I grew up in what most people would consider a large family (in a modern sense). There were seven of us: Dad, Mom, four girls and one boy. Don’t feel sorry for our brother, he held his own. We were very fortunate to have loving parents who stayed together faithfully, until our mothers death in 2011. Our mother was a wonderful homemaker and didn’t work the majority of my childhood. She was very frugal out of necessity. She loved to shop at secondhand or thrift stores. To her it was almost like a scavenger hunt to find the hidden treasure. She would lie in wait for the next cart of treasure to come rolling out of the intake room like a cat waiting to pounce on its prey. The thought makes me smile.
I’ve recently begun re-living my mother’s passion partly due to frugality but also as an excellent, eco-conscious endevour. When we give an item a second life we are able to keep plastic packaging out of the landfill. Living in the waste-stream of others is a very eco friendly habit. It certainly lessens our carbon footprint too.
I’ve been able to clothe our newborn son 90% of secondhand clothes all carefully chosen from natural fibers. No synthetic clothes for us! I keep an electronic list of the clothes in my children’s current wardrobes to evaluate whether an item found is really needed or not. I need to work further on creating a minimalist wardrobe for each family member. In time that’s a task I’ll conquer.
To keep within our goal of minimalism for this year, I need to go secondhand shopping with a list otherwise my excitement can get out of control quickly. Plastic free purchases, yipyee! Reminder to self, we still want to limit our purchases to only absolute necessities. What can I live without?
