Buy Nothing Day has been "celebrated" as an international day of protest against consumerism since it was first set up in Canada in 1992. In the USA it is held on the Friday after Thanksgiving, the same day as Black Friday which is one of the busiest shopping days of the year. I have been thinking about this sort of thing for a while, partly from an ecological point of view and enjoyment from trying to live a bit of the "Good Life" in the urban wilds of Wandsworth and partly for financial reasons. However, it's also because of the creeping feeling of "Stuffocation", a word coined by James Wallman for his recent book which describes what it feels like; drowning under a pile of stuff. Read a February 2015 Guardian article about experientialism vs. materialism by Wallman here. It seems a good time to think about it with the "Keep Sunday Special" campaign being debated again after George Osborne's announcement during his budget speech of a consultation of Sunday shop-opening hours (yes, I wrote this a little while ago).
Gradually over the last few years I've been making more and more conscious decisions to spend less money and instead spend time cooking, making things and pursuing hobbies from a back-to-basics approach. I like making meals from scratch, including most of our dinners, soups, sauces, bread, pies, cakes, jam. For the jam, I pick blackberries rather improbably on Wandsworth Roundabout every year to make what my droll Dad named "Traffic Jam". The tally this year is 3.5 kg of blackberries and counting.
Berry harvest, 14th July 2015
My pet worms in the wormery compost bin have been working well for years now; all our food waste goes into it and the busy worms produce a nice lot of compost which goes straight back onto the garden. It probably doesn't sound very interesting or impressive to anyone outside London, but I feel it's a nice achievement in our urban surroundings. My whole garden is fairly self-sustaining : I dry my artichoke stems each year and use them as bean canes, I weave my hazel clippings around the trellis to reinforce it, rainwater is collected in my water barrel which is an old bin with the swing lid upturned to keep insects and leaves out. I collect seeds from the veg and flowers to recycle for next year; OK, not a new idea, but it's important to keep the seeds properly (I learnt a lot on a seed collection course at the London Centre for Wildlife Gardening). On another course at Regent's Park Allotment Garden as part of Capital Growth, I learnt plenty of tips to grow food in containers - one was to re-use half-buried yoghurt pots as water reservoirs in hanging baskets. Hubby's Polish family would be proud - I like to joke that his granny had a part-time job as a witch; she made her own medicines out of deep-rooted traditions and beliefs. I think she was also ahead of her time - she used to be shocked that grassy roundabouts in England and grass verges were so wasted - why wasn't there a goat on each one? How great would that be? I used to laugh at the idea but now think she had a point.
We don't use our car much, partly because the public transport here is so good, partly because the local traffic jams are so bad (no, not my blackberry traffic jam - that's great!), mostly because I don't like driving. But anyway we enjoy cycling around here along by the Thames and through the parks.
Cycling along the Thames: 7th July 2015
I like making my own art - our house has several blown-up photos on canvas from our holiday. The Camargue flamingo is a favourite.
I made a cushion cover to match:
I like making my own birthday cards; this one was for my sister-in-law:
I buy most of my clothes second hand (or vintage as it is known these days) and customise them. The shirt below (side view) is Liberty silk, found years ago in a Chelsea charity shop when I worked in King's Road (those were the days). The sleeves became a bit tired under the arms, so I cut them off, reattached the cuffs as cap sleeves, and then added a black and white silk panel from my favourite botanical-inspired designer (Clarissa Hulse off-cuts) down each side.
The rest of my wardrobe mostly consists of my own old clothes that I alter (OK, make bigger). The denim jacket below I've had since University and the shoulders recently frayed, so I added a couple of panels of Briar silk for a bit of a camouflage effect.
By spending a lot of time at the gym in the evenings and running (or having a lie-in) on Saturday mornings, it leaves little time left for shopping anyway. My workplace has no obvious shops nearby to spend superfluous money (not that I have the time either), although it has a nice selection of exotic fruit and veg stalls in the market.
I like to think we have a responsible lifestyle but I'm not claiming to be some sort of eco-guru or anything, I do these things because they absorb me. It's taken me time to learn techniques and I think it gives me a sense of security that I can do these things from scratch if necessary - make decent(ish) clothes, make cosy furnishings, feed myself from the garden. I have yet to try knitting but I don't fancy my chances unless one of my arms starts growing longer than the other for some reason.
I lost a lot of confidence after my cancer diagnosis. You don't feel in control of anything, even (especially) your own body. I suspect that I feel better about myself when I can control the food I eat and the environment I spend time in, especially if I can do it in an environmentally-friendly way.
Transition Towns is a movement that promotes sustainable living by creating contacts and wider networks of people, and from this grew our community garden, Bramford, which has really widened my circle of friends and taken me away from the all-absorbing process of feeling sorry for myself.
Writing the book "Not buying It"and living for a year only buying essentials raised the question for Judith Levine and her husband - what is essential? She made a list and classed haircuts as essential. I don't. (I can hear my mum - a retired hairdresser- tutting from here). In the end, Levine wasn't too harsh on herself but used the experience to think more deeply about her life choices and why we as humans are naturally acquisitive creatures. In my case I feel better for not going shopping very often. I've had a lot of fun doing other stuff instead. It's a sobering thought that the lifestyle most of us in England live today is beyond the wildest dreams of even the royalty and other rich of the past who didn't have lighting, heating, running water, etc. Recently having a broken toilet for a couple of weeks has even helped me to truly appreciate a flush!
