Conscious Choice Seattle: Buying in to Simplicity

May 2006 | Letters to the Editor

Buying in to Simplicity

Imagine an entire year without shopping for anything but the bare essentials. That’s exactly what author Judith Levine did after yet another stressful December getting ready for the winter holidays.

But Levine went the next step or three. She turned her daydream into a book contract, then wrote about an entire year of consumer cold storage. The book “Not Buying It” is excerpted, starting on page 38, in our Conscious Culture section this month. You will discover that Levine was both exhilarated and exhausted by year’s end of 2004.

Levine and her partner Paul Cillo. agreed to shop for groceries but no processed or prepared foods, save one, the most basic, bread.

While some might consider the book sort of cultural romp, social commentator and author Bill McKibben pointed to the “importance” of the book given the super-size rate of American consumerism. He cited ecological economist Lester Brown, who points out that by 2031 residents of China will be as wealthy as Americans. If they eat at the same rate as Americans currently do, that adds up to Chinese alone consuming two-thirds of the grain supply produced in 2004. The Chinese would also use 99 million barrels of oil per day, or 20 million barrels more than the whole world uses right now. The numbers go on and on, such as the Chinese projecting to use twice the global paper supply.

There are just so many good reasons to buy into a simpler life—and buying less.

Levine and Cillo got started at the basic questions, such as whether Q-tips and Kleenex are necessary. Answer: No, toilet tissue works just fine in all bathroom cases.

Cillo, with Italian roots, qualified wine as a necessary item. That’s perhaps more arguable, but, hey, a nice glass of red can be just the thing to relax into a simpler life with purpose.

Speaking of purpose, Levine was clearly writing from a perspective that resonates with many Seattle Conscious Choice readers. She was just as flabbergasted as many other Americans who wondered how President Bush could possibly suggest buying and shopping would be true acts of patriotism in the aftermath months of Sept. 11.

Among the more hopeful material in Levine’s book was her diary entries showing that not buying things can become routine, just like the usual urge to shop when depressed, happy, anxious, unsure, delighted and…fill in the blank.

“Not buying is becoming a habit,” she writes in August 2004. “When I’m picking up groceries at the co-op I don’t even think about grabbing an egg roll from the cooler; when I’m driving, I have no impulse to stop for coffee. I don’t read magazine ads, even for movies, and I peruse the mail-order catalogs casually, like a woman declining the advances of a lover who no longer thrills her. For their parts, J. Crew, J. Jill, L.L. Bean and my other suitors seem to have sensed my cooling affections and are responding with heightening ardor—more catalogs, more e-mail announcements of special sales, more missives asking where I have been.”

Better By Design

Look for a whole new us in your favorite Seattle Conscious Choice pickup spot next month. The June issue will debut our new size, paper stock and overall redesign.

We will continue featuring editorial coverage aimed at improving the quality of your life, adding some new columns and spotlights while keeping the features and columns that readers tell us they appreciate. We will keep supplying the freshest information on natural health, mindful living, food, spirituality, green business, personal growth, environment and social good.

We can barely wait to show you the June issue—and hear what you think.

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