Do You Realize?

Children's Gift Giving for Dummies

Our strategy for buying our kids' Christmas gifts has been in the process of fine-tuning for a few years. We now have what I consider a pretty brilliant idea. It keeps yearlong consumerism to a minimum and the kids end up getting what they want at Christmas.

The strategy? you ask. It's simple: don't buy them everything they want all year long. If it's not birthday or Christmas or a cold day in hell, it's not likely we're out buying a video game just because one of our precious pumpkins just HAAAAAS to HAAAAVE it. They can save up their chore money for it... which poses a problem for them most times, because we actually require work for payment rendered.

So, come Christmas, we have a very good list of pickings from which to choose. It looks like we spoil our kids at Christmas sometimes, but it's because we neglect them the rest of the year. (Well, at least that would be their story.) We give them one large gift on their birthday, but we haven't done (or overdone) a birthday party since they were five. They get to choose where/what we eat on their birthday, and they get their one large gift.

On Christmas morning, our kids are usually overjoyed with their gifts, because they aren't inundated and oversaturated with crap all year long.

(We also adopt as many kids as we can from the Salvation Army Angel Tree, and we shop for them together, and then we volunteer our time to help distribute all the toys to the families. It's  a great way to help the kids realize how good we live life.)

Slow & Steady

I've decided that "slow & steady, steady & slow" is the way to approach most things, including our "better world" impacts. If I go in with guns blazing, I tend to burn myself out fairly quickly, then go on hiatus, then go back in (whether or not I learned anything, and go back in "steady & slow" varies greatly). Vanessa, over at Green as a Thistle, knows this; it's the whole premise of her blog!

I've covered some of my S&S actions in posts already, but most of these are things I've not talked about or I've just done this week, and I feel great about them!

1. I used some old pillowcases to sew cloth napkins this week. None of them are the same size, mind you, but at least the seams are pretty straight and the thread matched. I'm now contemplating how to use the sheets to make some sort of shopping bags, unless someone has another suggestion for their use. I could give them to Goodwill, I suppose, as it was only the pillowcases that had an unrepairable hole.
2. I pitched all my mop water yesterday out on the hostas and the jasmine plants. (I use safe Method products, so I'm not trying to kill them with Lysol or bleach.)
3. I gave my Better World Shopping Guide to my mother. I know I am buying another copy, but I knew she probably would never get around to it. I do have her word, though, that she will use it to make her purchasing decisions.
4. I found & ordered some environmentally friendly nail polish and remover from a company called Acquarella. It is water-based, non-toxic, and phthalate & formaldehyde-free.
5. I'm saving all my MAC cosmetic containers. I'm almost up to the six required for their "Back to MAC" recycling program. In order to encourage recycling, MAC takes back all of their containers, and when you bring in six of them, you get a free lipstick (not including the Viva Glam line, since 100% of those profits go to AIDS relief, and they won't cut into those profits)! How cool is that?!?
6. I always have a box by the front door somewhere, designated for Goodwill stuff. Once every blue moon or so, we will have a yard sale (okay,only twice ever). Even though the last one made us over $700, I would mostly rather send my stuff to Goodwill to free my space up a little more; yesterday, two boxes went.
7. I inspired my mom & sister to try reusable bags (she now has five from One Bag at a Time) and all-natural pet food. Telling them about the pet foods that use euthanized pound animals as protein sources, plus the recent pet food nightmares, did the trick.
8. I was thrilled to discover that Performance Bicycle, where my hubby buys all of his cycling gear and supplies, uses CornCard  gift cards instead of plastic, and they use 100% renewable energy.
9. I have my own personal boycotts that I am fairly rigid about. I need to post about them, like Shawn over at Kowai, and I still need to write to them & let them know why I won't buy anything from them, but the boycott is a start, right?

Making the world a little better place is not that hard. Especially if you take it "slow & steady."

NOTE: I've neglected my Better World Handbook Quote of the Day. A new one is up.

Ready to Fall?

Those of you who are regular readers (and even occasional readers) know that I delve into deep thoughts or long posts only on occasion, usually when something is bothering me. And today, I am very bothered. My teenage son has been telling me about this super-disturbing video. Curious to see what he finds disturbing (since he finds Jackass funny and I think that's pretty freakin' disturbing), I went to check it out; I knew I liked the band, I liked the song, why not? I am surely glad he finds it disturbing, but it is something I think everyone should see. It's quite the commentary on how we as a society have come to enjoy our "consumables" so much that we have turned a blind eye, and therefore condoned, what is done to get the final product. (Warning: Very graphic and disturbing images. Teenage daughter couldn't sit through the whole thing; she left in tears.)

"Ready to Fall" by Rise Against

Today is Memorial Day, a day to remember men & women who have lost their lives for our freedom. But I really would like to see us also start paying closer attention to our "companions" who have lost their lives (or maybe just their eyesight or the use of a limb) for our comfort, for "tears-free" shampoo and "hypo-allergenic" lotions and "new & improved" formulas.

Sometimes I can be quite the proverbial ostrich, burying my head in the sand when something is tough to take. But if everyone did that, I realized that nothing would get done about things like unnecessary animal testing and inhumane slaughter houses. I really believe that a society's ultimate goodness can be judged by how it treats its animals (an opinion I know has been shared by Gandhi, Mark Twain, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Leo Tolstoy, and Dr. Charles Mayo, to name a few). Is our society "ready to fall"? Morally, sometimes I think so.

One of the things I learned today is that Nalgene makes this evil contraption just for a test known as the Draize Eye Test. In the Draize eye test a substance is dropped into the eyes of a group of albino rabbits. The animals are often immobilized in stocks from which only their heads protrude. They usually receive no anesthesia during the tests. After placing the substance in the rabbits' eyes, technicians record the damage to the eye tissue at specific intervals over an average period of 72 hours, with tests sometimes lasting 7-18 days. Reactions to the substances include swollen eyelids, inflamed irises, ulceration, bleeding, massive deterioration, and blindness. During the tests, the rabbits' eyelids are held open with clips. Animals sometimes break their necks or backs as they struggle to escape. Technicians performing eye irritancy tests do not attempt to treat the rabbits or seek antidotes to the test substance, so the test cannot help lead to treatments for potential human injuries. No more Nalgene for me, my friend; never again. (We have a bunny, and I cannot even fathom the hardness or mindset required to treat one like that.)

The problem is that Nalgene is not the only "bad guy" here. There are plenty of companies that purchase and use these contraptions, and we are giving them our money. "Here, I bought some of your shampoo. Go burn somebunny's eyes out." Ummmm, that's logical, right? No, it's blind consumerism (or possibly callousness, because "this shampoo works better than any of the others.").

Dr. Albert Schweitzer said, "The quiet conscience is the invention of the devil. No one of us may permit any preventable pain to be inflicted even though the responsibility for that pain is not ours. No one may shut his eyes and think that the pain which is therefore not visible, is non-existent." He said it a lot better that I can, and he sounded a lot smarter, too. So... yeah, what he said!

This is not supposed to be a hypocritical rant to make anyone feel any guiltier than I do. It's more like a plea to take an extra 5 minutes to take a look at this list or this guide before going out to buy cleaning products or shampoo or cosmetics. I know I will think a little harder and shop a little smarter.