Going Gift Free...and not hating it

When my husband first suggested going (largely) gift free last December*, I was horrified. I adore presents; choosing them, wrapping them, giving them, getting them, unwrapping them... the whole shebang.

But after a long year, the thought of trying to pick out non-bankrupting presents that weren't largely meaningless additions to clutter and/or consumerism was overwhelming.

I agreed to try it.

We persuaded most of our immediate family to do the same.

Somewhat to my surprise, I didn't hate it.

Now WHY would you cut these delightful things out of your life?
Photo credit: JD Hancock (CC-BY 2.0)

Why Replace Gifts?

Why do we give gifts? Sometimes we do it in order to satisfy social convention, but in the best case scenario we genuinely desire to show love and appreciation for another person by giving them something that they will enjoy, and something which they wouldn't necessarily have gotten for themselves.

Now ask yourself: does my gift giving always actually end up doing this? And if so, is it the best way to do it?

Often, it seems to me, we spend a huge amount of time and a scary amount of money trying (sometimes unsuccessfully) to express our love. The stress of malls and shopping centres in the run up to Christmas can consume our attention for weeks ahead of "the big day", and being in that environment often increases our dissatisfaction with the gifts we've chosen and the lifestyle we live: being exposed to all that consumerism and advertising definitely has an impact. It's all very well to be strong willed, but companies spend millions of rand trying to make their product irresistible to people just like you and me.

And then, too often, the gift you settle on isn't quite right. You end up buying something for the sake of having something to give, but it isn't quite what the person needs or wants, and you end up feeling even more dissatisfied. 

(This isn't to say that when you find that perfect gift you shouldn't buy it. But don't buy it because you have to. Buy it "just because". We did that once. Three years on, the gift in question is still being used daily. This is a win.)

But when you are buying bulk gifts for everyone, it's unlikely that you'll hit the giver's jackpot for everyone. You'll probably have to settle in some cases, and end up back where we started. Dissatisfied.

Or they'll get you a bigger/better gift, and you feel guilty.

Or they'll get you a smaller/worse gift and you feel grumpy. And guilty for being grumpy.

Either way, you lose. Money. Time. Peace of mind. Even relationship value.

Wouldn't it be better to take that time, and a small portion of that money, and spend it with the person you love?

The gift of time?
Photo credit: Moyan Brenn (CC-BY 2.0)

Time and Effort

I am a firm believer in this principle: if you want to cut something out of your life, replace it with something better. Otherwise the gap will either hurt like the blazes, or get filled by something worse.

We replaced Christmas presents with two things: time and effort. Or, as we phrased it amongst ourselves, acts of service and family activities.

Basically, we got together and made two lists. One was of things that we would like to have done for us, or that we needed help with. My requested act of service was making a headboard for our bed. My dad wanted help painting his puppet theatre. My mom needed help with organising her digital music collection, and so on. Then we made (and diarised!) times  to do these acts of service for - and more importantly, with - each other.

Mostly, the acts of service weren't necessities - of course we would help each other with urgent and essential things at any time during the year. They were just those little niggly things that you want done. In that way, they mimicked an important quality of gifts: no-one wants nothing but socks and toothpaste for Christmas! You want things that you just want.

The second list was of family activities. Climbing Table Mountain, going to the Planetarium, having a mini carol service and baking gingerbread were some of our chosen activities. Some activities involved a smaller subset of the gifting community, others were much wider. We made a conscious effort to spend large chunks of time doing things that we wanted to do, rather than letting the whole "festive season" take over and leave us exhausted but without having actually spent quality time together.

Family outings aren't limited to the human race!
Photo credit: Boris Kasimov (CC-BY 2.0)

Saving Money vs Financial Freedom

You will notice that I haven't spoken much about saving money. That's because although that was a side-effect of our Gift Free campaign, it wasn't the main purpose. In fact, some of our acts of service and family outings actually cost some money. Gasp!

But although it wasn't about saving money as such, it was definitely about financial freedom.

Because financial freedom isn't only about being free to quit work if we want to. It is also about having our happiness independent from money. It's about satisfaction getting disconnected from consumerism and reconnected to relationship.

From this point of view, and in fact from many points of view, I am more than happy to repeat the Gift Free strategy this year, without feeling the least bit sad about those glittery packages.

What would you do to replace gifts in  your life? If you're not ready to replace them altogether, how could you reduce the impact of stress and consumerism on your gifting decisions?

To freedom!
jjdaydream




*If you're wondering why I'm talking about December/Christmas in September it is because we have had to start planning travel arrangements and family events already... so it is at the forefront of my mind. 2015 is almost over, people!

Ethical Decisions: Avoiding the Fool's Choice

We recently stumbled across a website called Made in a Free World. This is about sourcing ethical products, ones which don't make use of what is essentially modern slave labour. They have an alarming survey called Slavery Footprint.

You fill in data about your lifestyle (in great detail, like how many rooms your house has, and how many pairs of pants you have!), and they work out how many slaves/indentured labourers work somewhere in the world to make that lifestyle possible. Obviously things like cotton, coffee, cosmetics and so on are really problematic. Electronic devices also seem to be a real problem.

The two of us got 26 and 35 slaves respectively.

This was scary.

This is the number of people - including children - who work in conditions that I'm sure all of us would consider unacceptable in order to provide us with our insanely luxurious lifestyles.

The economic chains which keep people in slavery are just as real as these ones.
Photo credit:Trevor Leyenhorst (CC-BY 2.0)

I recommend everyone does this survey. Rethink your life choices. It's a humbling exercise, and one which we should all do once in a while.

Avoiding the Fool's Choice

Now I know that often ethical consumer choices are prohibitively expensive. So how can we save money but still consume ethically?

This can be an example of a Fool's Choice or false dichotomy. You feel like you have to choose between two bad options. Actually, there is often a third option.

False dichotomy: forgetting the third option.
Photo credit: Dan Moyle (CC-BY 2.0)

Neither.

Don't buy the dodgy product. And if you can't afford the good product, then buy nothing.

Mostly, you don't actually need either of them.

Consuming less is a good idea anyway. Buying less saves money, cuts down on slaves and is also better for the environment.

When there isn't a third option...

Even food, the obvious exception to just not buying anything ever, can be part of the false dichotomy. Maybe the third option there isn't so much "neither" as "something else altogether", such local, in season fresh products.

But nonetheless, we have to accept that sometimes there is a genuine payoff here, and we have to make a genuine choice between cheapest and ethically acceptable.

This is a complicated, entangled issue. In each of these situations we need to make a moral choice as best we can. All I ask - and I am asking myself as much as I am asking you - is that we really think about the choice, rather than just grabbing the quickest, easiest, or even just cheapest option.

Think first. Consume later.
Photo credit: Taymaz Valley  (CC-BY 2.0)

Yours, in a most challenged frame of mine,
jjdaydream

Stuff Minimisation and Financial Freedom

Over the past two years, we have been on an EPIC QUEST please tell me we’re not the only people for whom thinking of things as quests makes the admin feel more bearable… One of the parts of this quest, as you know, has been reduction of expenses. Another part has been self-education regarding personal finances, and a resulting increase in investment income. A third branch of the quest, one that has been essential to the financial freedom frame of mind, has been the process of STUFF MINIMISATION. 

Does your life feel like this? Time for STUFF MINIMISATION!
Photo Credit: Nathan Jongewaard (CC-BY 2.0)

Minimisation and Financial Freedom

What does STUFF MINIMISATION have to do with financial freedom? 

1.  It is about reducing our dependence on a consumer mindset, and retraining our brains to understand that STUFF does not make us happy.
2. It is about (re)discovering useful and awesome STUFF that otherwise gets buried in all the other STUFF, and therefore getting the best use/most enjoyment out of the STUFF we have instead of constantly needing new STUFF -  otherwise known as expenses!
3. It is about reducing the amount of time spent maintaining, cleaning and repairing all your STUFF, thereby increasing the amount of time available for everything else.
4. It is about creating a calm environment (minimizing stress right alongside that STUFF) from which we are better able to cope with life. We are therefore better able to make tough, long-term decisions instead of lurching from choice to choice in the sometimes inexorable grip of what feels good now.

However, STUFF MINIMISATION is a process, not a destination. We, for example, still own far too much STUFF, despite all our efforts. We live a lavish lifestyle, if you get down to the basic needs, surrounded by sentimental and useful possessions.

The fact is, that although we may admire the homes furnished entirely by two blocks of concrete and a pot plant, we have no real desire to be minimalists. Some STUFF is handy to have around, and the premise of chucking everything not currently in use seems wasteful: after all, I will need that brand new extra beater at some point when my current one fizzles, as it inevitably will. But do I need ten microscopically different baking dishes, all of which fulfill the same essential function? Nope. Might I need the work trousers in one size up some day? Yeah, let’s be honest, I might. And why buy a new pair just because I didn’t want to keep one extra folded pair of trousers in the back of my cupboard? Do I need to keep the skirt which I’ve worn once in the three years since I bought it? Well… probably not. There is a balance here, and probably a balance which comes out differently for every family.

So I can't give you a date by which we will only have the optimal STUFF left in our home. I can't show you a picture of the ideal STUFF-free home, or tell you which of your STUFF you should get rid of.

But I can tell you that embarking on a process of STUFF MINIMISATION definitely makes you think twice before acquiring: for that reason alone, it is worth considering in our consumer-mad world. 

Fill your life with freedom, not STUFF.

Photo Credit: brett jordan (CC-BY 2.0)

Making Minimisation Practical

Most of us wouldn't mind a bit of a spring clean, and most of us would probably agree that we could stand to get rid of some STUFF. The difficulty is that, well, it's... difficult. Whether because of inertia or sentimentality, the STUFF MINIMISATION process is tough to start and tougher to make significant progress in. The choices are personal, and often emotional.

How do I make myself actually make those choices on a fairly regular basis?

1. Give almost everything away. This is usually quicker and easier than selling, and it will probably give you a happy glow. Plus, (almost) everything can be given away, and not everything is saleable if you aren't going to do the massive garage sale thing. And I certainly do not have the energy for that. Most charity shops will take boxes and bags of unsorted junk with wide-embracing er, charity, and do all the sorting and  pricing themselves. Some will even collect. If they can make a bit of money out of my pursuit of freedom, awesome. 
2. Sell the big stuff. Some STUFF is worth a lot of money: you know what that might be in your home. Double financial freedom whammy: less STUFF + more money. In South Africa, Gumtree is your friend, though you need to be careful (obviously). But if you don't have the bandwidth even for this... see #1! Don't get stressed about making a small amount of extra cash here: the main goal is getting the STUFF out of your life as efficiently as possible. Keep your prices low but fair in exchange for quick, easy sales.
3. Keep a secret STUFF stash in between dumping trips. We have a big cardboard box in the garage. Whenever we decide that an item can go, we put it in there, straight away. No backsies. Then, when the box is full, we can take a trip to our favourite charity shop.
4. One step at a time. Whether you work room by room, or have a special decluttering time in the week/month, or cope with one type of STUFF at a time, don't try to do everything in one go. That's just demoralising. Rather celebrate each item of STUFF that you manage to toss. And of course enjoy using the good STUFF unearthed!
5. Embrace the process... and remember it. The pain has significant gain: if you can hold on to your irritation as you throw out another half used moisturizer, and bring it out at the right moment, you are way less likely to buy more useless STUFF next time you're at the mall.

Lastly, keep your eyes on the purpose of all your hard work: instead of gradually accumulating more STUFF, you are gradually accumulating more freedom. Instead of buying the latest and greatest, you are getting rid of the white elephants, the not-really-our-favourites and the no-longer-useful. Instead of filling your home with possessions, you are emptying it, to make space for possibility.

Make space for possibility!
Photo credit: Archana Jarajapu (CC-BY 2.0)

To freedom!
jjdaydream

Cycling to Work in the Rain

Today I got properly wet while cycling for the first time this winter. In the honour of the occasion, I thought I would post my practical thoughts on cycling to work through Cape Town winter!

Chances are, at some point in winter you will get wet!
Photo credit: Nick (CC-BY 2.0)

jjdaydream's ten hints for commuting in the rain

1. Try to avoid getting very wet on the way to work. Risk it on the way home, no problem. But if it is pouring in the morning, you might want to wimp out, just this once. This is easier to control anyway, because once you're at work on your bike you don't really have a choice. (Fortunately, home is usually better supplied with hot water and towels!)
2. Keep dry clothes at work, for days when 1. doesn't quite work out.  These should include socks, shoes and underwear, because wet underwear = not cool. (Mr Cent(ri)Frugal Force also takes in some spare clothes protected with plastic when he cycles in inclement weather.)
3. If you're gonna get wet, you're gonna get wet. Embrace the wateriness and don't be grumpy about it. You'll just ruin the fun of getting properly drenched for once: remember how awesome that was when you were a kid? 
4. In the spirit of 3., don't bother with heavy rain gear. Obviously this is different if you have a very long way to go, but in Cape Town the weather is so unpredictable that if you take extra gear you could very well get stuck carrying a useless and heavy load. And I always get too hot in serious rain coats anyway: rain pants are worse. If I'm going to be wet, I'd rather it was with water than sweat/condensation. 
5. However, plastic bags are your friends: you will dry, but your electronics and papers may not.
6. Subways may be full of water: 'nuff said.
7. Remember that roads are slippery: both you and the cars will take longer to stop in an emergency, so be extra careful. Visibility is probably also down. Switch on your lights, and be especially cautious at intersections.
8. Be friendly to fellow orphans of the storm. It is always good for a shared laugh when you are waiting at a traffic light with an equally soaked beggar or trudging commuter. And that helps you to forget that there is a chilly trickle of water running down the inside of your socks.
9. You will get mud on your butt. There is no easy way to avoid this.
10. If there is any chance at all of rain, do not wear your glasses. Contact lenses are the way forward. Please trust me on this, my friends. 

Cycling

Hi again everyone

People tend to look at me  bit strangely when I tell them that I cycle to work. I must say that I had a lot of misgivings at first too. But now I think that ditching the car (most of the time) has been one of the best changes we've made to our lives in the last few years. Here's my bold summary:

You should cycle to work.

Who wouldn't want to ride a bike when it looked like this?
Photo credit: Michael (CC-BY 2.0)

  Not sold? Not even by the blue and yellow bike?

Benefits of cycling:

1. The Planet. People, we do not live on an infinite resource. I would like my children to know what trees look like from first hand experience. Every kilometer cycled is a kilometer less fossil fuel consumption.
2. Your wallet. Our very basic little citiGolf costs approximately R4 per kilometer, if you factor in wear and tear, maintenance, depreciation and fuel (which you absolutely should, by the way. That new clutch is not going to pay for itself!). How much does your car cost? Go here to get an estimate. It totally changed my perspective when I worked out that my home-work route was costing me R50 a time. Would I really spend R250 per week just getting to work?
3. Health. I am fitter (and skinnier) than I've ever been in my life, despite eating like a Trojan. This comes down to simple Maths: although I don't cycle fast, or particularly far, I get about an hour's worth of exercise on average five times a week. This makes a big difference to a totally non-gym girl. If I don't cycle for a week, I can feel the stress levels rising as well. Apparently endorphins are a real thing.
4. Connection. Moving more slowly, and not isolated in your car bubble, you notice more. This week, I noticed that the pavements near our house had been swept, and spent several moments feeling grateful to whomever had toiled at that thankless task. I shared a wry grin with some domestic workers setting off on their longer journey home. Cycling gives me a chance to connect with the world around me far more than driving.

Being connected to the world around you: priceless.
Photo credit: Dustin Gaffke (CC-BY 2.0)

Problems with cycling (and how to make them go away):

1. "I'll arrive at work all sweaty and gross". Actually, you don't get that hot and sweaty, even in summer: cycling works up a pleasant breeze. You also don't have to cycle as if you're about to win the Tour de France. I usually take it easy; and if I can feel that I'm getting a bit warm then I deliberately slow down for the last few minutes of my trip. 
2. "I can't work in cycling clothes". Um, most workplaces have bathrooms, right? Some even have shower facilities. Now since I'm a teacher and I am NOT sharing a shower facility with the kids (we all have limits), I don't shower after my trip. But I do keep my work clothes in my staff locker and change when I get to school. I transport a week's worth of clothes when I drive in on the day I stay for evening classes. The quick-change process takes about 5-10 minutes in the morning.
3. "It's too far". If you live less than 10 km from work, just stop being a wuss. If I can get fit enough, trust me, anyone can. If you live further away, consider moving closer to work, or moving work closer to home: quickest way to reduce your carbon footprint too!
4. "It's cold and wet in winter". See point three above. The benefits far outweigh this consideration, unless it is actually POURING when you want to leave. And that has only happened to us once or twice this whole winter so far; it is far rarer than you might think. If you ain't already sick, you'll dry and warm up in no time. 



It isn't snowing, so stop making excuses!
Photo credit: Sakeeb Sabakka (CC-BY 2.0)

5. "I've got too much to carry". Easy. Stay at work a bit longer. Work a bit more efficiently. Leave work at work. This is a fantastic side effect of cycling. Brain space expansion!
6. "It'll take too long". It takes me about 30 minutes to cycle to school. If there is absolutely no traffic (i.e. almost never) it take 15 minutes to drive the same distance. And I'm getting in my free gym and mental health session as well. The time investment might feel like a lot, but it is actually minimal, considering the other benefits. I do leave a little earlier in case of flat tyres and other cycling catastrophes but that just gives me a bit more time at work to get my ducks in a row. My husband sometimes beats his colleagues home, as he almost always cycles during peak traffic.
7. "It's not safe". the received wisdom in South Africa is that the streets are a mad, bad place to be, especially for women, and much better only seen from the tinted windows of your vehicle. This is an important one to get right: it isn't worth risking your personal safety. BUT if you think about it, the very act of living risks your personal safety. You have to decide what risks are acceptable, based on their reward. My safety boundaries? I won't cycle at night. I have chosen my route based on the cycle paths as far as possible. I try to cycle with my husband through the dangerous/dark parts of the trip. I am hyper cautious on the road, and often wait for ages at intersections rather than take any chances. Depending on where you live, this last point might be the deal breaker. But think carefully before you allow it to put you off: you may just be making excuses. Plus, the more cyclists we have on the roads, the safer it will be for everyone: more cycle paths, better motorist awareness, general goodness.

So, to return to my first point... You should cycle to work.

It's okay to be scared - I was at first! Don't let fear stop you.

It's okay to start out slow. I'll post another time on how I got into the swing of it. Don't let inertia stop you. 

It's also okay to wimp out once in a while. Every day that you don't drive is benefiting you in so many ways. Don't let a desire for 100% perfection stop you.

Basically, don't let anything stop you.

To freedom!

jjdaydream