Goodwill Hunting: How do ya like dem jars?

After a month of buying nothing new, I'm still a consumer. And limiting myself to second hand shopping might have made me an even more excited consumer because now when I find something really good at a second hand store I feel like I've made a major accomplishment. It's the thrill of the search! Being the child of a museum curator and archivist has given me the interest in pawing through the remnants of other peoples lives to piece together a glimpse of their personalities. I suppose my brief stint in archaeology was fitting as well. Digging through stacks of used stuff is almost as fun as slowly scraping away layers of soil to expose the day-to-day realities of former civilizations. Or perhaps more fun, for some.

Last week SteadyJ and I headed to Goodwill to procure some sweet threads for an 80s themed Birthday Party. In the first 10 minutes he found some killer acid wash jeans and I found perhaps the most hideous/awesome lavender polyester pant suit with a sort of disco meets the Golden Girls vibe. They proved successful garb for the party, in fact, I would go on to say that we got more double takes than any other couple in the place. Sidenote: If you ever have the chance to attend the 80s Video Dance Attack at the Crystal Ballroom in Portland, OR, you should do it.

Our Goodwill experience wasn't just successful because of the costume finds - of course we had to browse for a few minutes! I was walking through the kitchen items when I noticed a low shelf full of canning jars. Now, Goodwill probably has these all the time, but I hardly have given them much notice in the past. But this time I spotted some of the really old Ball and Atlas wire bail canning jars with the glass lids. Major score! I love these old jars! Here is A Brief History of the Home Canning Jar found on the pickyourown.org website:

Clamped Glass-Lid Jars (Lightning Jars)

In 1882, Henry William Putnam of Bennington, Vermont, invented a fruit jar that used a glass lid and a metal clamp to hold the lid in place. These "Lightning jars" became popular because no metal (which could rust, breaking the seal or contaminating the food) contacted the food and the metal clamps made the lids themselves easier to seal and remove (hence the "Lightning" name) . There were many similar glass lid and wire-clamp jars produced for home canning all the way into the 1960s. Many can still be seen in garage sales, flea markets and on specialty food jars today.

Well hot damn. The glass jars I got could range in age from 50 to 100 years old given that they have patent dates of 1908 on them. I'm really not sure how old they are. There was a bit of rust on the bailing wires, but I took them off and hit them with some steel wool and now they are looking sharp! For three jars I paid about $7, which isn't bad for jars that will probably last my entire life!

This past November I was visiting some family friends in Vancouver, BC and I had a great conversation with my mom's best buddy Linda about disposable life styles. Linda and her husband have been working to consume less over the past few years, downsizing their life from a house to an apartment and selling one car along the way. Their son, Evan, has been working to start his own business helping people make their urban homes sustainable. The interesting thing that came out of our conversation is that basically, we all should be living more like our great-grandparents did in order to have sustainable lifestyles. Growing a lot of our own food and preserving it, collecting our rain water, entertaining ourselves at home, listening to the radio as opposed to spending a lot of time online (ironic for a blogger to say, I know), and truly weighing the importance of use of time and money in relation to wants versus needs. It would be ignorant for me to sit here and glorify the hard lives that made most of my great grandparents flee their homelands and seek the opportunities in the United States. The point I'm trying to make is that I think past generations gave a lot more thought to their consumption, mainly because they had to in order to survive. And my guess is that glass canning jars just like my Goodwill finds were seen as valuable tools to their sustainable survival.

I've got a plan/ner

I've been a bit delayed in posting given a hectic schedule over the past two weeks! But my plan to buy nothing new is still going strong. I've had a few instances of "oh crap, I really want that new (fill in the blank)", but I've so far been able to deter myself by remembering that my sister doubted my ability to do this, and overcoming someones doubt is a pretty good motivator! Thanks Dor!

Normally at the end of the year I take a quick trip to Dollar Tree, a pretty spectacular dollar store in Oregon, and pick up a planner for the coming year. But this year it just didn't happen and come January 1st, I was without planner and had limited myself to buying nothing new. After a few days I asking around if anyone had gotten a free planner in the mail, and getting no where, I noticed the 2010 calendar that my alma mater sent......could it work as a day planner? Yes! I don't anticipate needing more than a blank square with a date attached to write in this year (last year my days were broken into half hour increments) so a calendar should work fine.

The only thing strange about using a wall calendar as a day planner is the fact that it looks a bit odd. And this brings up an interesting point - why do we limit the functionality of items because we perceive them to be useful in only one way? Am I the only person that gets incredibly excited when an item has multiple uses? Has anyone else noticed that most items produced for common usage today (not including common electronic devices) tend to have a single specified use? I guess this is supposed to make our lives easier. Except I think it just makes a ton of clutter and plastic crap heading to landfills. Recently while perusing some camping supplies, I noticed the worlds smallest salt and pepper shakers for sale, made of plastic and touted to be water proof and spill proof. Um, ok. I thought of about a million things that could be used in place of S+P shakers while on a camping trip.....any plastic bags, old film canisters, contact lens cases, small plastic spice jars, plastic extract bottles, etc. Come on people! Put on your creative hats!

Ok, back to the calendar turned planner....

Every year I make a collage cover for my planner out of images from magazines and phrases that should inspire me to work toward the goals of my coming year. This was the perfect way to disguise my wall calender as a planner. I started by making a cover for my calendar out of a brown paper grocery bag (high school book cover style).

Next, I took the cover off the calendar, opened it up to expose the front and back cover and arranged an assortment of magazine images, photos from past trips, and labels on the paper. When I got things how I wanted them, I used Mod Podge to glue the collage items into place. To keep things a big water resistant, and to guard from the inevitable planner abuse that will occur over the next year, after the Mod Podge dried, I covered the collage with clear packing tape.

Here's what I came up with (the cover is the side with the prayer flags and polar bear) :

I've got prayer flags to keep me thinking of the greater good, a photo of a sunset from a great camping trip to SinkyOne State Park in CA, a mini map of Ireland to remind me to get there this year, an Ethiopian beer label from a great dinner with a great friend, Frida to keep the art in my life, record albums for music, a cedar waxwing-a bird that looms large in my life, and a few other little things to inspire my day-to-day life.

You don't really notice the fact that this is a wall calendar until it gets opened up. And I actually find it quite amusing to open, especially because some of my former professors, and current professional colleagues are profiled on the pages. I've gotten to say howdy to Shaik, the director of International Programs, and look at an awesome study abroad photo each day this January!

She's Crafty

I managed to escape office gift giving before the holidays with a well timed vacation, but coming back I knew I’d have to gift my colleagues with some sort of token of my esteem and well wishes. What do you give when you are opposed to giving clutter? Baked goods. But baking for an office of 15 people with 15 different aversions, “ I don’t like fruit and chocolate combined” and assorted allergies took the fun out of my plan.

I decided to focus my office gift giving on acknowledging the exciting new year – 2010 (which I refer to as THE FUTURE because I feel like I’m a Jetson each time I write it). Normally I would head to the craft store for inspiration, and spend a small fortune on some cool new art project I could slave over for a few days. But this time I decide to consult my closet first. This is where I admit something: I AM AN ART AND CRAFT SUPPLY ADDICT. In my closet are five plastic tubs of art supplies ranging from a 120 count box of Crayolas to to metal etching tools. These tubs can’t even contain the silk screens under my bed, or my bag of fabric and sewing supplies and thousands of glass beads boxed under my bed. Walking into art supply stores makes me flutter with excitement. So many aisles of creative potential! Shortly before Christmas I discovered the amazing art supply store at the University of Oregon, and fell in love with these Enkaustikos Hot Cakes: http://www.encausticpaints.com/ which look like the coolest things ever and would really improve my current encausitic technique of melting crayons in a pie tin on a hot burner in the kitchen. Alas, I will have to wait a year. And by that time I’ll probably have forgotten they even exist. Hmm. All of this wax thought makes me wonder, “Where is my candle mould?”

Back to my gift giving plan. A quick survey of my art supplies (see photo) made me realize that I should make something for my coworkers. I decided to make everyone little 4x6 inch colored paper Goal Reminders for 2010. On each paper I used colored marker to write 2010 and then bedazzled it with glitter (I love sparkly things). I bought this particular set of awesome glitter a few years ago at The Accidental Bookmaker, the store of Green Heron Book Arts in Forest Grove http://www.greenheronbookkits.com/

On the back of each card, I wrote a personal message to my colleagues and then provided the following instructions:

Step 1: On the bottom of this paper, write something that you would like to leave behind in 2009. (an example would be, “worrying about things I can’t control, eating too much fat, being addicted to televistion, etc.”)

Step 2: Cut off what you have written and burn it (I gave each person a match – who doesn’t like to burn things?)

Step 3: On the bottom front of the page, write something you would like to embrace or welcome into your life in 2010 (example: Good vibes, positive thoughts, eating healthy, spending more time with family, etc).

Step 4: Keep as a reminder of your goal.

I rolled each Goal Reminder up and tied it in place with a strike anywhere match and some old embroidery thread (because I’m probably not going to finish those friendship bracelets I started in the 7^th grade.)

My colleagues received their Goal Reminders in their mail boxes today. I thought they might think I'm a weirdo for giving them an unorthodox gift and providing them with a match at work. What if one was a secret pyromaniac? But so far I've received nothing but good response and those who have mentioned the gift seem excited to take time to think about potential changes they'd like in their lives...and the fact that they have an excuse to play with fire.

In other news, I need a day planner. And normally I would go to DollarTree and pick it up. But those days are gone. What to do? Time to get thinking....

Buy Buy!

Consumption is as consumption does. It's stupid. But can it be avoided? Sort of. I am taking my first stab at altering my consumeristic lifestyle by giving up my penchant for shiny new things that have never been touched by another hand for one year. The initial spark of this project came to mind a few months ago when I abandoned use of plastic food storage containers and decided to instead use the plethora of glass jars accumulating in my cupboard. Next came a decision to never ever purchase gift wrap again for the rest of my life (gift wrap = waste and $). I have decided to take things a lot further and not purchase any new stuff for an entire year. Well, ok, I will purchase new food. And new hygiene items - who wants used TP? But everything else will either be borrowed, bought second hand or bartered for. Instead of heading to the mall to buy new clothes or shoes, I'll be scouring Craigs List, second hand shops, attempting to trade my skills for used items, or asking my vast network to borrow the things I need. More than anything, I anticipate this project influencing how I see what I "need" versus what I "want".