Frugal in the Fruitlands

Have you started thinking about Christmas yet? I’ve already started dreading it. I haven’t quite figured out what I like the least - getting gifts I don’t need or want, or giving gifts that other people don’t need or want.

It might seem early, but now is the time to start thinking about how you want to celebrate Christmas. This will ensure that you have enough time to plan a relaxing season with family and friends, rather than a season of conspicuous consumption.

Here are some tips for fitting your own ethical sensibilities into an over-commercialized season:

1. Make your home a no-giving zone. Start early - it’s no good telling Aunt Jeannie that you don’t plan to exchange gifts when that lumpy green sweater is already in the mail. Similarly, if you plan to spend the holidays with someone, you want to set up the gift-giving rules early. Last year in my home my husband’s parents and my mother agreed that they would not exchange gifts. If you send out a family newsletter each year, you may want to send it earlier and include the announcement that due to (financial situation, awareness of poverty in the world, disgust with consumerism, etc) you are refraining from gift giving this year, and that likewise, you don’t wish to receive any gifts in return. I find that most adults are relieved to find out that they don’t have to purchase Yet Another Gift, not dismayed.

2. Give to charity, not to each other. This is another way to harness the family newsletter—use it to announce that instead of giving individual gifts this year, you have used the money to buy a herd of goats for a third-world country. Heifer.org and the International Fund for Animal Welfare are just two charities that allow you to “itemize” your charitable gift according to what benefits it buys (i.e. $50 buys a neuter for a dog). This is good idea if you’re worried about keeping up appearances by giving a certain amount—I doubt the recipient will go online to price a herd of goats.

3. Suggest a regift swap. I successfully implemented this idea in my book club last year. In this kind of swap everyone contributes a perfectly good item that they don’t need. You can distribute the gifts via any method that works for you: secret Santa, grab bag, Yankee swap. I daresay our book club had more fun with this than we ever would with a new gift swap, perhaps because the nature of the gifts meant that nobody minded so much having a copy of Scattergories or a set of garden gnomes stolen from them, Yankee-swap style.

4. Start a gift-free tradition. Sometime in the week before Christmas, we like to have some friends over for a party. We make it clear that the purpose is not to exchange gifts. We pop popcorn and string them on strings with cranberries and make orange pomanders, listen to Christmas music, and eat Christmas cookies (everybody brings their own). The point is to enjoy each other’s company without an outpouring of consumerism.

5. Decorate green, decorate cheap. There are so many inexpensive ways to decorate in Christmas that don’t involve the consumption of a tree. My fondest Christmas memory is of a day in winter when I was very small and my mother stayed home with me to do Christmas crafts. We made garlands out of old wrapping paper, found pine branches from the woods and set them in jars, and made orange pomanders. Some other Christmas crafts you might want to try are:

• Paper snowflakes
• Washable window painting
• Christmas tree tomato trellises: take a cone-shaped tomato trellis and bend the pointy bits that go into the dirt down onto themselves to form a rough tree shape. Drape with lights and use it to decorate your porch or front lawn. Alternately, you can also reuse your Christmas tree to make tomato trellises!

6. If you have to give, give consumables. Everybody loves chocolate, wine, or other luxury foods. Other items that will be used, such as soap, lotion - or, hey, CFL bulbs - are alternatives to gifts that will sit on a shelf.

7. Make and give homemade. The beauty of homemade gifts is that they usually cost less than store-bought gifts while providing recipients with a one-of-a-kind, homemade item. Last year, many people on our Christmas list received homebrew beer for exactly this reason. Our spiced Belgian-style ale was quite popular in a cold winter!

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I’ve gone ahead and re-themed and renamed this blog, as I suggested I might. Those of your viewing this post in a feed reader might want to check out the new design. Additionally, I significantly edited my about page. I used the Craving4Green theme with my own images, and some other tweaks, to personalize this. Ideally I’d like to come up with my own unique theme, as this one is not widget-compatible. That, however, is not something I can fit in my schedule right now. Either way, feedback is welcome.

Frugal in the Fruitlands will bring you all the frugality and VS articles as before, along with occasional articles on personal development, productivity, and personal finance. It’s intended to be a lot more focused - and descriptively named- then XORsted was, now that I’ve finally figured out what I want this blog to be “about.”

Speaking of which, here are some memorable posts from August:

• Three reasons why routines are not straitjackets
• Ten Frugal (And Mostly Green) Things to Do With an Empty TidyCat Container
• The Economics and Psychology of A Spending Trigger

And, as always, if you wish to subscribe, here’s the link to the Frugal in the Fruitlands RSS feed.

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Does perhaps a balance stand
Between the Devil on one hand
And God on the other, which must be gained
As often as lost, and so maintained?–
And what I love as my own soul
I spit upon–to make me whole?

- Edna St. Vincent Millay, “Journal”

We are imperfect creatures. Voluntary simplicity and frugality are certainly my goals, but sometimes I fall short of the mark. This post is my own way of balancing the scales; of assessing what my husband and I do right as well as what we do wrong.

Ways I Simplify

1. I use simple cleaners (such as vinegar/water or diluted Simple Green), with rags, for most of my cleaning needs.
2. I compulsively reuse. Plastic grocery bags become litter cleanout bags. Litter tubs become planters. Plastic tubs for food are washed out and used again. I have rows of raspberry syrup bottles cleaned out and ready to reuse for gifts somedays.
3. I love my library – so much so that I have almost stopped buying books entirely. We also borrow books and DVDs from our friends.
4. We don’t have a land line – just two cell phones. They’re basic cell phones, too – no smart phones here, although they’re tempting.
5. My husband and I carpool to work 3-4 times a week.
6. I almost always bring my own lunch to work. Sometimes, if I forget, I’ll walk down to the nearest supermarket and pick up some lunch supplies, instead.
7. We make use of Freecycle, Craigslist, yard sales, and the kindness of family and friends for many of our needs. We just got a working Toro snowblower through Freecycle!
8. We only go to the movies two or three times a year The last movie I saw in a theatre was the second Pirates of the Caribbean movie.
9. I reuse tea bags at least twice; sometimes three times. Surprisingly, the most inexpensive teas are most often the ones that are stuffed with tea and can be reused again and again.
10. We don’t have kids, and don’t intend to. We’re staunchly childfree, and I don’t see the point—ecologically, economically, or philosophically—in bringing another methane-belching living thing with a 70 year lifespan into the world. Plus, we’re having too much fun without them.

Ways I Complicate
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Recently The Tao of Making Money posted a list of twelve things he would never buy. Computer upgrades and repairs were among them. Golbguru rightly pointed out that you can learn to do these simple things yourself, or have a family member or friend do them for you. As a computer-savvy family member, I encourage the former more than the latter, but the basic logic stands.

As a computer-savvy family member, I also am called upon to cut through the jargon and half-truths that stores such as Best Buy throw at their customers. My most recent experience with Best Buy and its associated Geek Squad involved my father, in fact. Keep in mind, my father would buy that bridge. He would buy any bridge. Hell, he bought a dump truck.

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