Frugality is one of the most beautiful and joyful words…

Frugality is one of the most beautiful and joyful words in the English language, and yet one that we are culturally cut off from understanding and enjoying. The consumption society has made us feel that happiness lies in having things, and has failed to teach us the happiness of not having things.
-- Elise Boulding

Driving through town the other day with a car full of delightful passengers, I stated – with some dismay – that we could not joyride and take in the sights of the area because I had recently spent over $60 to fill my gas-guzzling SUV. While each of the passengers – including me – grew sour-faced, we looked around at the other vehicles on the road and realized that most of them were gas-guzzling trucks and SUVs as well! None of us on the road could ride free. We all had to make a straight shot to where we were going then go directly back to where we came from or risk having to refill the tank too soon.

One of my passengers remarked that driving a smaller car would eliminate the use of lots of gas while another countered with, "You can't get as much stuff in a smaller car." Somebody else then said, "Well, why do you have to carry so much stuff?"

Well, ding, ding, ding, that's the point! And the question is not only why do we have to carry so much stuff, but why do we have to have so much stuff to begin with?

When I first moved into my house almost 20 years ago, I believed I needed to fill it with stuff – furniture, fixtures, decorations, all the things I thought said "comfort" or "home." Years later, I look around at all this stuff and wonder WTH I was thinking. I have become a frequent visitor to the Goodwill donation sites around town, giving away just about everything I've accumulated over the years. But I still have tons of stuff in my house.

Which ultimately spills over to my truck. I carry a bin in the trunk to collect odds and ends but it often becomes cluttered with stuff from the house, stuff we should have taken back into the house when we got out of the car. Eventually all that stuff weighs my car down, which means I end up burning more fuel.

And speaking of extra pounds, what about all the pounds we keep on our bodies? Certainly that adds to the weight we carry in our cars. We've got to get rid of that trunk junk, too.

And what about all the negative emotions, worries, and past hurts/pains we carry around with us? That's extra weight to our psyches and shoulders, weight we shouldn't carry around. You know what happens with all that emotional weight to consider, carry, and deal with – we end up trying to cover up/hide from/compensate for the sense of lack/discomfort/fear/uncertainty/chaos the weight brings. And we do it by accumulating more stuff! More stuff to carry, house, and hold onto.

It's easy to make a run to Goodwill, call the ARC, give your stuff away on Freecycle, or upload it for sale on Craigslist. It's easy to pare down what you eat. And, sometimes – ((sometimes)), it's easy to monitor what you allow to enter your consciousness. But unless we make mindful lifestyle changes, we'll be constantly saddled with unnecessary stuff to tend. In order to make life uncomplicated/lighter/less cumbersome/simpler, we must think differently about the stuff around us. We must evaluate the necessity of all that we allow into our lives, make careful decisions about the things we choose to own, and eliminate for good the things that we don't need. And, while sometimes these are hard choices, we must make them for our health, sanity, and freedom.

Eliminating the unnecessary from your life, be it furniture, material possessions, cars, friends, or worry, makes life simpler, even happier. Fewer possessions means not having to keep up with stuff, clean it, care for it, and most importantly, have a place for it. Think on this – if you don't have a lot of stuff, you don't have to have a big house to put stuff in, which means smaller heating/cooling and electricity costs (read: less energy consumption), smaller mortgage/rent, and even fewer repairs. It also means being intentional about valuing and maintaining calm, clutter free, less-is-more space, and including only those things that meet your everyday needs, speak to who you are, and bring you tranquility, comfort, and joy. Having less stuff in your home means you can really be at home.

And when you begin to eliminate stuff from your home, reducing or disposing of the other stuff in your life becomes more deliberate as well. Who says we have to have 800 Facebook friends? We don't keep in touch with 800 friends at one time, do we? We don't have all 800 friends at our house at one time, do we? Really, if you think about it, we may only have 20 – 30 people in our everyday lives, 20 – 30 people (if that) who have easy access to us daily. Yeah, it feels good to keep in touch your old childhood friends; they are special. But, really, if you hadn't kept up with them before Facebook, would you really miss them now?

Okay, maybe... Anyway, this isn't a scribe about Facebook, but it wouldn't hurt to consider who you give right of entry /attention to. Some people make life harder than it has to be.

And consider our eating habits. Needing only to eat when necessary – and not just because we're hungry for something – might mean that we would eat on purpose and be healthier. This means we'd eat more grains, fruits, and fresh vegetables; more legumes which are excellent sources of fiber and protein; and, of course, drinking more water. And none of this means you have to spend an exorbitant amount of money. It could mean a weekly visit to the local farmers market or growing your own fruits and vegetables – from pots on the patio, if you want to; finding a natural food store and stocking up on grains and beans to add to your home- or farm-grown vegetables, and drinking water straight from the tap you pay for every month! Just add a filter to the faucet to eliminate the yucky taste of chlorine and whatever else the city uses to purify the water.

If you eat healthier, you'll find yourself losing unnecessary body weight, and there's no way you'll want to put it back on! Exercising even a little preserves a healthy weight. It also increases mental sharpness, improves your mood, and greatly diminishes the stress that can make you ball into the fetal position and want to forget it all.

And once there's less of you physically, you'll want less of yourself to be consumed. No more hectic schedules or burdensome obligations and commitments to clutter your mind and time – you didn't lose all that material and physical weight to do more stuff; you're paring it all down. Because the less you do, the less stretched and more focused you are. Oh yeah, we can do many things; we're awesome multitaskers. But, really, do you want to do so much? And, do you do all the things you do well, or do you just meet the mark with the hundreds of things you're obligated to do? Think about it – if you did one or a few things, wouldn't you do them/be so much better? Happier?

Ultimately, we must become more frugal, or thrifty and prudent, in our ways. The more we have, the less we have – less freedom/happiness/peace. The more we have, the less we and our opportunities are. We become what we have and all the material/physical stuff we have keeps us limited in some capacity. Being frugal means being free to live.

I'm for giving up on the "American Dream" of consumerism and obsession with material abundance. I'm for living simple – owning, having, eating, doing, and being that which does not hinder living. I want to be thoughtful about the way I use energy, time, space, and myself. I've enlisted the help of Leo Babauta, Tsh Oxenreider, and Courtney Carver. It's all a process, but these are working for me and a lifestyle change that'll lead to peace, happiness, and freedom.

Freedom to joyride with delightful passengers because we're not hindered by gas prices!

So, why do I drive a gas-guzzling SUV? Vanity, I guess. There are certainly thousands of cars on the market I'd look good in that boast better fuel efficiency than my brown Explorer. But while giving up the brown truck is not (necessarily) in the near future for me, driving more efficiently by cutting down on my trips via a pared down schedule and carrying less junk in the trunks is certainly on the menu. The joyrides will just have to wait.

This morning, I sat in the beautiful and gracefully inviting garden

This morning, I sat in the beautiful and gracefully inviting garden of one of my dearest friends. I drank refreshing raspberry lemonade from a wine glass, got my locs eyeballed by a sneaking spider, had my ankle sized up by a seasoned bumblebee, and talked about life and the love of it in a way that can only be discussed in a garden over lemonade with the elements and a wise friend.

Much of our time was spent marveling at the way nature thrives when it’s loved and nurtured. Her petunias, the sedum, the cactus with fresh bulbs, and the orange hibiscus were luscious and breathtaking because of the care she’d taken in making their home serene and generous with just what they needed. Sitting among this life, I couldn’t help but think of how my friend’s garden so mimicked her life and the one many of us are trying to capture and create. My friend’s life is sheathed by simplicity, creativity, and contentment, traits that are all too fleeting if not totally vanished.

Lots of us spend our lives working on and toward the “ideal” life – one full of material wealth gained from working in this career or taking that job so we could acquire even more wealth. We’ve tucked away a bit here and there for our golden years so we’d have cushion to live on, travel the world if we like, and leave something to our children. It is, of course, important in this day and age to make a nest egg for ourselves and to have money and benefits enough to live on. We’re living longer lives so it’s imperative we have what we need when we enter the years after retirement from active work or whatever it is we did when we were younger.

But, we do all that at the expense of overwork, stress and its effects on our health, and the missed chance of watching daisies grow on the patio. Are we working too hard and too much to watch something as simple as the substance of a garden in bloom? Are we doing too much that we only demand our children be this because of that, and living with them in fear of this moment and a dubious and difficult tomorrow instead of encouraging them to bloom and be inspired by their innate abilities? Are you working so hard to keep your ends met that you’ve let wither that brainchild you’ve flowered for years, the one that could sprout and spread if you’d turn loose the safe yet predictable job you’ve held onto for years, the idea that haunts you and screams aloud that you should be doing it instead of working for someone else?

Of course I’m the last person who’d balk at comfort and predictability; I’m a teacher with a relatively dependable salary, benefits, and 2 months of down time. How much more predictable can you get?

But the point is, all the hard work, degrees, money saved, and things we’ve gathered aren’t getting us closer to simplicity or happiness. And there’s very little creativity attached to any of it.

When I left my friend’s, I ended up at a little pizzeria that lauded making your food fresh at the time of your order which gave me time to reflect on my visit in the garden. None of my thoughts really came together until I read a poster on the wall. Some of it read –

“The paradox of our time in history is that we ... spend more, but have less;
buy more, but enjoy it less; have more conveniences, but less time... We have
multiplied our possessions, but reduced our value. We talk too much, love too
seldom, and hate too often. We’ve learned how to make a living, but not a life.
We’ve added years to life, not life to years... It is a time when there is much
in the show window and nothing in the stockroom. It is a time when we can choose
either to make a difference or languish in the paradox.”

Today I’m choosing the simple. I’m paring it down and out. And, perhaps if more of us sought what was simple and uncomplicated, our collective creativity could soar and we may even find contentment, or at least something to genuinely smile and feel good about. Or, perhaps it’s not that clear-cut; maybe there’s a lot more to it than simplicity and happiness. After all, you still have the creepy spiders, the menacing bumblebees, the rocky economy, and all the other stuff that can make life unpleasant and scary. But does that mean you can’t enjoy the garden, even till your own special place to breathe in and create newness? I refuse to think so.