I have been gone for just over a year. By that I mean from the blog, and for the earlier part of the year in many respects, the home, without even venturing far from home. Work, waste and consumerism been on the rise in our household this past few months. How can that be? Why so, when in my last blog post (Craftivism, Activism) I was there – all guns blazing? My ambitions haven’t changed, so what happened?
For a while I have bumbled through with what ever time I have aside from payed work. I revolve around my usual eclectic range of activities, which some may think of as old-fashioned and housewifely. Perhaps they are, but I think of them as useful, and generally creative. Nevertheless, I get somewhere with some aims and fail with others.
There was a period for a few months, though, when I have never failed quite so much. My attempts at looking after what, I lightheartedly call the ‘homestead’, were sporadic to say the least. At times they were almost non-existent. This might seem to be a somewhat dismal story to report, but after some reflection I see it as instructive. It’s a call to keep going and even renew my efforts now.
Does Work Maketh the Man (Or Woman)?
Let’s rewind a little. Back in mid-February, My husband, Andy, and I decided to inject some of our own time into a work-related project, which contributed to publishing an important report (for we are both in the same kind of 9-5 work). We never thought it would take so long, and take up so much of our time. Weeks went by, working on it in the evenings, at the weekends and through bank holidays until it was finally done.
All the Best Laid Plans…
Before this started we had thought things through on the home front. The allotment was going to look better and produce more of our own food. The pantry shelves under the stairs would be groaning under the weight of easy-to-store food from the allotment. After all, we had butternut squash and pumpkins in crates, and borlotti beans in jam jars. We’d carry on with the oh so sensible, planned shopping, our batch cooking bulked out with beans and pearl barley. I’d keep up my own green-living approaches, such as creative mending of clothes, making new clothes, knitting socks, and spinning yarn. These I see as more steps along the road towards plastic-free living (or more realistically, plastic-light at best) . You name it, I intended it.
Then what happened? With all the concentrated activity on the extra work project, the cracks started to show. The greenhouse, cold and empty in February had some warmer days in March but remained empty. In April the seedlings appeared but failed to flee the nest to the allotment which was successfully growing weeds. We worked into the evening on ‘the project’ but found we hadn’t thought about cooking. We hadn’t shopped or produced anything of our own. The clothes mending pile grew and a half-knitted sock retired to the knitting bag. It came out sporadically and then the finished pair was, at least, eventually gratefully received by my husband some time ago. An outdoor renovation project stalled, and the list goes on.
In short, until we found our way back to where we wanted to be, it was only too easy to do what most people do. We fell back on convenience. We relied more on ready-made food, the bin filled with plastic, and we had a tendency to waste food.
Too Much Work Can Make You Ill
To top it all I went down with what I now think was whooping cough, shortly followed by Andy. We suffered together with it for about three months. With only 24 hours in a day and an illness, it’s no surprise we under-performed on the household front. Why couldn’t we keep up with everything?
Rethinking Work
I find that revisiting the past few months has me in a philosophical frame of mind. Work, waste and consumerism. Are they all connected? I’m wondering, what does this say about a specialised versus more eclectic approach to life? Or, the specialist and the generalist mindset? What about producing more at home to provide what you need instead of producing outside of the home to earn money to buy what you need?
We are in a privileged position. Crop failures on the allotment don’t mean we’re going to starve. Not attending to outdoor renovation these past few months wasn’t going to result in a breach of our defences from impending natural disaster (as far as I was aware). The house wasn’t going to fall down. We did some apologising to neighbours that our house looked like a building site AGAIN. They were so understanding, and we are lucky.
We can aim to have a degree of self-sufficiency by choice. It isn’t just a fact of life because we have no other option. That’s largely because there are two wages coming into the household, and we have the back-up of living in a fairly wealthy country with all the safety nets that come with it. There is a limit, though, to how much self-sufficiency we can achieve unless we drop the hours worked outside the home and produce more for ourselves. Then we really would depend more on everything we can produce and do for ourselves.
Employment Makes you Incompetent
I think it is the case, the longer you spend on very specialised work. You hit a tipping point and can develop tunnel vision. Tom Hodgkinson, who founded The Idler said in his book How to be free that ‘specialization is a curse‘ and that we convince ourselves that we would be useless at engaging in all sorts of productive activities for ourselves. ‘I can’t make clothes’, ‘I don’t have green fingers and could never grow my food’ are statements I hear all the time. In a way this is imagined, as most people, if they put their mind to it, would learn quite quickly.
Effectively, society has made us incompetent at so many life skills, simply by focussing our energies on very specialised work. I myself work in a very specialised job (the paid work). There is nothing I like best, though, than revolving round varied activites in my spare time. Most of these are productive, useful and nonetheless enjoyable. A theme has been developing in my mind of late and that is ‘tunnel vision’ versus ‘holistic’ thinking.
A Dependent, Consumer Lifestyle
Here we are then, a year later. It seems so relevant, considering what’s in the news at the moment. Few can not know about the rising tide of plastics in the oceans. And, more people know now that our clothes and electrical goods (in fact, any kind of goods) given away for recycling are either not recycled at all, or end up in poorer countries around the world. All this causes pollution and social problems.
I’m surprised these issues have taken so long to break the news, as they have been bubbling along under the surface for a long time now. Food is always in the news. Concerns about factory farming have polarised views.
What Do We Do About It?
We could all think either that it’s a storm in a teacup, or it’s all hopeless and we might as well give up now and demand that politicians and experts sort it out. Like many green living or zero waste bloggers, I’m more of the mindset that we can all play our part. I find I share many of their views, but certainly not all.
Tom Hodgkinson said in his book ‘ How to be free ‘It is useless to sit around moaning and hope that someone is going to do that for for us’. That meant anxiety, fear, mortgages, money, guilt, debt. Add trashing the planet in the process to this, then that really ought to spur us on to do something about it ourselves.
I could produce a long list of the ways in which we can help, but here are some ways in which you can start to cut down on waste and food that is damaging to the environment – the subject of some blog posts coming up.
Coming Up….
Want to attempt plastic-free shopping? Come on a trip down memory lane with me, my late mum and my grandmother (my nan). We’re going Shopping 1970s style. Embrace an unpackaged food revolution.
Do all the opinions on what we should eat in order to save the planet confuse you? Should we continue to eat meat or should we go for a plant-based diet? What do we eat? I’m not going to give a definite ‘you must’ answer, but come on a trip with me around my area, and I’ll attempt to visit some places very different from my own. It’s a way of tackling what questions we might ask of ourselves.
If I’ve interested you in sustainable food, you may be interested in my book:
