may challenge

May seems like such a fresh start in so many ways. It's finally really spring (no more waking up to 30 degree weather, hopefully). I'm done with the Spring semester-- just submitted my last assignment yesterday. There's a tide turned at work as we prepare for summer and the following fall. I'm ready to plant my summer garden. Soon I'll be planning trips to the beach and to those plentiful summer weddings, instead of structuring my time around classes and other school obligations.

And so, that is why I feel that May 1 is the best time for me to start a new challenge. It is definitely going to be a challenge to me. But I endeavor to do my best to stick to the letter of the challenge, and not even to cheat in spirit. I'm giving up buying 'new' this month. Phew.

I have a tendency, it seems, to run out on a legitimate errand to buy something I need. However once I'm surrounded by aisles and aisles of beautiful new, likely manufactured in China and definitely mass produced, I lose my head. I buy things I don't need. I buy things sometimes I later realize I don't even want-- or at least wish I hadn't bought (especially if it's a good 'deal' or the thing is on sale, or I think it matches and it doesn't...).

And so, I need to develop the fortitude to end that.

Recently I discovered the thrift store. I mean, I had always kind of been on the hunt for a good one, but I finally discovered a good thrift store. And I think I love old things better than new things, anyway. I have always loved handmade things more than new things. And so it just makes sense that if I can make it myself or recycle someone else's instead of buying new, I should.

This is going to be difficult, of course. But I am challenging myself, for the month of May: No buying new things. I can buy old things, if I want to. I can make things, using old things or what I have, if I want to. But no more trips out to Target that end up costing me $60. And no more bag full of commercial junk: I am smarter than the consumer I sometimes still want to be.

Hopefully, this challenge will help me to save money, to value what I have more, to be creative in repurposing and help me finish old projects. I'm also hoping that this challenge is the beginning of helping to build new habits regarding my commercial ways and that in the end it won't be a challenge, but a new way to do things. Huzzah!

And now, off to pick up my CSA produce and help run my church garage sale...