Category: low-footprint living

Robin Greenfield’s recent Facebook post, showing his all-natural, handmade-by-him capsule wardrobe of 18 pieces, drew the expected ooohs and ahhhs from many of us who have been following him for years.

Although my approach is different, I respect Rob’s approach, and admire the well-thought-out background information that he supplies for all of his choices. If you want detailed FAQs about an eco lifestyle, I recommend you bookmark Rob’s website.

An interesting plot-twist happened when someone shared Rob’s post in the Non-Consumer Advocate (a private FB group).

Most of the people commenting on the shared post were not previously familiar with Rob and his work. Accordingly, people were understandably put off by what came across to them as a request for some internet stranger to hand-knit a sweater for him for free.

What he was saying, though, is that he could not afford to pay the $500 that a hand-knit sweater would cost (he already has the yarn), but that he is willing to barter services.

When he posted that on his own page, the audience mostly understood the background. But when it was shared in a group, a bunch of strangers were unfamiliar with the background.

In response to the post on his own page, he actually got several offers to knit a sweater for free. Many people felt that he had contributed greatly to their own well-being as well as to the planet, so for these people, the request did not feel out of line.

In the NCA group, on the other hand, the post came across to many as indicating entitlement and privilege.

I can certainly see both sides of this. $500 is actually a very conservative estimate, given that many experienced knitters said a sweater would take them 60 hours to make. But, given that a lot of us are engaged in an ongoing effort to weave a parallel economy that is independent of the consumers money economy, there is an invitation to consider bartering.

A couple of people provided a live demo of this, when one person says they would be glad to trade some of their fresh eggs and other farm produce for a handmade item that another person produced. The fact that this felt OK and fair to both people is an indicator that we are seeing the inherent value of our work, independent of the monetary prices defined by the capitalist/consumerist financial economy.

I have no doubt that Rob will get his sweater, and that he will provide great value in exchange one way or the other.

My personal preference would be to find a wool sweater at a secondhand shop, or, as so often happens, a sweater that is literally being thrown away. But Rob has his carefully-thought-out reasons for pursuing an all-handmade wardrobe.

My personal wardrobe approach, in general, is to look to the waste stream first. Thrift stores, spoils of decluttering gigs, and so on. Also, for me, clothing made of synthetic fabrics that will not break down as easily in landfill are the top choice. Since clothes made of synthetic fiber will not as easily break down in landfill, I feel that we do the planet a service by wearing these clothes down to rags. (Literally! As I have often mentioned, as my clothing wears out, I down-cycle it into a “cascading hierarchy of household rags”). That said, I fully understand the attraction of natural fibers.

So vast is the waste-stream of clothing, that a person could potentially have a vast wardrobe even just doing waste-stream diversion, possibly embellished with their own sewing and embroidery skills. Thus even the person who craves a lot of variety and novelty in their wardrobe can indulge their craving in a low-footprint way.

Another topic that came up when Rob’s post got shared in the NCA group was the idea that such a wardrobe made a person look homeless, and would never fly in the corporate work culture.

But, it’s easy to tailor and embellish clothing so that it looks appropriate for different settings. And, some rather famous personages been known for basically wearing the same clothes every day — a uniform, in essence.

Many people have pointed out over the years that Rob can afford to live his unusual lifestyle because he doesn’t have a family to support or whatever. Rob makes no bones about that; he has written extensively acknowledging his privilege.

And, as I see it, it’s precisely those of us who can afford to live an alternative life (those of us who don’t have a “job” to lose; who work at the margins; or who might have a little financial leeway etc.) who need to be doing so and showing the way. As more of us outliers are living our our “alternative” lifestyles and sharing our tips and successes, we pave the way to make it easier and more feasible for others to do so.

Right now, many people would suffer financially — and also be socially ostracized — for trying to wear a very limited handmade capsule wardrobe to work. But, norms change over time, and we can help shift the norms.

Here are some ways I’ve noticed, most of which I have tried myself, of making a lower-footprint wardrobe.

• Very limited number of high-end basic pieces. Advantage: looks classy. Disadvantage: expensive.

• Very limited number of basic pieces, bargain-brand version. Advantage: looks classy but for less money. Disadvantage: wears out quickly; also fast fashion is bad for the planet.

• Very limited number of basic pieces, thrift-shop or landfill diversion diversion. Advantage: earth friendly, and inexpensive or free. Disadvantage: harder to serendipitously find pieces that go together.

• This one is for people who really can’t stand to have a limited wardrobe. For these folks I would recommend having as many clothes & shoes as you want, but mostly rescue them from the waste stream, and the rest you get from thrift shops. Advantage: free or cheap, and much more planet friendly than having a huge wardrobe of newly store-bought closed. Disadvantage: having a huge wardrobe is an organizational burden, and you will end up with clothes that are forgotten or damaged or moldy from being crammed in closets and such. One way to mitigate this downfall is to periodically sift through your wardrobe and allow things you’re not using to flow back into the thrift stream/waste stream as treasure for someone else to discover.

• Very limited number of basic pieces, accessorized with (for example) scarves and earrings. This is the approach I am taking for the past few years. Almost all of my wardrobe is now rescued from the waste stream, and I then do aftermarket things with needle and thread. And, I make a variety of scarves and have a good number of earrings. I have necklaces too but not as many necklaces.

There’s an “OK Boomer”-worthy post going around, sharing cranky-toned Grandma advice about household conservation.

(Late-edge Boomer here): My parents and grandparents taught us all of these things growing up. But without the mean, shaming voice.

So as a result, we learned that we had a lot of choice and could save a lot of money. And we carried that practical knowledge into adulthood. By needing less money, we reduce the amount of leverage that a boss etc has over us.

The more economically/financially independent we are; the less dependent we are on centralized conveniences and electric appliances — the less anyone can force us to stick with toxic jobs, living situations, relationships, or other not-healthy gigs.

Also, there is a direct connection between fossil-fuel dependency (and dependency on consumption in general) and supporting war; propping up fascist regimes.

Plus, line-dried laundry just smells good. And, a weird but true fact I’ve noticed in my various side gigs cleaning houses over the years, having a washer + dryer just seems to induce some people to have more clothes and do laundry more often. I know it doesn’t make sense but I’ve seen it repeatedly.

The tone and manner in which something is delivered makes all the difference. And for what it’s worth, if you hear Boomers still saying this, then a lot of them are going against this advice — because a lot of my fellow Boomers are now totally dependent on AC and all that other stuff mentioned in the post.

PS. One thing I discovered almost 20 years ago is that since I don’t use air conditioning, I don’t need hot showers in the summer. And that led to not needing hot showers in the winter (since I live in a climate of mild winters).

Some seemingly minor but actually major things I would like us to free ourselves of. List is ongoing and in no particular order.

1) Bottled water

Seriously, there should be a special place in hell for an industry that has:

1) systematically undermined public trust in the public water system;
2) undermined the political will to clean up the public water supply where necessary;
3) drained springs and aquifers;
4) created endless mountains of junk plastic; and
5) convinced the most economically vulnerable households that they need to buy its product.

#RefuseBottledWater — Our resistance is more powerful than we think.

BTW if you haven’t already, Google to find all kinds of studies showing that the quality of bottled water is not significantly different from the quality of tapwater. Same with the taste, in blind taste tests.

2) Spending hours pulling “weeds”

I’m only 61 and already my back and shoulders protest loudly, so when I see people 15-20 years older than me spending hours pulling weeds, I am torn between being envious of their fitness, and wanting to save them from this drudge work. There are many ways to put an end to this drudge work.

1) Learn the names and attributes of the so-called “weeds”; many are free food and medicine, as well as supporting butterflies and other

2) Grow your desired plants closer together. Nature abhors a vacuum; she doesn’t plant plants with big areas of mulch in between. Neither should we.

3) When the occasional unwanted plants spring up, just cut them to the ground with scissors. This is called “chop and drop.” The cut vegetation nourishes the surrounding plants, and the root that remains in the soil supports the teeming microbial life of the soil and helps prevent erosion. Healthy soil absorbs more stormwater and acts as a filter.

These are three abbreviations I just made up this morning, in the course of going about some domestic kaizen.

The abbreviations stand for:

Just What I Want; Not Good Enough; Barely Good Enough

I have noticed out there in the world, observing people, that oftentimes, the JWIW thing degrades rather quickly into the NGE thing.

This, I believe, is due to a combination of two things:

• the creeping dissatisfaction instilled in us by industrial capitalist consumerist society / supremacy culture;

• and also, on a positive note, the natural human urge to engineer and improve upon things.

So, when making something, or setting up a process or system in my household, I have taken to starting with a BGE version. (This is analogous to the business concept of MVP, Minimum Viable Product.)

And, using the BGE version, I then make incremental improvements over time as I feel drawn to.

This approach has the advantage of radically reducing cost and labor. It also fosters creativity and resourcefulness, as opposed to feeding into that old familiar creeping dissatisfaction.

As always, I welcome your thoughts! If you have tried something like this, or if you have noticed this kind of thinking pattern, how is it going for you?

A special thank-you to my fellow environmentalists who have undertaken longterm, voluntary radical reduction of gasoline, electricity, water usage, travel, and unnecessary purchases. #ResettingTheNorms #DeepGreenTroops

Lots of people are discovering the joys and virtues of decluttering. And I totally applaud that! Passing on your unwanted stuff to someone who has immediate use for it is definitely a wonderful thing – for you, for them, and for the planet!

But, there are some irresponsible decluttering behaviors that are undermining the social and ecological good we’re trying to do.

One is thinking that disaster victims, people in less-well-off countries, and so on automatically want our old clothes. We need to pay attention to the wish-lists of aid organizations, and not send things they are not looking for. Just because our closets are bursting doesn’t give us an excuse to offload our unwanted junk onto other people.

Same with books, or anything else. We accumulated our clutter; no one forced us to. We need to do due diligence to distribute it responsibly.

Don’t be one of the people who, for example, contribute to the ugly phenomenon of huge bales of raggedy clothing that are getting sent to African countries. Of course people don’t want garments that are stained, ripped, and otherwise disgusting.

Sometimes, the best destination for clutter is literally our own backyard. I routinely compost books and clothing that are too far gone to be of use to people. (As I have written in my book and elsewhere on this blog, at our house clothing and other fabric goes through a cascading hierarchy of household rags before finally getting composted, or turned into trellis-tying strips, or other downcycle uses.)

Decluttering feels really good. Once you have your stuff in a box, there’s this strong urge to just dump it and be free. But putting your clutter onto other people isn’t right.

Today I made a post on my neighborhood Facebook group, asking people to stop using our Little Free Library as a bulk drop-off spot:

Please do not use the Little Free Library as a dumping ground. I have limited space in my library and it’s not kind to dump a bunch of books if the library is full. Now I have to recycle or throw away your books.

And actually, there’s even an extra layer of difficulty, because you drop about 50 or 100 pounds of books off, so unless you are Hercules, you are obviously coming into the neighborhood by car.

When you guys do this, I get to try to redistribute the excess books on foot. Or I get to feel guilty about dumping them in the trash.

Fortunately there is a church right down the street, so I usually just hand-carry the excess books there. But why should I have to do this, when you are in a car, and you could’ve dropped them off at a thrift shop???

Other donation destinations, if you have too many books to fit on the Little Free Library shelves, include the public library. The public library has an ongoing book sale and will take your books and sort out which ones are sellable. Proceeds go to the public library, always a wonderful cause!

Also: You are blocking the sidewalk when you dump bags of books on the sidewalk. The sidewalk-using public deserves more respect than that.

And, you are leaving the books out exposed to weather when you dump books instead of putting them inside the shelves. Books deserve more respect than that.

Glad you feel good about decluttering your bookshelf, but please respect that the library is a Community asset.

We are always happy to see people bring books. With a caveat: Any books beyond what will fit on the shelves, please do not leave them here.

Running a library is a delight, but it is really quite a lot of work, surprisingly so. Please don’t make it more work than it needs to be!

— Your friendly but weary librarian, Harvey Ave Little Free Library, charter #9278 (just celebrated our 11th anniversary!!)

For more information about little free libraries, and how you can start one in your neighborhood, please visit the little free library website www.littlefreelibrary.org
I am also always available to help people start little free libraries in their own neighborhood.

PS. Sharing is caring! Please spread the word about not using little free libraries as a bulk dropoff station.

(Part of me was saying to myself, well at least people seem to have progressed; they’re not dropping off boxes of dented cans of beans anymore. But maybe I shouldn’t say that out loud; I might jinx myself …)

Disposing of unwanted stuff responsibly, by finding people and organizations who can truly use it and who want it, is a beautiful experience.

Another dimension of decluttering we want to be cautious about is tossing old things that represent unfulfilled goals, dreams, and aspirations.

For example, a few years back, I bought a huge collection of beads from someone who had once had a bead store. It was one of my dreams at the time to basically have a bead store’s worth of beads. And to be making all kinds of beautiful creations with them. And teaching various beading workshops and so on.

But that particular aspiration has sort of fallen by the wayside, as I have gotten more deeply into writing and other types of work. However, to just dump the beads on someone without first ascertaining that the person is truly excited and eager to have them, would be extremely disrespectful.

But, there’s even more to it. In my case, I still do have some aspirations to do some kind of projects with the beads. Possibly little workshops for the community, for nonprofit organizations, nursing homes, homeless shelter?

And, I’m still occasionally enjoying making a creation here and there for my own use as well, or for a gift for a friend. So, simply donating the collection in bulk to the makerspace of the library, to a theater, or to someone else who might want it, would not quite yet be appropriate. It may become so, at some point down the road. But being a responsible declutterer means being loyal to my own past intentions too. (It would be different if I were completely decided that I was totally done with beads. Then, a different approach would be called for.)

One thing I’m having a blast with the past few years is my collection of sewing supplies which comes from multiple generations of women in my family. I can see in the collection the tendencies that my ancestors share in common with me. Always wanting to make sure we have enough of a certain color of zipper, size of needle, etc.

Over time, I have been using the supplies steadily. And really enjoying what I’ve been making. Not only what I’ve been making, but the act of using up these good-quality materials (such as packets and packets of bias tape, all different colors and widths), and using the needles and other tools some of which came to me still in their original packaging.

There is a rather large collection of zippers, and I may still donate some to the craft section of a good thrift store. I also might not need the several hundred tapestry needles I seem to have. On the other hand, needles don’t take up very much space …

In part one of this post, I gave the moral and ecological reasons why we should adopt voluntary radical reduction. Or what I call a deep green lifestyle, or low-footprint living.

Here, I will give the secret juice that keeps me doing it. Actually, it shouldn’t be such a secret anymore since I have been talking about it for decades, as are many others who are on a voluntary thrift path.

But, many of my fellow environmentalists still insist on perceiving me as somehow virtuous and making so many sacrifices, so I need to try again here to put that harmful myth to rest.

The truth — what some of you keep missing, that I have been trying to tell you for the better part of two decades now — is that I get IMMENSE personal benefits from my voluntary radical reduction.

And all others I know of who are on the same path, living their own version of a “voluntary radical reduction” lifestyle, also consistently report that they are getting immense intrinsic personal benefits.

Yes, there are some aspects that might technically be considered sacrifices, but the sacrifice aspect is so tiny in comparison with the benefits that it’s almost misleading to even bring it up.

I don’t know if it’s just not getting through to you, or if you are willfully misunderstanding, out of fear that you will somehow be trapped if you try this voluntary radical reduction lifestyle. All I can say at this point is you need to try it yourself to believe how great it is.

Because if, after all this time, you are still looking at me and thinking I am somehow deprived or suffering or a martyr or “so good” or “so virtuous” or “so admirable” (words typically spoken in wistful tones, accompanied by wrung hands and dewy manga-character eyes), you are really not paying attention!

The truth is, I have way, way too much fun, and way, way too much pleasure; more than any human being should be allowed to have(according to the dour, lockdown standpoint of our consumer capitalist society). I mean, I really really have a blast in life. And a blessed life! Everyone else I know who’s embarked on their own version of this path would say the same.

My book and this blog, and my personalized talks and workshops, can help you craft your own personalized version of a “voluntary radical reduction” lifestyle. And once you get into it, it is self-reinforcing because YOU will be getting so many personal benefits. And you will start getting them immediately.

I don’t know how many times I will have to repeat that for some of you to get it, but I will keep repeating it as long I need to. 

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General note: This blog presents topics as they occur to me. Typically in rambling fashion. If you would prefer a more focused, organized document, read my book DEEP GREEN. It’s available to read for free on this site. There are also, at any given time, usually a few print copies available as well. I believe I still have 15 or so copies left from my last micro print run. DEEP GREEN book is available exclusively by ordering direct through me.

Also, I am available to give talks for your neighborhood association, community, church, club, or other group. My talks are by Zoom or equivalent, so I’m available to you wherever you’re located. For more information, click on “talks and appearances” in the menu for this site. Contact me and we’ll set a date!