Coming out of the consume-less closet

So in my now two months of consume-less living and I've never once tried to hide my new lifestyle. Logical people don't usually blog about their secrets and I like to consider myself a logical person. Anyways, from time to time my consume-less-ness comes up and people hear about it for the first time. I'm always entertained by their reactions, they seem to follow a very distinct pattern. First, the person is usually shocked/confused wondering how in the world I could set a goal such as this. I always try to explain what I mean by going consume-less, but most people's minds start racing as soon as I say I'm not consuming and they stop actually listening to what I say. Once they finally start to listen again and realize things like I still eat, take showers, and use toilet paper they calm down a bit. Then the "what about" phase begins. This is where the person inevitably asks me a ton of questions all starting with "what about....". For example, what about gifts, what about soap, what about clothes....etc. etc. So I usually go through these questions for about 5 minutes before the person realizes that I'm not completely crazy and lowering ones environmental impact is not as hard as it first sounds. I also never go around proselytizing or preaching about living a consume-less lifestyle. As I've said many times, it was a personal decision to change my lifestyle and I don't go around judging those who consume the good old fashion American way. Well 2 months down 10 to go!

PS. I've included a picture of a baby polar bear I got from the no impact man blog. It has absolutely no relevance to my post I just thought it was ridiculously cute :)

The joys and dangers of thrift stores

Well I am now 37 days into this consume-less year and still going pretty strong. I apologize for my lack of posts lately, things got a little busy. Anyways, so far this new life style has not been too challenging. I think a lot of this has to do with my general dislike and laziness towards shopping. I don't think I've really been in any stores other than for groceries this year. Well, yesterday that changed, I decided to further investigate the Bozeman thrift store scene. After work I visited all 4 of these fine establishments. I've always liked thrift stores. They're kind of like a big treasure hunt, you never know what you'll find. So I set off with the intention of looking for some specific items: board games, pants that were not jeans, possibly a new remote, and to check out couch possibilities. For the record buying things at thrift stores is completely ok in my consume-less year because it is recycling already produced goods not buying something new. I didn't go crazy or anything, I only ended up with a pair of jeans and several shanks of yarn for future knitting projects (neither did I originally plan to buy). Interestingly, once I bought something I started to think of tons of other random things I suddenly really wanted, but absolutely don't need. I was very content, until I stepped into stores again and remembered how easy and addicting buying things is. We as Americans have a serious retail addiction and are notorious for impulse buying things we never needed and will hardly use. Just think about your last couple trips to a store like Target. I'm just as guilty as the next person. I can't even begin to count the many times I've gone into a store not really wanting or needing anything just to look around and once inside suddenly think I have to have half the stuff there. There's probably some psychological theory out there explaining this phenomena. It's one thing to use resources for something really crucial and necessary, but it's another thing entirely to consume just for the sake of consumption. It's so interesting to me to look at how societies progressed from markets where essential goods were sold and traded to giant super stores filled with low quality foreign mass produced junk that we just some how can't live without.