Tag: nothing new

Waste to Art: Guest Post on Laudato Si Blog

Yesterday, I was privileged to contribute my post to Laudato Si blog that is full of great green tips and explores the Christian calling to care for our common home.

Here is an extract to the blog post. Link to the full text below.

A long time ago, inspired by a blogger from Australia, Sash Milne, I started a Nothing New Project, i.e. I tried not to buy anything new for a year, to decrease waste and increase living. While back then I felt quite virtuous about living that way, there was nothing too virtuous about the way I live now, as if back then I stretched myself too far and snapped like a bandana that children get for the Remembrance Day in the UK. When you do a project like that, that forces you to reduce your buying and question every moment when you open your wallet and reach for a coin not out of poverty but out of restraint, you either learn to love yourself as you are, without the gadgets and extra consumption and you learn to live differently or you feel somewhat destabilized because you locked yourself out of participation in the prevailing culture, i.e. the culture of consumerism. Oh, and one more thing, you can also develop the maturity to make yourself accountable for the trail of waste that falls behind you but, in all honesty, this wasn’t the learning outcome that I have satisfactorily reached and consolidated. To consistently swim against the current, you have to decide to consistently swim against the current and that is hard.
What the Nothing New project showed me is that I by and large go through life inattentively, to the shouts of waste that brutally lurk in the shadows of my life or blatantly ‘shine’ on display in my house – as if the psyche couldn’t quite handle the tension between wanting more and needing less. I go through life with an ecological heart that is neither pure nor faithful to the principles of ecological teaching, but I still have hope for myself and the humanity – that we will make progress. Read more..

Where would your bundle go?

leaving something for others to take

After most christening or wedding parties there is a custom of preparing something for the guests to take home with them. Usually it’s a small bundle of sweets or cakes, sometimes accompanied by a quote or a thankful message, to let the guests know that their presence was welcomed and appreciated. It’s a symbolic way of sharing with them the goods of the feast.

Throughout the last year I have been trying to cultivate a giving heart. I have supported various charities and community events. I was trying to resist buying new items for myself and my son in order to support humanitarian, rather than consumerist, objectives. While I was doing this project I was observing myself and others around me and one observation struck me very hard: being able to give, in many cases, does not really depend on the state of people’s bank account but on their perceived lack of capacity to share. I observed people who refused to support causes because they say they don’t earn enough to be charitable, and then I saw the very same people discarding goods that they had bought the previous week. How is it that we don’t earn enough to give but we earn enough to throw?

There are people in the world for whom what we spend and consume every day would constitute a lavish feast. In every form. The electricity we use. The food we eat. The many pairs of shoes we wear. The books we read. The clothes we have. It is likely that we are feasting in one area or another, or in all those areas.

The Nothing New Project made me realise that I feast in quite a few areas of my life, but for one of them I am particularly grateful: healthcare. Last year I was diagnosed with a life-long illness but because I live in the UK my medicine is for free. Through the Nothing New Project I was able to support many charities, but Doctors Without Borders (MSF), the charity that heals those who would otherwise be left without treatment, was my priority. The charity deals with challenging situations and extraordinary tasks, the Ebola crisis among them. Could you imagine yourself being in Liberia right now? Being a patient or trying to help? Doctors Without Borders are uncommon people whose courage is not of this earth. They deserve our respect, our support and certainly my feast bundle.

Where would your bundle go?

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.

IMG_0320_life how i like it

IMG_9681_nothing newa house

Nothing New: moving forward

mountain_flowers

My Nothing New Project has come to a standstill over the summer. I came across a few situations where I didn’t have a choice but to buy something new for myself and my son. Things like that always happen when you think you can relax, don’t they? For example, when you simply forget to pack that essential jacket you need because the place where you’re staying in the mountains drops to 6°C or when your child’s feet grow almost overnight and you realise that he will not make many steps in the old ones any more. I’m forgiving myself these small departures from the nothing new project as they really are justifiable but there is something else too… my little weakness that I indulged in while in Poland. I love Polish children’s’ songs and stories (written and spoken). I tried to say no to them, but I do see them as an essential part of my son’s childhood. And not just my son’s. They will also be used by a number of children because I am starting a group for Polish kids in my town which will focus on popularising Polish rhymes and stories among the expat children. So it turns out that those books have become a bit of an investment into community building and I’m happy I am making use of this investment.

So all in all, what’s the status of my nothing new project? I’ve slipped but I am carrying on, being mindful of what and where I buy or what I don’t buy. It’s almost the end of September and pre-Christmas shopping madness is about to start – I am sticking to the nothing new project just for the sole purpose of staying true to the message of the Christmas period – that new is born and not bought… that a true and long-lasting regeneration and renovation comes from effort, time and nourishment. So for these next few months I’ll carry on learning how to be patient, more hard-working and nurturing. I hope you’ll stay with me to see to it. ;)

Nothing New: Both Sides of The Coin

IMG_2625k

Six months without buying anything new seems like a long period of time, but it is not. It is just six months, not six years, not sixteen and not sixty. It is just six odd months of reusing, borrowing, repairing and buying second-hand. Nothing new hasn’t defined my lifetime. But it has and will be defining the lifetime of others.

I must admit I had a moment of panic when I started the nothing new project. It wasn’t about not being able to buy things but it was about losing friends, losing opportunities to socialise and hang around together. I felt trapped. You see… one of the things that I decided to give up was coffee and you know how the world looks like these days – you meet at a coffee shop, you chat and giggle over a steamy black or frothy white drink. It’s isolating not to be able to have a cup of coffee with a friend, isn’t it?

I think this fear was triggered by the memories of my first year in the UK, when as a student I wasn’t really able to afford cups of coffee or dinners. It was serious. I was studying as well as working many hours per week as a waitress in pubs or restaurants. I wasn’t earning much, had no student loan, paid my rent and food from what I earned as a waitress so I really couldn’t afford many indulgences. If I had spent my money on those things I wouldn’t have been able to pay for my electricity bill in winter, the flight back home for Christmas or books for studying. I remember I used to do overtime just to be able to go for a coffee with a friend to discuss essays and literature. Tough time. Glad that it’s over. More than over. Now I have a choice. I have a choice to buy or not to buy and I am making the choice not to buy almost nonchalantly. Just because I can.

It doesn’t make me proud. Very often it makes me feel uncomfortable. “To buy or not to buy?” is not a question that offers two options to everyone. For many, “to buy” is just a matter of upgrading, changing or improving. For others, “to buy” means choosing between two or more necessities, two or more human rights: the right to study, the right to sleep, the right to have warm food, the right to socialise, and even the right to go to work. It feels comfortable and snug to be in the first group. It feels alienating and vulnerable to be in the second one. ‘Nothing new’ is not their choice. It’s not a lifestyle. It’s survival.