The average American throws away roughly 68 pounds of textiles each year, the majority of this ending up in landfills. I was shocked by this statistic. As someone who takes a small amount of pride in my appearance, I am pretty low-maintenance when it comes to my wardrobe itself. I don't spend much on my clothing. In fact, most of the things I wear are either hand-me-downs or come from thrift stores. For the last several years I've had a $10 rule: any clothes I buy have to be less than $10. Still, I was appalled that we, as Americans, throw so much usable stuff away.
Recently, I watched a short news story on a woman who wore only 6 items of clothing for an entire month. She was a career woman, a reporter. She blogged about it and others participated in the experiment with her. It really intrigued me, so I decided to try it as well. I didn't think I could handle only 6 articles, so I upped it to 10: 2 sundresses, 2 skirts, 2 pairs of shorts, 3 shirts and a pair of jeans. That's what I'll wear for a month. I'm not too worried about pulling it off and I'm already enjoying the creativity of pulling in different shoes and accessories so I don't feel like I'm wearing the same thing everyday. I think it will be fun to be challenged in this way. The hardest part will be things that are out of the ordinary this month: a weekend away with friends and a wedding I'm coordinating. We'll see how that goes...
As much as I love the challenge, and it has certainly made me more aware of being wasteful, there's a bigger reason for me to do this. I like the lessons it enables me to teach our kids. I like that I've been able to have conversations about what what we actually need and how it differs from what we want. I enjoy being an example of living a little more simply, and being aware of how much the rest of the world doesn't have by comparison to our country. I'm not trying to punish myself for living here, I just think that living here gives us a responsiblity to not be blind to how people live beyond our borders. I like that I'm able to be thankful that I can choose only 10 items, instead of being limited to them.
1 comment:
I love this! And I agree, we need to be more sympathetic to those outside and some even within our borders who would die to have such abundance of "things". I just love you Joy!!! I love that I am always learning something about you which in turn makes me learn something about myself. Either something I need to strive towards, change, improve or keep doing ; D! Thanks for keeping me on my toes!!! You rock!!!
Marvina
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