Think Twice Before You Go Shopping

I’ll admit, it’s HARD to restrain myself from buying things that make my life easier. Especially when I’m faced with thousands of them at my local Walmart, grocery store, or mall. But I think that we are coming to the point where we will no longer have a choice in the matter…This way of “disposable” living is no longer sustainable.

What kind of products do I find tempting? Here’s an example from several days ago: I was making au gratin cauliflower (a delicious recipe!) and it called for a cup of bread crumbs. Once upon a time I would have simply made my own bread crumbs from a piece of my homemade bread. Nowadays? I opened a canister of store-bought bread crumbs. What else is like that? Boxed rice, mac n cheese, cereal, crackers, snack foods, waffles, chicken/veggie broth, jars of cut-up fruit, applesauce, baby food, jam, condiments, cans of soup, packages of trail mix, popcorn, bread, croutons…and so much more! With a few exceptions, all of that stuff could have been homemade. But our society has become so reliant on quick fixes (and necessarily so because we’ve let ourselves get so busy that we don’t have time to do to it ourselves!) that we would never even consider making our own ___ (fill in the blank). Like I wouldn’t think to make my own bread crumbs, or any of the other food in the packages lining my shelves.

And that’s just the food. What about the stuff we buy to use with the food? Small plastic bags, big plastic bags, plastic bags with zippers, paper bags, waxed paper, parchment paper, plastic wrap, aluminum foil, plastic containers (that are labeled disposable even though you could reuse them for years!)… I think back to this one cabinet my grandmom had that was filled with truly “disposable” plastic containers of all sorts that she had washed and resused dozens of times—butter, yogurt, and whipped cream containers. Maybe you’ve seen a similar cabinet at a relative’s house before. Chances are you don’t have one yourself.

Why am I even thinking about this now? I’ve thought about the difference between using-up and reusing occasionally over the past few months, but lately, I can’t STOP thinking about it. In fact, I feel like I need to make some real changes in the way I consume products, before I am forced to make that choice. Why will I be forced? Well, I believe we will all be forced in the coming years (I’m not sure if will be sooner or later, but I want to be prepared for sooner) to drastically change our disposable lifestyles simply because the products we’ve become reliant on will stop existing. Our resources are disappearing, plain and simple.

I can point to several truth-telling sources that the main-stream media doesn’t want us to see, and certainly the government and corporate big business don’t want us to see. But we should see them, so that we can educate ourselves on the reality of our daily practices, and then decide for ourselves how to respond. The first one is a 20-minute video that starts to delve into the details of our “disposable” society. It’s short, entertaining, and gives enough information that you can start to see a bigger picture at play than the one we’ve been feed from the media and our government. I posted the link below, and I URGE you to watch it. I’ll post more in-depth links in the coming weeks.

Nate and I feel like we are at a cross-roads, and as you learn more about the coming future, you may come to one too.

~Jen

The Story of Stuff
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