band for it. It was the only watch I'd ever found that really met my short yet stringent list of requirements: a face with all twelve numbers visible; hour, minute, and second hands; a night light; a metal bracelet band (NOT an extension band that snags my hair all the time); and a design that works with any outfit, dressy or casual. So I decided that rather than searching site after site trying to find another watch that meets all those needs, I should just track down another copy of this old, discontinued watch and buy that. (And, as a bonus, if the band wears out, I already have a stainless-steel one to replace it.) So now I have the perfect EDC pen and the perfect EDC watch, and I'm still working on the ideal phone.

All this inspired me to write an article about the EDC lifestyle for Money Crashers. This piece explains the concept of EDC, outlines its benefits (e.g., saving time, saving money, and being prepared for any emergency), and then goes into details about how to craft your own personal EDC. I discuss the nine essentials that show up on most lists of the ideal EDC—wallet, key fob, cell phone, flashlight, pocketknife, multitool, watch, notebook, pen—with details about how to choose the best ones for your needs.

Here are the details: 9 Everyday Carry Items You Need to Have to Be Prepared for Anything

Money Crashers: How to Simplify Your Life

First of all, just to be clear: I don't really consider myself a minimalist.

I'll admit that the ideal of minimalism, or voluntary simplicity, appeals to me in some ways. I like the idea of clearing away all the stuff in my life that doesn't improve it—not just belongings, but schedule commitments as well. My biggest problem with it is that most minimalists seem to have the idea that less is always better. The fewer possessions you have, the fewer things you have on your to-do list, the more bare you can strip your life, the happier you'll be. That's the viewpoint I rejected in this post back in 2010.

But to be fair, this isn't really a problem with the movement itself. The authors of the website "The Minimalists," which is more or less the definitive source, say minimalism is simply a way "to rid yourself of life's excess in favor of focusing on what's important." Thus, by definition, anything that is really important to you—anything that makes your life easier or more satisfying—isn't "excess," and there's no need to get rid of it. Indeed, the whole point is to give yourself more time and space for the things you care about by clearing away all the junk.

So my latest Money Crashers piece is all about this idea of voluntary simplicity: where it came from, what it means, and most importantly, what it doesn't mean. I talk about the financial, environmental, and health benefits of living with less, as well as the challenges of choosing a life that's so different from most mainstream Americans', and I conclude with a few ideas about how to move toward a simpler life if that's what you want.

How to Simplify Your Life With Voluntary Simplicity – Benefits & Challenges

Money Crashers: What Is the Tiny House Movement

About a year ago, I stumbled on the phenomenon of Tiny Houses while browsing on HGTV (the only channel in our cable lineup I actually miss now that we're cable-free again). I found these minute homes oddly fascinating; they're so small they look almost like a child's playhouse, yet they're so fully fitted out that you can actually live in them - and live pretty well, if the shows are to be believed. Watching the Tiny House shows is like exploring the model apartments at IKEA, which somehow pack space for cooking, eating, sleeping, bathing, working and relaxing into 250 or 400 square feet. You keep finding new nooks and crannies turned to uses you never would have imagined and marveling at the designers' cleverness.

The whole concept intrigued me so much that I decided to write a story for Money Crashers about it—basically allowing me to spend a couple of days exploring Tiny House sites and get paid for it. In the article, I outline the various types of tiny houses, discuss the advantages and disadvantages of living in a space less than 500 square feet in size. Then I provide profiles of several tiny house owners - single folks, families, and collectives - and discuss the ways they cope with the challenges of tiny house living. Finally, I wrap it all up with some resources for those who would like to find out more.

Read all about it here: What Is the Tiny House Movement – Plans, Resources, Pros & Cons

Ecofrugal Living podcast #11: The problem of too much space

Here's the lastest Ecofrugal Living podcast, based on the blog entry for January 3.

 
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

The problem of too much space

Over our Christmas vacation, we discovered a new show on HGTV called "Tiny House Hunters." In a refreshing change of pace from the original "House Hunters" series (and its two existing spin-offs, "House Hunters International" and "Island Hunters"), the prospective homeowners on this show are seeking less space, not more. They have various reasons for wanting to downsize: some are trying to live debt-free in a house they can buy for cash, some live a nomadic lifestyle and want a home they can take with them, and some are just trying to tread more lightly on the earth. Whatever the reason, they're bucking the long-term American trend against seeking more, more, more, by scaling back their belongings until they can fit into a home that, in many cases, is smaller than the kitchen at their old house.

As it turns out, this isn't the only show about the Tiny House movement. While trying to find out the schedule for "Tiny House Hunters," I Googled "tiny house show" and discovered two others: "Tiny House Builders," also on HGTV, which is all about the construction of these space-saving dwellings, and "Tiny House Nation," on FYI, which is like a combination of the other two: each hour-long episode shows both the process of constructing a tiny house to meet a family's needs and the process the family goes through to adjust to living there. Apparently, Tiny Houses are a pretty hot topic right now, and everybody wants a piece of it—which is an encouraging sign for a society in which the average new house is a whopping 2,600 square feet. (According to the environmental site Shrink that Footprint, Americans have more than twice as much space per person in their homes as the Brits and Japanese, and more than 3 times as much as Russians.)

Brian and I have now watched two episodes of "Tiny House Hunters" and two episodes of "Tiny House Nation" (which has full-length episodes available on its website and on Hulu). And after viewing two of them in a row last night, we've made an astonishing discovery: our house is HUGE.

Now, we've always known that our roughly 1,400-square-foot home (936 square feet upstairs and roughly half as much finished area downstairs) was a lot more house than we needed for just the two of us. We certainly could have made do with significantly less, if there had been any smaller houses on the market in the areas we wanted. But still, we've always been accustomed to think of our house as fairly modest in size. After all, it's only about half the size of the average new American home; it's smaller than most of the houses in our town, and even in our neighborhood; and there are a lot of rooms it doesn't have, such as a separate dining room or a formal living room. Yet after watching two episodes in a row of "Tiny House Nation" last night, Brian and I found ourselves wandering around the house saying, "Look at all this wasted space!" The designers on this show put Karl Champley of "Wasted Spaces" to shame, using every single square inch of space—walls, floor, and ceiling—and often putting the same space to multiple uses. In just two episodes, we saw a kitchen with individual induction burners that can be stored in a drawer and pulled out when needed, an entire office that folds up into a movable wall, and a Murphy-style bed that folds up into the wall—and then has a fold-out seating bench on the back.

This raises another question: if our house has so much room, why do we always seem to have so much trouble each year figuring out where to put all our Christmas presents? This year, for instance, Brian got a new air compressor—a small one, but it's still bigger than a breadbox, and it needs to find a new home in the shop, which is already piled so deep in stuff that it's hard to move around or find an empty surface to put anything down (or, once you've put it down, find it to pick it up again when you need it). Even if our house is small by modern standards, it's still got around 700 square feet of space for each of us; why can't we seem to find two square feet to store Brian's new toy?

At first, it's a puzzling question. But the answer actually became obvious to me while I was looking for a place to put one of my presents, a set of fluffy new bath towels. I opened up the cabinet in the downstairs bathroom and thought, "Gee, we have so many towels in here already, how are the new ones going to fit?" So I started pulling out the old towels, most of which hadn't actually been used in years, and that was when it hit me: We can't find room for anything because we have TOO MUCH space.

Yes, this sounds completely counterintuitive. But just think about it for a minute: when you live in a small space, you can't afford to hold on to things you don't need. You need to make the most of every available square inch, so anything that isn't being used has to go to free up space for more important stuff. But when you have extra space, it's easy to let things pile up. I didn't need all those extra towels; they aren't being used, and chances are they never will be used again. But on the other hand, there was no particular reason to get rid of them either, because we had the space. As long as that cabinet was sitting there, there was no reason not to hold on to all our old towels and whatever other miscellaneous linens we could find. There were curtains in there that hadn't been hung since we moved into this house; there were curtains that we'd never hung in any home and couldn't even remember where they came from; there were old shower curtain liners that were stained and had been retired in favor of new ones. But we hadn't dumped any of this stuff, because there was no need to—and consequently, when some nice, new towels that we might actually use came into our life, there was no room for them.

I don't mean to imply by this that I think Brian and I would actually be happier if we traded in our roomy, paid-off house for one less than half its size. After all, a house with more space has certain advantages, such as...well, more space. Sure, this house has more room than we actually need or use on a day-to-day basis, but if the plumbing unexpectedly goes out at my parents' house over Thanksgiving weekend, we can just pack up four guests and settle them in at our place with no difficulties. And when the Folk Project calls around seeking volunteers to host its monthly Home-Made Music Party, which can have anywhere from half a dozen people to over fifty, we can say without hesitation that we have plenty of room to put a big circle of musicians downstairs, fit in a smaller one (or two) upstairs, and still have room for folks to chat over snacks in the kitchen without disrupting the music. No Tiny House is going to be able to pull that off.

So I don't actually want to reduce the amount of space in our house; what I would like to do, instead, is stop using all of it. Because even if we do, technically, have room to store piles of linens that we never use, or repair records for a car that was totaled four years ago, or three old pairs of tap shoes that my sister and I used in high school, having these things in our home doesn't actually make our lives better in any way. They're just filling up space—which then isn't available for stuff that we could actually use.

So the first of my New Year's Resolutions this year is to go through every room in this house—every single room—and remove everything that is just taking up space. Stuff that could still be useful for someone else can be Freecycled; stuff that's worn or damaged, or that no one else wants, can go to the textile recycling bins. And stuff that's absolutely no use to anyone can just be thrown out—because while I normally like to avoid waste as much as possible, keeping garbage cluttering up my house instead of cluttering up a landfill isn't a solution. It's still garbage, it's just in the wrong place.

I'll keep you posted throughout the year on our decluttering efforts. I'm thinking of keeping a list of all the items I get rid of and how, updating it throughout the year to track our progress. By the end of 2015, I'll have concrete evidence of how much useless stuff I've sent on to a better life—and I'll also know just where I have available space for next year's holiday gifts.

My Green Holiday

I've fallen a bit behind with the Simplify the Holidays calendar that I posted about here last month. I was reading the entries regularly for a while, but over the past couple of weeks, I forgot about it. So today I went back to check up on the entries I'd missed, and I discovered the entry for December 8: The Green Holiday Quiz. This seemed right up my alley, since it combines two of my favorite things: environmental issues and taking quizzes. So I took it, and I found it interesting enough that I thought I'd share my results here with you.

Question 1 is "What activities will you be doing this holiday season?" I said that we would be giving gifts, wrapping gifts, putting up decorations, and traveling to visit loved ones, but not sending holiday cards or hosting a holiday meal or party. This got me 12 points right off the bat for not taking part in those last two activities, though I wasn't sure if that was really fair, since we will be partaking of holiday meals at other people's houses. Somehow it doesn't seem quite right to give us credit for putting the burden of entertaining on others. But after mulling it over for a bit, I reasoned that we're actually sharing the environmental burden with them: we're doing the traveling, while they provide the food. I also took some comfort from the assurance that we're doing a bit of good for the earth by not sending holiday cards, since I tend to feel a trifle guilty every year when we receive cards and end-of-year reports from half a dozen relatives and friends to whom we haven't sent anything. But now I can say, hey, we're not just being lazy; we're being green. So there.

Next, the quiz asked me for more details about the type of gifts we'd be giving. Would they be new, store-bought items? Secondhand? Homemade? How about gift cards, "gifts of charity" (a donation in a loved one's name), "gifts of experience" (such as a class or tickets to an event), or "gifts of your time and care" (such as lessons, child care, or help with household chores)? I somewhat guiltily bypassed those last few and 'fessed up that our gifts would be a mixture of secondhand, homemade, and store-bought.

The quiz then pressed me for more details: what percentage of our gifts would be new and store-bought? I didn't know the answer to that offhand, so I went to the handy Excel spreadsheet on which I keep track of all our holiday gifts, because I am the most anal person in the entire world. It has columns showing what gift we gave to each person and where it was bought, as well as a column indicating whether the gift was secondhand or in some other way green (organic, local, recycled, etc.). I totted up the number of gifts we were giving that were new and store-bought and found that it came to 17 out of 51 gifts on the list, so I selected "about 25 percent," which was the closest answer. Then it asked me what percentage of our gifts would be shipped either to us or to someone else. I hesitated over that one, not sure whether sending a package in the mail was the same as "shipping," but eventually I decided it was and checked "about 25 percent" for that as well. Those two answers netted me another 9 points.

Next it moved on to questions about wrapping. For what percentage of my gifts, it asked, would I use "upcycled" wrapping rather than new materials? Once again, I was a little thrown by the wording, as I hardly consider our reuse of last year's wrapping paper to be "upcycling." Supposedly, the difference between "upcycling" and recycling or reuse is that an upcycled product is more useful than the waste material it was made from. But our reused wrapping is, at best, exactly as useful as it was on its first go-round—and realistically, it's probably less useful, because even though we discard the obviously damaged parts, the paper still has wrinkles and dents that show it's been used before. However, since "reused" wasn't an option, I told the quiz we were using 75 percent "upcycled" wrapping. (The gifts we have shipped directly to my in-laws' house get wrapped there, which means we use new paper for those.) That got me 3 more points.

Next topic: decorations. Approximately what percentage of our decorations would be reusable? Once again, I wasn't sure how to answer. Our usual holiday decorations are made primarily from natural materials—evergreen boughs scavenged from the Christmas tree vendors, pine cones, holly twigs—plus a single strand of LED lights and some bits of ribbon. The lights and ribbon get reused, but all those branches tend to end up in the compost bin or bundled with the other brush at the curb when the holidays are over. Does that count as "reuse"? After some hesitation, I guessed the answer was yes, since even if we're not going to use these natural materials again, we've already "upcycling" them once. So I said we'd be going with 100 percent reusable decorations and was rewarded with 4 more points.

It then asked about our holiday lights. I was disappointed to see that the quiz didn't even ask whether we were using energy-efficient LED lights, as opposed to the old-fashioned, energy-gobbling incandescent bulbs. All it wanted to know was where we were using them (indoors, outdoors, both, or neither) and whether they were solar-powered. So I had to select "outdoors, no solar" and reveal that we would have them on for "a few hours a day for a few weeks or so." Four more points for those answers, so we didn't do quite as well on decorations as we did on gifts.

The final question was, "What's the most traveling you'll be doing this holiday season?" This was the part of the quiz where I knew we'd get spanked, since our annual trip out to Indianapolis to visit my in-laws is nearly 700 miles of driving. (At least we don't fly, which would produce more than twice as much CO2 per person, according to this "Earth Talk" column.) In fact, I probably got off fairly easily on this question, since I only had to confess to driving "more than 150 miles" and not how much more. I only got 2 more points for this answer, but it was better than nothing.

Totting everything up, the quiz reported that my 34-point score indicated my holidays were "about 68 percent green." Not bad, but it said I could do even better by making a few changes. It offered a list of tips, "personalized to my answers," to help me make my holidays greener:

• Consider alternative gifts, the kind that can't be wrapped. Unfortunately, this suggestion wasn't very practical for me. It's hard to give "gifts of your time and skill" to a friend or relative you hardly ever see, which describes most of the people on our gift list. Yes, we could offer to help my mom with a computer problem—but we do that all the time anyway and don't consider it a present. Gifts to charity don't really feel like much of a present, either; even if I knew which charities all the people on my list supported (those that are old enough to understand such things), I just don't think they'd get a thrill out of finding an envelope under the tree with a card reading, "A donation has been made in your name to...." And while gifts of "experiences," like event tickets or lessons, could be a great gift for the right person, you have to know what experience that person really wants and have a way to provide it. So while it's a lovely idea in theory, it just doesn't work out that often in practice. Bottom line: I think the whole point of gift giving is to show how you like and appreciate a specific person by giving a specific gift that person will really enjoy. If a charitable contribution or a cooking lesson is what that person would truly love, great. But if not, I think it's much better to choose a gift that will be valued, even if it's not as "green." I do my best to save resources in my own life all year round; I think I can afford to stray a little bit at the holidays.
• If you give material gifts, choose greener ones. Look for minimal packaging, recycled materials, and durable gifts that won't wear out. Once again, this is something I try to do when possible, but it doesn't take priority over the quality of the gift itself. If I want to give, say, a board game, I'm going to choose on the basis of whether it looks like a game my friend would enjoy—not whether it's made with sustainably harvested wooden pieces.
• Avoid waste when shopping and shipping. Specific tips include bringing reusable bags on shopping trips, using rechargeable batteries in electronic items, shipping gifts in reused and/or reusable packaging, and recycling your packing peanuts. To all of this, my reaction was: well, duh. I mean, of course I do all these things, and not just at Christmas time. I don't see how this tip could possibly have been "personalized to my answers," since the quiz never asked me about it. If it had, I could probably have picked up an extra point or two.
• Cut down on paper waste by removing yourself from the mailing lists of catalogues you don't need. Yeah, I know this is something I should really do; it's just such a hassle that I keep putting it off. I don't see how it's a specifically holiday-related tip, either, since I get unwanted catalogues all year long. Maybe I'll make removing myself from these mailing lists my New Year's resolution, instead.
• Ditch the "candy-filled advent calendar" in favor of an "acts of kindness calendar," which sends you an e-mail each day recommending an act of kindness you can do for someone else. I never buy an advent calendar anyway, so this tip is irrelevant for me, but I frankly can't see how getting an e-mail every day with one more thing you have to do is supposed to reduce holiday stress.
• Focus on experiences rather than stuff. "Pursuing happiness doesn't mean purchasing it," the site advises. "Moments with loved ones are what will be remembered." Here, at last, is a tip I can completely get behind. My favorite parts of the Christmas gathering at my in-laws are always the ones that aren't present-related: baking cookies, gathering around the piano to sing carols, playing adult-friendly board games after the kids are in bed. But somehow, in the rush to get everything "ready" for Christmas, I end up fixating on whether I've checked off all the boxes in that Excel spreadsheet—coming up with an idea for everyone on the list, buying or making all the gifts, wrapping them, shipping them—and I lose sight of the fact that years from now, this probably isn't the part of the holiday that any of them will remember. So maybe I need to cut myself some slack. If I don't manage to get a present under that tree for every single person in the family, does it really matter? With so many of us all exchanging gifts, is anyone even going to notice if one person's pile of presents doesn't include one from us? Considering how long it takes to open all those gifts, maybe making the process a little shorter would actually be a welcome relief for everyone.

Alternative Advent calendar

I'm starting this off with a disclaimer: normally I object to any material about "the holidays"—meaning Christmas, Hanukkah, Yule, Kwanzaa, and the general December Madness—before Thanksgiving. But I'm going to make an exception for this little tidbit, because it's actually about preparing for the onslaught of the holiday season and coming up with ways to minimize the madness. So, since even I concede that the holiday season can be considered under way as soon as Thanksgiving is over, it follows that in order to plan ahead for it, you need to start planning before Thanksgiving. And ideally, rather than increasing your December-mas stress by starting the season even earlier, it will reduce it so you can enjoy both holidays more.

The folks at the Center for a New American Dream have been urging folks to "simplify the holidays" for several years now. The goal, they stress, is not to do away with the gifts, the decorations, the carols, and all the other things that people love about Christmas; it's to get rid of everything else, the extraneous stuff that just adds stress and detracts from the joy of the holiday rather than adding to it. So, for instance, rather than giving each child half a dozen presents, so that they spend hours opening them all and end up in a state of sensory overload where they can't really focus on anything, perhaps you could increase the joy by giving them each just one or two presents that they will really love and treasure, and letting them spend the rest of the day playing with and enjoying them. Instead of baking a dozen different kinds of Christmas cookies (and then feeling compelled to eat at least one of each and ending the day feeling dyspeptic and guilty), maybe make just the few kinds that everyone in the family loves most. Instead of covering every inch of the house with colored lights, consider having just one tree in one room, where it will really stand out and look special.

The problem, as I've noted before, is that it's one thing to decide you'd like your holiday celebration to be simpler and more meaningful; it's quite another to make it happen. Especially when your holiday celebration isn't just yours, but your whole family's, and a lot of those family members are deeply attached to their current way of celebrating.

Well, this year, the Simplify the Holidays campaign is actually acknowledging that fact. The authors have put together a Simplify the Holidays calendar that's kind of like an Advent calendar for minimalists; each day, there's a different exercise, tip, blog entry, resource, or inspirational thought to help you turn your simplified holiday from a dream into a reality. Last week's entries included:

• An exercise called The Big Picture, in which you list all the things you do each year to get ready for the holidays, then think about which ones you really enjoy, and think about ways you might be able to eliminate or reduce the ones you don't enjoy.
• Guidelines for talking to your loved ones about the holidays and which parts are most meaningful to all of you.
• One reader's story about how she reduced the emphasis on gifts at her family's Christmas celebration and focused more on "spending time with each other."
• Links to the Simplify the Holidays pledge, a list of actions you can vow to adopt for de-commercializing Christmas, and booklet, which features a wealth of tips on planning a more meaningful and sustainable celebration.
• An inspirational quotation on the True Meaning of Simplifying. 

As we approach the season of holiday joy and madness, I offer you this alternative Advent calendar in the hope that it will help you focus on what's important to you, increasing the joy and minimizing the madness. Or, if you like your holiday celebration just fine the way it is, thank you, then maybe you can pass it on to someone else who you think could do with a little less stress during December.

We now return you to our regularly scheduled Thanksgiving thoughts.

Frugality versus simplicity, part 2

In her latest post at Live Like a Mensch, blogger Emily Guy Birkin talks about her conflicting impulses to "embrace a little more minimalism in my life" and to avoid spending money unnecessarily. On the face of it, the two goals seem to be inextricably linked: the less stuff you own, the less money it costs to buy it, maintain it, and furnish space for it all. But as Birkin points out, the two goals come into conflict when it comes to getting rid of stuff you "might need again someday," such as the numerous "big-ticket items" that her younger child has now outgrown—car seat, stroller, sling—but that might be needed if they ever have a third child. On the one hand, these items aren't being used now and may never be used again, so at the moment, they're just a major waste of space. But on the other hand, giving them all away would turn out to be a major waste of money if they ended up having another kid and needing to replace them all.

This article intrigued me, because the conflict between frugality and simplicity is one that I've confronted often over the years, most explicitly in this post back in 2010. In it, I noted that while frugality has a lot in common with simplicity or minimalism, they're really very different ideals. Minimalism is about having less: less earning, less spending, less work, less stuff. Frugality, by contrast, is about having more—more money in the bank, more time for what matters, more enjoyment—without spending more money. Adopting a minimalist lifestyle is one way to achieve frugality, but it's by no means the only way. Indeed, as Birkin notes, in some cases the two goals can actively conflict with each other, because getting rid of stuff may end up costing you more money in the long run. For instance, if you had a tool you seldom used, such as a circular saw, you might decide to give it away or sell because it was "unnecessary"—but then every time you did have a need for a circular saw, you'd need to rent one. It might still be worth doing, if the extra space was more important to you than the extra money, but it would depend on your personal situation.

Amy Dacyczyn (all hail the Frugal Zealot!) wrote about this very problem in a Tightwad Gazette article called "The Frugal Balance." She said frugality isn't just about saving money; it's about making the most of all the resources available to you, including money, time, space, and personal energy. Thus, a hoarder who stuffs her tiny apartment with egg cartons and rubber bands that "might be useful" at some unspecified time, for some unspecified reason, is not being "too frugal"; the problem is that her frugality is out of balance. In her efforts to save money, she's wasting space. Her lack of space may also end up costing her time and energy (because it takes so long to find anything), and even, ironically, costing her money (because she ends up buying new things when she can't find what she already has).

Keeping your frugality in balance is a matter of being lavish with the resources you have plenty of and stingy with those that are scarce. Thus, if you have a high income but little free time, there's no point in spending hours on end making all your holiday gifts by hand to save money; you'd be better off spending working just a few extra hours working to earn extra cash for presents. Contrariwise, if you have a huge house with tons of space, there's no need to live like a minimalist; storing things you "might need someday" is actually easier than living in a half-empty house and running out to rent items (spending both time and money) when you discover a need for them.

If my goal is to make the most of all the resources available to me, it doesn't really make sense to view getting rid of stuff—even unnecessary stuff—as an end in itself. Instead, it's a means to an end: making room for something else that matters more. If I have a sweater in my closet that I seldom wear, that's only a problem if the closet is overcrowded; if I have a massive amount of zucchini in the garden, that's only a problem if it'll go bad before I'm able (or willing) to eat it all. In other words, having a lot of anything is not, in itself, a problem. "A lot" doesn't become "too much" until it starts taking away space (and time, and energy) from everything else.

Frugality versus simplicity

Following up up on last week's entry, my mom sent me a link to this interview with the woman described in the Times article who made the transition from the "work-spend treadmill" to a life of extreme frugality. This article contrasts Tammy's "before" lifestyle (a $40,000 salary, a two-bedroom condo, two cars, $30,000 worth of debt, and "enough wedding china to serve two dozen people gazpacho at the same time") with her "after" lifestyle (no car, no TV, a 400-square-foot studio that she shares with her husband Logan, about $24,000 a year from freelance work, and no more than 100 personal possessions in total). Then the site poses the question: Which would you choose?

Now, I'm sympathetic with Tammy's decision to simplify her life. I definitely think that when the stuff you own is not contributing to your happiness, you should get rid of it. And I absolutely agree that it's better to do a job you enjoy and earn a modest income than to pay for an extravagant lifestyle with work you hate. But all the same, my honest answer to the question was "Neither." I certainly wouldn't want her "before" life, with a job she didn't care for and an apartment full of stuff that wasn't making her happy. But when I contemplate living the way she lives now, I have to admit that I don't think I could be happy that way, either.

I mean, think about it for a minute. One hundred possessions total? Including books? Okay, I'm willing to admit that among the books presently filling (and overfilling) my shelves are a lot of volumes that I'll probably never read again (or in some cases, never read at all). I'm sure I could part with some of them and never miss them. But even if I kept only the ones that I really love and read (or refer to) over and over, I'm sure I'd have more than one hundred. And I can't believe that getting rid of them all—or even just the ones I only look at once in a while—would make me a better and happier person.

Likewise, I can't see myself becoming happier by giving up our beloved house and yard in favor of a one-room apartment. We worked and saved for years to buy this place precisely because we knew we wanted a home of our own, a place we could keep and tend and make all ours. Yes, we do spend a lot of hours working on the house and the yard—but we do it willingly, even joyfully, because it gives us a sense of satisfaction to make the place we live in as beautiful as it can be. I can't see how giving that up could ever make us happier. And while I can admit that our house has more space than we really need for just the two of us (although it's still much, much smaller than most new houses) I really don't think that a single 20-by-20 room would be enough space for us to cook, eat, sleep, work, and play in. I can't help thinking I'd always be going and hiding in the bathroom just to get a couple of minutes to myself—not because I don't love spending time with my husband, but because I don't want to spend every minute of my life with anyone.

Tammy Strobel's story seems to me to be less about frugality than about simplicity—getting rid of the excess in your life. Naturally, these two goals overlap to a certain extent, but they're not the same goal. A lot of people's idea of a "frugal" life is a bare-bones life like Tammy's—which is an appealing vision for some, and so unappealing to others that it turns them off to the whole idea of saving money. But my version of frugality doesn't have anything to do with austerity. Rather, it has to do with abundance—having more and doing more with less (as I discussed in this entry back in May).

For example, in the interview Tammy Strobel claims that "Americans spend one-fifth of their income on their cars," and posits that giving up your car could make you happier by freeing up all the hours you have to spend working to make those payments. But when I consult our budget, I see that Brian and I spend approximately one-fiftieth of our income on our car (and that's take-home pay, not gross). By making the distinction between luxury (a shiny new car for each of us) and necessity (one reliable car that can get us to all the places we can't reach via foot, bike, or mass transit) we get what we need at a price we can easily afford. And the same principle applies to every aspect of the frugal life—housing, food, clothing, and those books stuffing my living room shelves.

To put it another way, we really can have our cake and eat it too, as long as we're willing to bake it ourselves. And to me, that's a much better deal than going without any cake at all.