Two Frog Home

At some point last fall, I made the decision to withdraw from all of my volunteer activities and focus more of my attention, time, and love on home and the people in my life.  While, I like to think my loved ones were never robbed of any of my attention or affection, I can see now how much more of me is available by tightening up my focus.

I realize we’re only in the second month of 2008, but I can feel a real shift in my thinking and my attitude and my energy level for that matter.  I owe that in great part to the “cutting out of fat” from my time and energy.  The activities I was involved in were worthwhile, very much so, but the participation was weak and I was carrying more of a load than I expected.  I came to a point where I realized that if it wasn’t important enough for someone else to step up and help out - its not important and it had to be cut from my life.

I’ve spent these first weeks of 2008 changing my focus to God, home, and loved ones, denying any requests for my presence or time away from those.  It’s not easy for me to say no.  I had an email from one of the organizations and I said I would be happy to review plans via email and give my input but I would not attend any meetings.  They’ve stopped emailing me, and that’s fine.  If I can’t help on my terms, I’m not helping.  Is that selfish?  Maybe, but in the long run I want to know I made a difference mostly in my home and those people who are put in my path.  I can’t make that difference when I’m out trying to save my community when my community doesn’t think it needs saving.

I’m so much more content right now and I can attribute that to less distractions and more focus on what and whom I enjoy.  Focus on my own goals and not those of the organization I’m volunteering for - its not the right season in my life right now to focus on goals other than those that are important to my family.  I struggled with that for a while, I felt selfish and uncaring.  However, I’ve accepted that I can only give so much and I want to give that to what I value most.  That acceptance has given me so much freedom in spirit and mind and I’m so grateful.

Now that we are officially debt free, for the moment anyway.  We’ve been thinking more about our money.  We are a very frugal couple.  We have a good emergency savings, small IRA accounts, and a savings for a house down payment.  However, with the interest rates dropping so is the rate on our savings accounts.  I’ve started doing some reading and investigating on the world of investing and personal finance.  I admit that while I’m a fairly intelligent person, I’m completely dumbfounded and almost overwhelmed by the stock market, mutal funds, etc.  I honestly want to understand it better, I’m unwilling to just take an advisor’s word on what to do with my hard-earned money.  I figure its going to take some time, I may need to take a course or two but I’ll get more comfortable with all these concepts, I hope.  

I’ve started reading personal finance and frugality blogs a little more and have found some wonderful references there for books and other websites.  If you have a favorite book, website, blog, etc. on personal finance and investing please let me know.  I have a great library system here and if they don’t have it I can usually request it from another library.

Also, you have until 5PM (MST) today to enter in my care package giveaway if you are so inclined.  Please enter by commenting on that post.  Folks outside the US can enter, but I will most likely not include edibles (baked goods) if I ship outside the US due to shipping times and freshness issues.

I finished reading The Waste Makers by Vance Packard and wanted to recommend it again.  It was written in 1960 but many of thoughts are very relevant today.

Sound familiar?:

Still, as the sixities have begun with something less than jet-powered take-off, most American citizens are not particularly apprehensive that they would fall into really serious trouble because of thier debts.  They feel that the federal government - whether Democrat or Republican - is emotionally committed to make it safe for them to continue spending.  And it has become increasingly probable that if a notable lag in consumption does develop the federal government will be under massive pressure to manipulate interest rates in such a way that saving will be discouraged and spending encouraged.

He writes in another chapter, something that I continue to worry about and feel that Packard would be even more dismayed about if he was still alive:

A final price that must be considered in assessing the implications of the current drift of American society under the impact of an economy based on ever-mounting consumption is the change it may be producing in the character of the people involved… It is unrealistic to assume that all such pressures are not producing changes at a deeper level than mere spending habits.  For example, a person who finds himself induced to spend beyond his income habitually does not wish to feel guilty about his excesses and welcomes a system of morality that condones such habilts.  Much of the average American’s consumption has been channeled into frivolous or playful or whimsical outlets, which also requires rationalizing… These new pressures are causing ever more people to find thier main life satisfactions in their consumption role rather than their productive role.  And these pressures are bring forward such traits as pleasure-mindedness, self-indulgence, materialism, and passivity as conspicuous elements of the American character.

I could quote on and on but will spare you most of that and say that this is a book worth reading.  It’s not all gloom and doom, Packard does offer some suggestions for hope and change.  He also talks about a movement of the citizens towards change and to me that is obviously the voluntary simplicity movement.  I understand that it’s almost trendy right now to say you believe in simple living; however, I’ve met enough folks in real life and even more online to know that there are good people out there fighting this culture of commercialism and over-consumerism that threatens to ruin so many.

I’ll close this entry with one last quote from The Waste Makers:

The central challenge seems to be this: Americans must learn to live with their abundance without being forced to impoverish their spirit by being damned fools about it.

That very boring photo contains my college loan payment.  The last college loan payment I’ll ever make!  Jeff and I have been slowing paying this bugger off - always more than the minimum payment but in the last 6 months we really stepped it up.  Today, we wrote a check for what amounts to 3 payments and are finished with that puppy.

We are now, officially debt free. 

At least until we find a house to buy…  However, until we find that house we’re socking at least the minimum college loan payment away to pay down any mortgage we’ll incur.

For Christmas, my Aunt Tish sent me a copy of The Waste Makersby Vance Packard.  The copyright date is 1960 and the book is amazing.  If you have the opportunity to read it, I think for the most part you’ll be impressed with his thoughts written some 47 years ago and horrified that we as a society are still dealing with these problems in an alarming fashion.

“It could be asserted that most Americans are becoming waste makers…Historians, I suspect may allude to this as the Throwaway Age.”

In discussing growth for the economy’s sake, he writes:

“Few have considered that while some selective kinds of growth may well be needed in the United States, other kinds are undesirable or would produce only surfeit.  It is just assumed that any growth is good.  Growth is fast becoming a hallowed word alongside Democracy and Motherhood.”

I’ve read several recent economic books addressing just this issue.  Their thoughts echo Packard’s in more modern terms but in essence are very much the same.

In another chapter, Packard writes:

“Another general tack the marketers took was to try to induce people to get rid of the products they already owned.  In its broadest form this took the form of encouraging people to throw things away.”

That particular thought really struck a cord with me in light of two TV commercials I saw recently.  One was for Toyota, I think, and it showed a man transporting a huge steel beam with a crane who purposely misses the dump truck in order to smash his vehicle in order to buy a new car.  The other was for an appliance manufacturer.  It showed a woman gazing in a store window longingly looking at a new refrigerator with the announcer saying “The only thing standing between you and a new {Name Brand I don’t remember} refrigerator is your old refrigerator.”  The next scene shows the woman throwing her refrigerator over a cliff.  Oy, I think of both cars and household appliances as things to be used until they no longer work and if at all possible repairing before purchasing new.  These are sad things about our society, in my opinion.

I know we all want nice things.  I’m one of those people.  I like having a comfortable home and I realize that I have way more luxuries than most of the world.  Wouldn’t it be nice if everyone did stop consuming less and had to work less and could enjoy family more?

As a general rule, I use cloth bags when I go shopping.  I rarely use the plastic or paper bags the stores provide.  Earlier this year, however; I picked up a few of these brown paper sacks from Montana Coffee Traders.  I had them saved in my sewing room, just knowing I’d re-use them eventually.  Yesterday, I finally found a purpose for them.

I give alot of gift basket type gifts at Christmas time.  Usually we fill the baskets with home canned goods, some homemade treats, and maybe a few other bought items.  In the past, I’ve made tote bags, used second-hand buckets, flower pots, and of course baskets.  This year, I was a bit stumped about how to package all the goodies when I looked up and saw my stash of saved brown sacks. 

I rummaged through items I had in the sewing room and decorated the bags with colored paper, some very old (& thankfully still liquid) glitter glue.  I’m not a scrapbooker or a stamper so I don’t have many supplies on hand and I’m not very good at cutting paper into nice shapes.  However, I’m happy with this little bags in that they are simple, re-used and full of the holiday spirit. 

Traditionally, we start decorating for Christmas the day after Thanksgiving.  However, I got a small head start yesterday.  

We don’t do a ton of decorating here, its just not my thing really.  A small tree and a few little holiday accents - no giant inflatable snow globes or lights everywhere.  I was inspired by the discovery of a new blog recently, however; and decided to make a wreath to welcome visitors to Two Frog Home.  I did a few things differently than the inspiration source.  I didn’t have any foam wreath frames around, so I made one by tracing a plate onto some scrap cardboard.  I glued some quilt batting scraps onto the cardboard and wrapped it all with some green fleece scrap strips.  I used a hot glue gun to keep everything in place.  I then wrapped some gold & red ribbon around the fleece, glued on a frog (of course there had to be a frog accent), added a ribbon for hanging and, voila my new wreath.

That’s the main door to our home.  The tree garland was the one I bought at the gifts festival a few weeks back.  The curtain, I made from some fabric I found at the thift store.  I was originally going to use it for a table cloth, but couldn’t resist using it as a window dressing for our holiday decorations.

Over the weekend, Jeff played in a few 8-ball tournaments.  I spent both days at home cleaning, baking, crafting, etc.  I had the TV turned on, to the food network most of the time, for background noise.  I like listening to the food programs and picking up new idea recipes but I don’t generally sit and watch for very long.

The holiday commercials were out in force, however; and I was able to pick up on the latest marketing ploys.  Truly they never cease to amaze me, however; they do continue to disgust me.

There was a jewelry commercial that used the line “remind her why she loves you” to sell diamonds.  Really, thats why a woman loves her partner/spouse, for diamonds?  If that is true, it’s not love in my opinion and someone had better look at their priorities.

Wal-mart’s tag line was “save more, live better” - maybe this isn’t new.  I don’t follow commercials or wal-mart as a general rule, but I don’t remember this tagline before.  Again, is saving more the qualification for living better?  I agree that not having to live paycheck to paycheck is living better but I think consuming less over saving more might be a better strategy to living better long term.  Obviously, I’m a bit biased to voluntary simplicity as a life choice, but I don’t see how saving more really leads to a better life.  I know that a person needs money to survive, but in the end I believe its more about personal choices on how we spend our money more than how much of it we save.

There was a commerical for a car or van, I think, where the sister got her brother’s name wrong and when he corrected her she said something like “I knew that.”  Does it take a new car to bring a family together?  What’s more frightening to me than the obvious marketing ploy about how much fun a new car might be, is that the joke about not knowing family members was considered something people would relate to by a marketing firm and used as a tactic to sell a product. 

I understand that retail and marketing firms make their bread & butter from overconsumerism, saving and spending money, but what concerns me is the taglines and ploys they use because it means its resonating with folks.   Its concerns me that we are so removed from each other in a community sense but if these commercials portray even the slightest bit of “regular” life for our citizens it means we are so disconnected from even our families that trying to connect as a larger community might be futile. 

If we can’t connect with the people we share a living space with, what hope is there for connecting with our neighbors?  I’m not a pessimist and I do believe there are people out there moving towards a more simple, home centered, connected life.  Yet, these commercials remind me of what an uphill battle we face.  It is a battle worth fighting, and like most it won’t be easy.

If you can, take back this holiday season.  Avoid the shopping traps and consumerism festivals.  Spend time with your family, bake some old-fashioned sugar cookies from scratch and don’t worry about the mess.  Make your holiday gifts or buy them handmade from crafters and artisans, locally if at all possible.  Seek out local food for your holiday meals.  And most importantly, in my opinion, spend real time with people you love and let them know you love them.  Then don’t forget to carry that on with you the rest of the year, not just around the holidays.

A local church has an international gift festival, twice a year.  Mostly the items come from Ten Thousand Villages - the items are fair trade and wonderful, coming from artisans from all over the world.  It’s always such fun to walk around and see what’s there.  Today was no different.

There were these angels made from coiled newspaper (there were coaster sets too from coiled newspaper).

There were vases, pots, baskets, and boxes in every size, shape, and color imaginable:

I did pick up a coil of hand-folded stars.  They displayed them completely uncoiled and wrapped around a small Christmas Tree.  Our tree is about the same size and I thought these would be a perfect addition to our holiday decorations.

I also picked up this string (the last one they had, too!) of Christmas tree garland.  I’ll be hanging this on the inside of our window to greet guests this holiday season.  For someone, who doesn’t normally get into holiday decorating, these are big purchases.