7, week 6

today marks the final day of the final week of fasting related to the book 7, An Experimental Mutiny Against Excess. friends and i have noticed that our entire way of looking at life has changed since we started reading this book (much to some of our husbands' chagrine - my minimalist man loves it ;).  so here's a recap of last week's...

Week 6: Spending

this was sort of a weird one because we chose to "make it easy on ourselves". the idea of it was to only shop at 7 places for the length of the fast (a much more difficult accomplishment for the month the author maintained it than our 7 days ;). unfortunately, it was jason's last week of summer vacation, and we had lots of celebrating planned... our list of 7 places ended up including:

Uptown whittier farmer's market

online bill pay

home depot: we were still hard at work with our garden boxes & home projects, and ended up there multiple times during the week... we were originally going to buy a scoop of gardening soil from a local garden store (less waste, etc), but couldn't justify including said random garden store in our list, since jason was also planning on working on refrigerator and plumbing projects this week. so we bought the 27 bags worth instead (boo as far as waste. this book has created more tensions in me than anything else, i think!)

the junkyard: they were having a sale, and jason's brother came over from out of town specifically to go there with him - this would not have been an option if it was for the whole month, probably, but for a week? no prob ;)

target: i know, i know. not the best place to be spending your money, as far as ethics and all that. but the author included it in HER list (as she put it, so her son wouldn't have to take a bunch of kale to a birthday party if it came up - haha)... so i felt justified in doing it, too. i may need to admit, however, that a main reason for choosing it was... the starbucks inside. it was jason's last week of summer, ok?! and they were doing that receipt for a $2 cold drink promo thing! 

costco: this was another "cheater" one. we do shop there, sometimes often, but i'll admit that the reason it made the cut was that, on top of groceries and anything you could ever want, there is a food court (for those days when i just can't cook 8 months pregnant - they are more than i'd like ;) AND a gas station. score!

chick-fil-a: my sister has free chick-fil-a every day of 2012 because she won a contest, so we are often meeting her there, spending time together (and they have their peach shakes in right now, which i crave every other day - and you don't mess with a pregnant woman and her cravings, right?!!)... and no, this choice had nothing to do with the much ado about nothing all over the news the last few weeks.

easy, right? yeah, that's what everyone i talked about it with said, too. but so many things come up during the week! like a good friend of Jason's birthday fell on that wednesday, and he wanted to take him out to dinner at Lucille's... not on our list. solution? costco has gift cards for lucille's!! bought 'em that afternoon, and used them at dinner :) we did break it once, when jason took joey to "Splash!", a local water park, on his very last day of summer vacation... he decided those memories were worth "breaking the fast".

 but a dozen other things came up throughout the week that we had to say "no" to. this is good, as august this year will be the smallest paycheck month we've had in a long time, and we are trying to stretch every dollar... we ate out less, even went grocery shopping less - worked hard at eating what we already had in the refrigerator/cupboard (why is this so hard?? such a "first world problem")

one thing we bought (at target.com) with gift cards from our baby shower last month is a brand-new video monitor! i love it. i get to watch my boy sleeping - the only peaceful moments of his day, and i cherish them! the first night we used it, however, we discovered how much we didn't know about our son (having only used audio monitors before). this video was taken almost 2 hours after he had been completely quiet in bed. we always assumed that meant he was asleep (since his every waking moment generally involves human interaction/communication - he's always been super-verbal). what the?! 

the other side of this fast was spending time researching companies actually worth giving money to. you know, like no sweat shops, actually looking toward the good of their community and world, etc? we've bought from tradeasone.org before - a fair trade organization, where you get to see a little bio on the person/group who made whatever product, and how your purchase is helping make the world a better place... everyone on our Christmas list received something from there this past year. but there are dozens of amazing companies, working at helping refugees, getting women out of prostitution, stopping human trafficking in so many ways... THOSE are the places i want to spend my money! we gave (giving money doesn't count as spending in this fast, according to jen hatmaker ;) to an organization called kiva.org; well, more specifically to a corn & bean farmer in el salvador named jorge. the way they work is by giving a "microloan" via donations, and then if the person's endeavors succeed, they "pay you back" the amount of the original "loan", and you can then reinvest it in someone else who needs it (which apparently happens 98% of the time)! SO COOL.  i got so inspired looking at the list of companies and how they are helping people, that it got me thinking: i own a business... could i employ refugees, sponsor children, stop human trafficking, give back to my community and the world somehow?? i give from the proceeds of my etsy shop to a couple of groups doing this kind of thing, but what about closer to home? could i personally be involved in justice & mercy to the world? still mulling this over as the days and weeks go on... any thoughts?

happy end of summer!

my boys love the beach... and it's free!
as long as we remember to get gas at costco beforehand... ;)

up next: week 7: "fasting from stress"

7, week 5

waste.

something we a do a lot of, and i have always wondered how much more responsible for the earth i could be as a good steward of what we've been given... we've always recycled bottles & cans, but that's about the extent of cutting down on the waste our home contributes to the earth and its landfills... 

ok, i also repurpose and "upcycle" a lot of castoffs (trash turned treasure) in my art and jewelry and decor... but, let's be honest - that was just cause i LIKE rusty stuff, not out of any kind of intentional awareness of being less wasteful. i'm sure i have been one of those people who (at least inwardly) mocked those who made actual effort at "being green". but it has been more on my radar the last couple of years, and this chapter of the 7 book just really brought it to my attention. 

so week 5 was a "fast from waste". we chose as our actions this week to:

*build and begin to maintain a compost bin

*build garden boxes, and start our long-awaited vegetable garden

*recycle everything possible

*no paper towels or ziploc bags, and try to avoid any type of non-recyclable packaging as much as possible

*try to buy fresh local organic produce in season (farmer's market) 

i LOVE our compost bin! just aesthetically, it is lovely with its weathered old pallet-wood. and we (meaning Jason - i stapled window screen to the inside of the slats... and then quickly retreated to the air-conditioning) made it entirely out of stuff we already had around the yard and garage! and i am so amazed at how much i used to toss in the trash can actually be composted. this was one contributing factor to our significantly smaller trash load this week.

our first offering:

as you can see, we are (so far) fairly casual composters... not grinding everything to a pulp so it breaks down faster - just tossing it in there (we did chop stuff like corn cobs & whole rotting apples). we cleaned out our fridge this day, and i felt much less guilty about throwing aging produce into the compost bin than the trash... at least it will eventually fertilize our garden...

for which we built three garden boxes (we were warned against using pallets for growing food itself, not knowing if there were any chemicals in these old guys' past), and planted them with (mostly) stuff that can be planted late summer for a fall crop (did you know home depot has a year warranty on their plants?! so my poor sweet basil that has already wilted in this august heat will either resurrect or get composted and another in its place! win-win ;) - tomato, bell pepper, basil, and cilantro plants; and carrot, spinach, and broccoli seeds... i chose things we eat often and i always feel like we throw some away because it goes bad before we can eat a whole costco quantity of it... this will be even BETTER than shopping at the farmer's market!

we researched what our trash company will accept to recycle in our blue bin, and i was pleasantly surprised to discover it was a LOT more than i thought! i guess my only category for recycling involved what can be taken in and exchanged for money (bottles & cans, basically) - not that we have really done much of that. but i always warned jason against throwing random papers and plastics in there - but you totally CAN! as long as it's "numbered plastic", and nothing is all food-stained...! yay! our recycle bin had to get taken out MUCH more frequently than our trash this week - hooray! and as we have been continuing to sort through our "possessions" to rid the excess left still from week 3, we came up with lots of alternate uses for junk we would have put in the trash before!

and i couldn't believe how easy it was not to use paper towels or ziploc bags! not a one, and we totally survived! even with the "great kitchen caramelization of 2012"! yes, i was trying to make dulce de leche by boiling a can of sweetened condensed milk for 3 hours. but we left and went to dinner halfway through, completely forgetting it, and came home to this:

the stove fire was still on. i am so thankful that a) our house didn't catch on fire, and b) no one was standing there when the lid blew on this can, spewing its boiling contents across our entire kitchen. we spent at least 6-8 hours in the ensuing days trying to decaramelize and unstickify the ceiling, cabinets, counters, appliances, and floor. what a mess. 

and what a WASTE of time. 

coming home from dinner that evening, our plan was to clean out the rest of the kitchen cabinets, not deep clean it from top to bottom! but now i have a deep-cleaned kitchen! something else i'm thankful for :) now, onto that pesky cabinet-cleanout, weeks in the waiting...