Sandra McCracken

life from the basement

I've been down in the basement a few times more than usual this week, checking on dripping old plumbing, parts and repairs for the ice maker, and looking for warmer clothes in the winter bins.  I had the thought that it is likely that we could survive for quite a long time, if not indefinitely on just the stuff we have under this roof.  Old clothes, picture frames, toys, scrap wood, and memory boxes.  I have a sewing machine and a full kitchen to help me renew and recycle so much of these odds and ends. 

I think the biggest obstacle to more restorative living is organization.  I can't quickly find what I need when I need it.  That is when the big-box stores have in their favor, with rows and rows of labeled, organized products. But easier is not always better.  Faster access to our needs and wants is not always better.  More people, buying more stuff, and more quickly producing more trash.

I noticed last week, while out in the newly developed suburbs south of Nashville, that there is a new storage building just off the highway near all the new stores and strip malls.  Several more farms are gone since I've last been by there, too.  It is a picture of consumer growth, more stuff to buy, more stuff to put in storage. But is this kind of growth and industry sustainable?  Is there longevity to these habits?  And what will our kids be like as adults when this is their childhood experience?

I want find new systems to sort and sift through our stuff, and to make our stuff work for us, rather than our working to buy more stuff.  I want to have less stuff.  And I want to encourage imagination and creativity in our home as we find ways to live simply and fully here in America in the last days of 2009.