Clarity

An image from Stephanie and Mav's gorgeous blog 3191 a year of mornings, that doesn't make me want to consume a single thing...

Despite all of the pretty objects, fun shops and general stuff that populate my posts, one of my overarching goals when I started this blog was to focus on simplicity and mindfulness in my little family’s daily life, especially as it relates to consumption.

Honestly, I’ll never stop desiring lovely things. I enjoy shopping, and stumbling on something well-made/unique/beautiful is a major pleasure for me -- one I usually want to share. I also firmly believe in buying things that truly delight you, ones that you’ll wear/carry/use the heck out of (or that just compel you to sit and stare at all day long), and those are the type of things that I tend to hone in on here.

(For example, I was a lucky girl and got some of the aforementioned iittala Taika dishes from both Bryan and my mother for my birthday…Despite thinking I would pull them out only for special occasions, they are so insanely beautiful, I’ve ended up using them as the foundation for everything from frozen waffles to Sunday dinner.)

So no matter how at odds it seems to follow a post about a pretty ring (or mobile, or cake platter) with a post about mindful consumption, I’ll probably continue to do it a lot...this is after all my internal monologue. What’s got me thinking about this topic right now is this 1955 quote I came across by retail analyst and economist Victor Lebow:

"Our enormously productive economy… demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfaction, our ego satisfaction, in consumption… We need things consumed, burned up, worn out, replaced, and discarded at an ever increasing rate."

I don’t want consumption to ever become our “way of life” or the source of any spiritual satisfaction…how, well…sad. So for me, it’s a poignant reminder to constantly scrutinize my own family’s consumption habits and to better understand why I buy what I buy…especially this month.

For what it’s worth.