Category: Lifestyle

Nothing New: Final reflections on my attempts at buying nothing new for almost a year

looking for the neighbour

As the autumn is slowly coming to its end and the winter air sneaks into our house through nooks, crannies and keyholes, I am bringing out our old coats, hats, scarves and jumpers and I am bracing us for the winter. In fact I am surprised how long we’ve managed to survive just with our summer jackets, running around with bare necks and heads uncovered. It’s been by all means one of the warmest Novembers I’ve experienced in the UK.

The year is almost over and I’ve been thinking about the journey that I have taken through embracing the Nothing New Project and how much I’ve gained because of it. (Almost) all the goods that I’ve bought this year were not new, but the direction my thoughts have taken me in were new to me. To be truthful, I’ve started liking myself a bit more towards the end of this year as I felt I’ve been a part of something meaningful… maybe even a small part of a big social change. I hope I was. I hope I still am.

If I had to list one thing that I’ve learnt or re-learnt through this project, I would fail at the task, as it’s just impossible to encapsulate the outcome of this project in one line. It would never do it justice. I can hear some of you saying: ‘But come on Alicja, give us three things, three things that you’ve learnt from the Nothing New Project. How would you encourage others to go about it?’ My answer would be: Try to do these things:

1. Engage
2. Maintain
3. Connect

Engage with what you have. More often than not we crave for new things because we forget about the things that we already have. We walk through our rooms oblivious to their contents. There are books that are unread, films not yet watched, CDs hardly ever listened to. Give those items your attention. You have probably bought them with a strong purpose of engaging with them. Give yourself time to do it. The Nothing New Project made it very clear to me that buying is not becoming – that the act of buying something does not change us; it does not make us something else other than just a consumer. To change we need to engage with what we’ve invested in. Only our efforts lead to creations which bring about change. Having a house will never equal having a home if we don’t breathe life into it.

Maintain. This is something that I have had the biggest problem with for as long as my mind can recall. I rush from one job to another, from one project to another, from one occasion to another and my mind is so scattered that I’ve hardly ever given time to the maintenance tasks. Maintenance means to “keep things in being”. To do this we should repair, preserve, clean and conserve what we already have. One thing is to possess something, it’s quite another to give it a long and good life.

Connect with people. Search for or create communities where you can share, swap, circulate items. Enrich others. Sign up to Freecycle or other groups to keep things out of landfill. Use libraries, toy libraries, tool hires. We really don’t need to possess everything. Realistically, we do not have space for everything. In her beautiful post Surrender  Sash Milne, the initiator of the Nothing New Project, wrote “Make every transaction an opportunity for human connection. With connection comes relationships, with relationships comes community.” This to me is the core message of the Nothing New Project. Often we hide in our homes with things that we have, with things that could be shared or offered to others (not only goods but also time and talents). When we show to others what we have, who we are, we realise that we have a lot and collectively we have everything. It’s so easy to feel unloved, it’s so easy to feel lonely when all we do is anonymous shopping, and then hiding and hording.

The Nothing New Project made me reach out and learn. I’ve started two groups in my communities and joined another. One of the two groups is doing really well, the other one… will be too (one day). You don’t always need to start a group, just attend the events that are going on in your area already. You are showing your support and openness for friendship through that. Be ambitious for your communities. Just because it must start from someone. Could it be you?

I’ve been following Sash Milne at Inked in Colour and her Nothing New Project for months now. I’ve embraced her ideas because they are simply great. Pop over to her blog for wonderful insights, great photography and writing.

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What do we truly want from our lives?

What do we truly want from our lives

I took a break from writing this blog to fill myself up with good experiences and as I was resting, exploring and nourishing myself and my body I’ve realised how depleting our current lifestyles are – those ways of life that we choose to live in our Western society: choosing walls instead of being outdoors, choosing screens instead of faces, choosing plasticated and pre-prepared food instead of a wholesome self-made dinner, choosing an additional cup of coffee instead of additional two hours of sleep, choosing to race through days instead of experiencing them… The body registers those choices and so no wonder it relentlessly directs us towards other ones through aches, pains, and tiredness – the signals that we should be thankful for as they remove the guilt for wanting to rest, for wanting to go against the mad and pushy current of modern life, for wanting to opt out.

Having a break is a good thing, taking the time to look after ourselves, our health and our family’s health is a good thing. It reminds us what a good life tastes of, how meaningful our interactions and relationships with people are, how our family life should look like, how our spiritual life should be. We begin to recognize again which truth comes from within us and not from adverts or some silly peer pressures. It has got this power to free us from dubious and shallow chatter that we, willingly or not, witness, hear or participate in, from those conversations that take our attention away from what we really love, from what we really believe in, from what we really want to do and what we really want to be like.

I think we really and truly want to be good people. But maybe sometimes we forget that this is the ultimate aim of our existence here, maybe sometimes we are told that there are other things that we should be fighting for and we allow ourselves to be persuaded by this stupid, manipulative and limiting narrative which tries to convince us that no one cares anymore and that the way to go is not to care, which, of course, is a total nonsense. So many people care! So many people give! So many people love! So many people share! So many people give their best out of them! So many people forgive!

I took a break from the fishy narratives and I’ve braced myself with goodness, with wholesome treats of my mum’s thinking and cooking, with refreshing fruit of my dad’s orchard and the calming vastness of the meadows and fields in my Polish village.

It’s been a month of detox for me, detox from false believes that as an individual I cannot make a difference, that I don’t have enough to make a difference, that I don’t have the ability to do it or that the world will go its own way even if I try to go the opposite direction. The world is not a hostile place that mysteriously turns its back on us just because we try, the world responds to our attempts, watches them carefully. It just needs time to be persuaded. The difficulty with doing what you believe in is in that the world, general public or even our friends, are often not persuaded by the process, but by a result. The process takes time and without support it’s difficult to have the endurance, strength and resources to complete the work. There are now so many people that are ‘in that process’ of making the world a better place, of making sure that we live in a cleaner, safer, and more equal planet – we should support them with our time, money or at least a good word. It takes time to create something good, something of value. It’s the process that needs our cheering and patience. The result will speak for itself.

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