Dear Friends Of Simple Living,
Welcome to the 53rd issue of our free, on-line Newsletter!
I am also pleased to announce the arrival of our new, state-of-the-art web site. Thanks to everyone who has contributed to, (and waited for), the completion of this nine-month long project.
I know it is cliché to say, but we certainly live in interesting times… on the brink of World War III, peak oil, mounting consumer debt, the pending unfunded retirement of many baby boomers, some are even forecasting complete economic collapse, etc…. Yes, life often seems overwhelming.
Now, I cannot say that The Simple Living Network has all the answers. But, I do know that the good folks who contribute to and participate in our vibrant Simple Living Network community offer some pleasant and realistic alternatives to the dominant paradigm of more… faster… bigger… better… that, some have speculated, are at the root of the problems we face.
I hope you enjoy and find value in the articles in our free, on-line Newsletter and the reorganized, expanded offerings of our web site. And, I hope you will continue to participate in and support our community as we all work together to consume less and enjoy life more. (Thank you CyberAngels!)
For the earth,
Dave Wampler
Founder, The Simple Living Network
- New Resources: The Latest Additions To Our Resource Directory
Click the link above to see all new titles. Click the individual links below for specific information. -
An Inconvenient Truth, by Al Gore
The Motherhood Manifesto, by Joan Blades & Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner
The Lilypad List, by Marian Van Eyk McCain
The Garden-Fresh Vegetable Cookbook, by Andrea Chesman
Vegetable Love, by Barbara Kafka - Articles In This Issue
Click article titles to jump to the specific story. - Bye Bye Bills!
- Counting The Cost
- Feel Free
- Rethinking Freedom In A World With Limits
- Reusable Menstrual Products
- Easy On The Pocketbook, Easy On The Environment
- The Path Of Simplicity
- Begin In This Very Moment
- Alternatives For Simple Living
- New Web Site
- Retirement, Will You Get There?
- from I'm In Debt, Over 40, With No Retirement Savings. Help!
- Credit Card Minimum Payments
- The Dollar Stretcher
- Sell stuff like crazy — That treadmill you never use? Put an ad in the paper and sell it. All that baby gear and those toys your kids no longer use? Have a yard sale and get rid of them. Sell that jewelry or stereo equipment you don't need on eBay. Turn your extra stuff into extra cash you can use to pay off debt.
- Get out the piggy bank — Pull out a piggy bank or old Mason jar. Ask all family members to put all their loose change in it at the end of each day. At the end of the month, deposit this money in your checking account and put it toward the smallest debt on your list in addition to your regular payment.
- Sacrifice — Getting out of debt will benefit the whole family. Being free of debt means that you can have more money to spend on fun stuff for everyone in the family. Ask everyone in the family to give up one special thing for a certain period of time (trips to McDonald's, that cappuccino on the way to work, the Friday night movie rental, etc). Then put the money you would have spent on those items toward your debt.
- Become obsessed — Become a frugal living maniac. Read everything you can get your hands on about frugality. Borrow books from the library, surf the Internet for web sites dedicated to saving money. If you are diligent, you will surely come across a few new ideas that will save you some extra money. When you do, put the money that you saved using those new ideas toward your smallest debt.
- Resort to drastic measures — Brainstorm with your spouse for drastic measures you could take to raise money to eliminate debt. Consider options like: taking on an extra part-time job; renting out your spare bedroom to a college student; selling your second car; selling your home and buying something less expensive; etc. Some of these suggestions may seem too drastic, but if you brainstorm long enough, you can probably come up with something you are willing and able to do. Don't think in terms of working an extra job or being a one-car family for the rest of your life. Think of it as a short-term sacrifice that will help you attain the long-term goal of being free from debt.
Copyright © The Simple Living Network. All Rights Reserved.
Copyright © 2006
Does your family have credit card bills or other debt that won't seem to go away no matter how much extra you pay each month? If so, it's time to get vicious and tackle those bills like you really mean it.
Before you start tackling your family's debt, you need a game plan. Paying an extra $5 on this bill, $10 on that bill and another $10 on some other bill each month is not the smartest way to approach debt elimination. In his book, Financial Peace Revisited (New York: Viking Penguin, 2003) financial guru Dave Ramsey recommends what he calls the "debt snowball." First, list all your family's debts from smallest to biggest based on the total amount owed on each debt. Then tackle the smallest debt on your list with all your might using strategies such as the ones listed below. When the smallest debt is paid off, put all the money you were paying each month on that bill toward the next smallest debt on your list. Keep working in this manner until you get all your bills paid off.
Okay, now that you've got a game plan for tackling your family's bills, let's talk about some creative strategies for making a dent in those bills. Some of these might sound a little crazy, but what's crazy about wanting to be debt-free? Make a commitment to do whatever it takes to get yourself and your family free from burden of debt.
About The Author
Nancy Twigg is an author and speaker who loves inspiring others to live simply. She is also the editor of Counting the Cost, a free email newsletter about simple and frugal living. Visit Nancy online at www.countingthecost.com or at her newest site, www.keepitsimplesister.com
Copyright © 2005
July 4, 2005
Hello friends,
Like kids who were born around Christmas, I've always secretly considered July 4 mine — the bonfires and fireworks I took as warm-up celebrations for my birthday, July 6.
In two days, I'll turn 60. And George Bush will turn 59. And the Dalai Lama will turn 70. Ever since I found out who shares my birthday, I've wanted to make some something of it (being the meaning junkie I am). Given that we three have been born between two Western liberation days, July 4 and Bastille Day (July 14), and now that I am 6 months away from finishing my book on freedom (Feel Free; Rethinking Freedom in a World with Limits) I'm gonna make something out of that.
All three of us have pledged our lives to freedom. At a material level, W considers himself a liberator of the Iraqi people, not to speak of the Afghani and everyone globally beset by terrorists. His Holiness the Dalai Lama (HHDL for short) has spent decades trying to non-violently liberate Tibet from Chinese rule. And I, too, have spent decades promoting independence — from money worries, but also from the whole consumer mindset. I have, to be honest, sometimes had the fervor (unto righteousness) of W. If you could hear my thoughts (many of which go right by without my notice), you'd catch sentences like, "This consumer feeding frenzy of stuff must stop! Now! I said NOW!". To my credit, I have also had the spaciousness of HHDL, often seeing with equanimity the vast, multi-faceted context out of which our delusional consumer culture arises.
All three of us are also in the soul liberation biz. W has found his salvation in Jesus, and some might read his kowtowing to the Religious Right as a sincere belief that we'd all be better off as Christians. HHDL is, first and foremost, a Buddhist monk engaged in the precise work of freeing himself from illusion at every level — lifetime after lifetime. I am more of a spiritual mongrel. I have the salvation bent of my Western Religious heritage, believing in the Kingdom of Heaven as my true home. I also seek liberation into the infinite now through attention and intention, influenced by Eastern traditions. And I've engaged in Native healing practices, from weekly Lakota sweat lodges to ceremonies with shamans from the lush jungles of South America. As I say in my book,
I've nosed along the fences between me and freedom my whole life, keen to openings where something fresh might blow in and swirl out musty ideas or now-dead routines. At age five I insisted on going to sleep-away camp. By eight I'd been to Cuba, by sixteen to Paris, by nineteen I was living in Spain for a year and at twenty-four I went cross-country in an old van with a guy and a dog. I started studying Utopian communities in high school, continued in college and was inventing my own within a decade. Every scrap of income was put into buying time rather than stuff — time to really taste existence up close and personal.
This range of experiences and expressions of freedom says a lot. It means that the lived meaning of freedom in America in 2005 does not cover the whole territory. A NY Times July 4 editorial this morning had a welcome tinge of Patrick Henry...
The word "freedom" especially seems to have hardened around the edges in the last few years. It has lost some of its ability to suggest the open-ended potential of our lives, the possibility of coming to new terms with the expectations we have been handed by earlier generations. The overtones of discovery the word once had seem to have been put on hold. Instead, there is a new complacency, a certainty that we know just what freedom means and exactly how it should look. There is an unwelcome comfort with the inequitable distribution of freedom even in our own country. There is a poisonous tolerance for the idea that freedom encompasses only the right to say positive things about America and its mission in the world.
The liberal tradition of "freedom from" (tyranny of every stripe, from the state to overbearing neighbors) has become "I can do whatever I want, whenever I want, as long as ... it's my property, it doesn't hurt anyone (ahem... that I can see), it's not against the law or at least I don't get caught." But the freedom of "away" — getting away (with it), going away (from it) and keeping "it" away from you — has to be coupled with "freedom with" — the capacity to be with whatever arises in your life, whether inside your noggin or right in your face. If "away" is the only way to freedom, we're doomed. We do live in a round world. Materials go round and round — never away. People can run, but, given our roundness, they can't hide; away and back home are the same thing. Karma says, "What goes around, comes around." So does the Golden Rule. Anything we won't ultimately embrace, love and heal will meet us again on our next road to Samara — or in our next lifetime.
There's also the profound question, "What is freedom for?" Were we given freedom (by the Creator, by the Constitution, by the embedded principles of the Universe) so we could run, hide, invade, take, dominate, rule, escape, care for only our own? Or were we given freedom to be designers along with the Divine? If so, the holy secret is that limits along with other constraints like containers, boundaries, edges, borders, criteria, agreements, laws, principles, values, covenants and such, are the tools the Universe uses to create. Away and With are both essential. Freedom is the necessary raw expansive power of life, but limits are the shaping power of existence. All the beauty we make — in marriages, in art, in sustainable societies, in great religions — comes from knowing this secret of the "away/with" "freedom-in-limits/limits-in-freedom" paradox and embracing the exquisite tension of living where the two intersect.
For me, personal freedom comes from being present to everything that arises — within and without, touching everything with love. Janis Joplin had it half right: freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose... or gain. Relational freedom comes from knowing that everyone and everything is enacting their freedom, just like me, and is equally worthy of my respect and attention. Social freedom comes from knowing that no matter how dense and encrusted social/cultural conventions might be, they were made up by people like me, and people like me can change them. Political freedom is being engaged in the conversations that create the rules we live by and the collective plans we make. And spiritual freedom is the loving, generative space in which all this arises and passes away.
So there you have it — my birthday message along with a preview of Feel Free. Happy 4th, and for that matter 5th, 6th, 7th and all the rest.
Be well,
Vicki
About The Author
Vicki Robin is coauthor with Joe Dominguez of the national best-seller, Your Money Or Your Life: Transforming Your Relationship With Money & Achieving Financial Independence, available now in nine languages. Vicki is President of the Seattle-based New Road Map Foundation, an educational and charitable foundation teaching people tools for sustainable living.
Inspired by years of experience in communication and dialogue skills — and by the challenge to democracy, ecological sustainability and social justice represented by the 9/11 crisis — Vicki created and took responsibility for spreading Conversation Cafes throughout Seattle — and the world. Conversation Cafes are hosted conversations among diverse people in public places on subjects that matter.
Web Site: The New Road Map Foundation
Resources By This Author
Copyright © 2006
Most people don't consciously think about it, but disposable tampons and pads are among the most popular products used by women today. Not only that, but these products are used routinely and consistently throughout a large part of a typical woman's life. However, little thought is given to the effect these throwaway products have on the environment — and on women's bodies and pocketbooks. Indeed, disposable menstrual products are hard on all three, but for women who advocate "simple living," the thought of waste is perhaps the most troubling.
After all, it is extremely wasteful to use a product for just a few hours and then toss it. And according to most estimates, the average woman will use nearly 12,000 pads and/or tampons during her lifetime. That's quite a lot of garbage — and quite a lot of money spent!
Whether you flush a tampon or pad down the toilet, or throw it in the garbage, it will be problematic for the environment. Flushed down the toilet, tampons and pads can clog sewer lines, or go on to play havoc with water treatment plants. (We have heard estimates that in 9 out of 10 plumbing problems in apartment buildings, homes and offices, the culprits are disposable menstrual products.)
When you throw disposables in the garbage, they end up in landfills, where — lacking light, water and circulating air — they probably won't biodegrade for many years. (Did you know that people have dug into landfills and found newspapers from 50 years earlier that are still readable?) And experts estimate that plastic tampon applicators may actually take 300 to 500 years to break down. But since tampons have only been around for seventy-five years, we can't yet be positive exactly how long the applicators will take to biodegrade.
When economically and ecologically-minded women look for other menstrual product options, they most often turn to disposable organic cotton tampons and pads. The reason they choose the organic cotton versions is because the synthetics used in most store-bought disposables have been linked to potential health hazards, such as Toxic Shock Syndrome and dioxin exposure. Organic cotton is certainly easier on the body and the environment, if not the pocketbook.
One option that is routinely left out of these discussions (as well as media programs and published articles) is reusable menstrual products. The truth is, before tampons and throwaway menstrual pads came on the market in the 1930s, women used rags, which were kind to the environment, because they were washable and therefore, reusable. It wasn't until the '30s, and in the years since then, that women began to discover that there was cause for concern.
So what's the answer? Reusable menstrual products. Although they are not universally known, they do have a loyal following; and there are several kinds on the market, making them readily accessible. For instance, instead of a tampon, there is the earth-friendly, reusable menstrual cup, The Keeper, made from gentle rubber, similar to the rubber that is used to make baby bottle nipples. Easy on the environment, The Keeper is also easy on the pocketbook: With proper care, one cup should last up to 10 years.
disposables — as opposed to one Keeper — used over a 10 year period.
And since The Keeper is made of rubber, rather than of an absorbent fibrous material like rayon, it can be worn up to 12 hours before being emptied. (On heavy days, a woman may want to change it more often.) The fact that The Keeper is not made of rayon, or any other synthetic material, also reduces the potential for Toxic Shock Syndrome and eliminates dioxin exposure.
But some women want a reusable — but not an insertable — menstrual product. One answer: reusable menstrual pads like Glad Rags, made from organic cotton that, like The Keeper, can be used for years. (According to the manufacturer, Glad Rags can be used for at least five years.) Glad Rags are also friendly to the environment, and come in colors, as well, through the use of natural dyes.
The health aspect of menstrual products is more difficult to assess, since there haven't been enough independent studies done on disposables. In fact, most of the studies that have been done have been performed by the companies who manufacture the products! Many people think that the FDA performs these kinds of studies, but it doesn't. In fact, it may shock you to know that the FDA requires the manufacturers of shampoo, lipstick and other cosmetics to list the ingredients in or on their packages, but does NOT require the manufacturers of menstrual products to do the same! Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) has been trying for many years now to get a bill passed that would require independent testing of tampons to determine if they are safe. So far, she has been unsuccessful. To learn more about her efforts, please click here. You can also call your congressperson and urge him or her to support H.R. 3411, the Robin Danielson Act.
But there should be no question in our minds that reusable menstrual products are the most environment-friendly and economical of all the menstrual products. It's time that more women knew about this option!
About The Author
Julia Schopick is the Marketing Director of The Keeper, Inc. She can be reached at 708-848-4788 or JuliaS1573@aol.com. Or visit The Keeper's website at http://www.keeper.com
Copyright © 2006
My hut lies in the middle of a dense forest;
Every year the green ivy grows longer.
No news of the affairs of men,
Only the occasional song of a woodcutter.
The sun shines and I mend my robe;
When the moon comes out I read Buddhist poems.
I have nothing to report, my friends
If you want to find the meaning, stop chasing after so many things
— Ryokan (1758-1831)
Before you started reading this article — what were you doing and where was your mind attending? Were you concentrating on one particular task, fully focused, giving your best effort? Or were you mentally elsewhere, distracted by a stream of fragmented thoughts, totally unaware of your lack of mindfulness? If you are anything like me you were probably in this latter category, over-reaching and dissipating your energy — chasing after so many things."
Our preoccupation with doing and achieving is an anxiety that largely accumulates from our exposure to fiercely competitive, economic environments. Financially driven, market cultures — now increased to global proportions — that constantly strive to maximize material production, performance and consumption, at all costs. And in the process of "busying" ourselves with all this activity, we can become lost, kept away from looking deeper into life, from asking those spiritual questions that can lead us into enriched understanding, deeper awakening, true liberation...
The Path Can Begin In This Very Moment
Life gets difficult when we try to meet so many expectations, often imposed on us, by us. We over-burden ourselves with multiple tasks, then end up feeling guilty when we do not accomplish the desired results. Leading a better life, a simplified, saner life means letting go of so much that preoccupies us unnecessarily. Letting go of that, which we know deep within us, is not essential to our true being. A new life, a spiritually enriched life that will take us off to deeper appreciation, is only a choice away. So do we continue to cling to our acquisitive, materialistic values and allow ourselves to become over-stressed in a situation that is unsustainable for us, and the planet, in the long term? Or do we follow the lead of Ryokan and try to simplify our existence to manageable proportions?
The Path Can Start Here
Once, a self-confessed over-worked, over-stressed friend of mine was late for an important meeting. He dashed to his car and headed towards his destination only to find heavy traffic congestion all along the route. He tried to take alternative short-cuts, but to no avail; there seemed to be traffic jams everywhere. At a crawling pace, getting very agitated, he suddenly, for no apparent reason, said he made the decision that he was going to be late. I like that: he reframed his normal response of anxiety / denial and accepted the reality of a situation he couldn't change. This marked his entry point into a whole new way of thinking, a whole new way of being in the world. His busy lifestyle of trying to juggle so many different things was in sharp focus like never before. He knew he that he had to trim down his commitments in order to achieve more peace, contentment and easiness in his life. Soon after, he started to attend retreats and engage with the pragmatic teachings of Buddhism (Dharma).
To reduce our burden of over-achieving, over-reaching and over-stretching we must start somewhere — like my friend. A decision needs to be made, whatever we are doing, to simplify. This decision then becomes our starting point, our entry into a new life. We must never again make adjustments to keep up with the runaway schedules, timetables, performance targets of a fierce economic culture; instead the latter must be scaled down and "humanized" to meet our real needs and desires.
Our lives are precious, our time is precious — greater than the value of the Stock Market's trading, greater than the value of the F T Index....
The Path Can Be My Life, My Life Can Be The Path
"We can travel a long way and do many different things, but our deepest happiness is not born from accumulating new experiences. It is born from letting go of what is unnecessary and knowing ourselves to always be at home."
— Sharon Salzburg
"Being at home" is what we should aim for — a space that allows us to rest mindfully in non-attachment. A space where contentment and deep happiness abides. A space that allows healing and restoration to take place...
It seems that everything we touch today has "Now, now, now," wired into it and unless we challenge our mind-set coding we will just go on repeating the same old patterns of behavior. We do not have to be driven by turbulent thoughts that tell us that we must be constantly "doing", thoughts that tell us that rest is lazy and somehow unproductive. To the contrary, rest is not laziness, and quite often it can be uniquely productive. Take nature, for instance. During the winter months, the months of dormancy, an apple orchard is at rest but within every tree, right down to its deepest roots, there is a promise of what is to come, the full fruits of its creative cycle. Without the rest there would be no apples to harvest. The latter is simply a product of the former, all expressed in a natural cycle of seasonality.
Rest Nourishes Growth
The more we can quiet our minds of their restless, neurotic thoughts, the more we are opened up for a listening to take place. A listening so deep, so still, that we may never be the same again. Yoniso manasikara = Wise attention...
Letting go creates space for letting in. Ryokan was very much aware of this; that's why he dedicated his life to the pursuit of simplicity in order to be able to somehow "touch" the truth of his existence. How else can we start to touch our truth — in a world that provides so many materialistic distractions — unless we start to pull away, simplify, and pay attention...
Simplicity means living lightly. This involves not only watching our consumption levels, but also following Earth-friendly strategies for a sustainable future. Then we can rest knowing that we have done all we can to make this world a better place. Living in harmony with the natural world, paying due respect to its universal gifts, is an imperative that we cannot afford to ignore anymore. Whilst we may not be able to influence global environmental policies we can at least make certain that we are engaged and committed to doing what we can.
The deeper we venture into simplicity, the deeper we experience a "knowing" that transcends the rationalistic, surface thought that we too readily accept as "normalcy." Simplicity helps to support focus, clarity of vision and insightfulness — bringing us the realization that less is often more and within t