Contentment

I just found a great site: The Little Brown Dress Project at www.littlebrowndress.com. It is a blog by a woman who has experimented with "intentional wardrobing" by wearing the same little brown dress for one year. Her next year-long project was to wear only clothing that she sewed herself, made from clothing that she already owned. You can read her reflections on what she learned from both projects on the blog.

The Little Brown Dress website caught my attention because, since reading Judith Levine's book, Not Buying It: My Year Without Shopping, I've been wishing that I could try an anti-consumerism project of my own. I've tried to go even one week without buying anything (other than food) and have never been able to do it. The closest we've gotten lately was the 4-day Thanksgiving 2007 weekend.

However, while it seems impossible to reduce our non-food purchases to zero, lately I have had very little desire to purchase "stuff." My mantra of late has been, "I have everything that I need." It is soothing and comforting to repeat this mantra to myself. The material side of our lives just seems completely sufficient right now, and the contentment that comes with not wanting more stuff is rewarding in itself.

Of course, much of this contentment is due to the generosity of others. Our kids are having a ball playing with their "new" 30-year-old Legos (including police and fire stations, medical clinic, and moon explorer's base) which used to belong to my brother. I've been incredibly lucky to receive tons of used clothing from friends, including a pair of black leather pants, a beautiful dress for warm weather special events, and six classic wool skirts, vintage 1980, exquisitely hand-sewn by an elderly friend of mine. And, I just discovered that the library where I work subscribes to my favorite magazine, Mother Earth News...forget buying copies!

The desire to consume is an exceedingly difficult one to extinguish, or even to diminish. Sometimes, the stuff you have requires you to purchase more stuff to go with it. In order to wear the black leather pants to a New Year's Eve party, I just had to buy a purple top and silver earrings to go with them. And just about a month ago, new black leather boots were calling my name...of course, they were the perfect accompaniment for the wool skirts.

I have everything that I need...I have everything that I need...I have everything that I need...Hopefully this mantra will carry me through the Christmas season and well into the 2008. There's probably not a better way to have a happy new year.