Lily, my very lovely 14 year old, creative and a non-consumerist, can take an outfit and make it uniquely her own via thrift and a wonderfully stylish manner.  Everything we own is used or second-hand.  Everything but our underwear and socks.

"Well, you're old, what does it matter?  I need to impress folks."

An imaginary conversation possibly, but I have tried to teach, or to model, a supremely low level of consumerism for my children simply because I know that more stuff won't make them more happy.

I don' think anyone's ever said on their deathbed, "Thank God for all this nice, expensive stuff!"

A lot of people don’t do minimalism because it doesn’t seem realistic for their lives. But what they often mean is that they don’t want others to think they’re weird.


I am all for living to help other people, but when we live our lives to the expectations of other people, we end up living lives we don’t want. And what do we get when we live up to the expectations of all these other people? They really don’t care — they just don’t like things different because they are uncomfortable with change. Staying the same as everyone else doesn’t make everyone else happier — it just doesn’t force them to reflect on their lives.


An excellent article yesterday by Mnmlst, me nodding my head like a bobblehead doll in the back window of someone's old Chevy.


I doubt I've ever discarded something that I later wished I'd kept, nor not bought an item and then regretted the non-purchase.


For example, we have so many clothes, gadgets and other possessions because ads have sold us on the idea that we need clothing to look stylish, to be successful, to feel like a woman, to be as good as the people on TV. It wasn’t always this way, and it’s up to us to decide whether we want it to be that way from now on.


No one cares.  I repeat no one cares.  No one looks at me and thinks, "Wouldn't she look better in pointy toed high heels?"


If someone does think that, then it's on them, not on me.


I've been this way since the start, not even realizing it until my own mother and her sister pointed it out one day on a visit to my home, when my Aunt Doris remarked, "Oh how nice!  Cindy doesn't have a bunch of decorative items to have to dust."


I kinda looked around in surprise.  Hey, cool, it's true.


If I had treasured possessions, I know they'd have been destroyed over the years by traumatized children.  A line in an adoption class, "They might tear up your wedding photos," as new parents are warned about the trauma actions and reactions, left me blissfully unconcerned.  


I don't shop for recreation, that'd be about as enjoyable as smashing my non-pointy toes with a hammer each day.  If anything, I grow food to keep me legitimately away from a boring store.


I don't see happy people shopping, I see that glazed over I can't afford this look in their eyes, the desperation to look cool at any price overtaking common sense when no one cares if they look cool or not, our self-obsessed society obviously obsessed with themselves, not with the appearance of others.


My county is getting a mall.  Why?  There's a mall hardly five miles from here.  Why do we need another one?  Stores are hurting for business in this recession, why on earth does anyone think we need more stores that'll potentially bankrupt themselves.  Who in this county needs another item to stuff into their stuffed house so they can continue to work-to-spend, stressing themselves out further?


Our country is sinking in credit card debt, student loans, underwater mortgages, and car payments.


Within seconds of typing this post, proofreading it, Jack knocked over my coffee cup, making me scream like a banshee in alarm, grabbing up my laptop and my Iphone faster than he ever thought I could react, knowing I'd have a cow if something happened to either one of those two treasured items.


And that's kinda my point.  We need some stuff, not a buncha stuff.  My amount of clothes would shock most folks, yet there's nothing about this tiny amount that bothers me, if anything, it's reassuring to me, less to tend to, less to choose from, less stress, less laundry.  I'm almost 60.  Who gives a hoot what I wear?


Scotty, who truly doesn't give a crap about fashion, spent a couple of hours yesterday afternoon painstakingly untangling a black snake from some poultry netting we'd used in the chicken moat.  


"Can't we just kill it?" one of my impulsive, less concerned with wildlife, aggressive sons asked me.


"Nope, it's protected by Georgia DNR," I explained to the one who wanted to oppositionally argue that no one would know if we offed it.


"Dude, I'd know," I again tried to explain the extraordinarily high level of conscience one has as the daughter of a Methodist preacher born in the 1950s girl that I am.  I'm always hyper aware that God sees everything, and I want His blessings, not condemnation in my conscience.


"You're weird," he told me.


Honey, it's that weirdness that's kept me living like this day after day after day after day.  I really wanna thank God out loud for making me this non materialistic.