5.25.2009

spartan spring city


i am coming off a great weekend filled with reminders of what abundance comes with simplicity.

me and mine spent a good portion of the weekend with my dad at his little homestead in spring city, which is a small central utah town about 2 hours away from salt lake, and one of the most historically preserved pioneer (and mormon pioneer) towns in the state. it is a gorgeous spot, full of historic architecture couched in scandinavian building traditions and craftsmanship. the town is nestled underneath dramatic mountains and surrounded by green pastures, turkey farms, and rodeo grounds. people down there stop "work" during the deer hunt. they still have a drive in theater in mt pleasant, the nearest "big" town. the whole area is a throwback to simpler, agrarian times and spring city has no physical evidence of commerce other than a single 2 pump gas station. there are no billboards and no golden arches. it feels pure and like i said, simpler.

my dad has had his 4 room farmhouse for nearly 15 years and in that time he's never had a television down there. this is a decision i applaud, though i'd be lying if i didn't admit to fiending for a dvd after the kids go to sleep, but the reason for it, as my dad has so eloquently explained, is so you can hear the hoot of the owl in the elm above the house or have a reason to go out with the telescope and try to find orion's belt, or simply find your head hitting the pillow at 9pm instead of midnight. it forces a change in routine and pace and the sense for what is entertaining.

i really think it helps to avoid the normalcy of your day to day if you want to gain perspective. i guess that is why vacations are so damn invigorating and needed. we all need a break from our own self imposed schedules and our own self imposed needs. obviously in a place like spring city not having the temptations of technology (no dishwasher or microwave either) and commerce make it easy to slow down and simplify, but i think it is good to be reminded that we can all do this occasionally in our own homes. take a vacation from your dishwasher and see what conversations may ensue while standing at the sink washing and drying dishes with your spouse. go out in your backyard or on your roof top and take a look at the stars instead of watching the 10:00 news. next time you just need a couple things from the grocery store, take a walk there instead of driving, who knows what you may see on the way there?

plus swearing things off, even if it is just for a night or two, makes the things you already have shine with a newfound luster. when we came back home yesterday, everybody gravitated to their own peculiar poison...jaren turned on his computer, i threw in a load of wash and took a hot shower, and the kids acted like it was christmas running around in the playroom fondling all their favorite toys. we're home.

(Photo A: Beautiful Spring City Vista
Photo B: Cleo feeding the famous Peanut Butter Chip 1 of the 5 lbs of carrots she fed him over the weekend!)

5.20.2009

Credit cards proudly NOT accepted here...


"By the end of 2007 Americans carried $937 billion in credit card debt - up $90 billion from 2006 according to CardTrak. The Federal Reserve reports that in just the first six weeks of 2008 consumers' revolving credit debt carried over month to month increased $68 billion."

I got my first credit card when I was 18 years old. I was a freshman in college and I still remember the really sweet looking woman at a folding table explaining to me that it didn't matter that I was a student and not currently employed, that establishing my credit and having a "safety net" for emergency expenses was reason enough to have a credit card. Her advice was probably sound for someone who understood the severity of monthly APR rates and finances charges, but I certainly didn't. And fairly quickly I used that card for "emergency expenses" like a road trip with friends up to Vancouver, BC and a whole slough of new clothes from the Bellis Fair Mall. It felt like a bonanza to have someone give me all that accessibility to money.

The debt I accrued on the card in the 6 months or so it took me to max out the $800 limit stuck with me the rest of my college career and with all the added interest probably ended up costing me thousands in the end. I wish I could say I learned my lesson and never took out another credit card, or that I maintain a card just for emergencies but in the ensuing 15 years I've gone through more cycles of debt and repayment than I care to mention. In my marriage we've gone through years of being debt free and many years of being saddled with big credit card payments. We've done balance transfers and taken people up on the "0% until..." offers all in attempts to juggle payments and outsmart those sometimes astronomical charages and rates.

I know that no one holds a gun to America's head and says spend money on this card or else!, but there really is a lot to be angry at credit card companies for. They have facilitated a culture of instant gratification in under 25 years, since credit cards have only been in widespread use since the early 1980's. The reason for the sudden increase was the perfect storm, it seems, between the rise in standard of living which gave everybody more personal income, the increased availability of consumer goods and the new and improved prowess of marketers to shape consumer desires, but also the fact that the credit card companies found a giant loophole in the law that allowed them freedom from government regulations on controlled national interest rates simply by relocating to states like South Dakota and Delware that had repealed their anti-usury laws (which maintained a set interest rate.) This meant that credit card companies could suddenly make ALOT more money (credit cards are the most profitable part of the banking industry) and more and more companies started springing up and preying on consumers. I say prey because another aspect of the giant loophole is that credit card companies suddenly had carte blanche to control the way the game is played. They can change their terms without regard to the consumer and with no warning. Their interest rates remain unregulated and they can make unreasonable rules such as doubling a consumer's interest rate overnight for being hours late on one payment.

The cards are heavily stacked in favor of the big credit companies and for that reason I am saying a big thank you to Obama and our lovely democratic congress for passing legislation today to begin to hold the credit card industry accountable for their practices. In a nutshell the new bill will work to protect consumers by requiring credit card companies to give credit card holders 45 days notice before their rates change and by helping to prevent people under age 21 from obtaining cards so ridiculously easy. Maybe by the time Cleo is cruising around a college campus that lady at the folding table won't be lying in wait for her too.
If you are curious about the true nature of credit card companies you should check out a great piece produced by Frontline and the New York Times a few years back called Secret History of Credit Cards and happily when I just searched for it I found it is available to view for free online. Check it out at the above link. It is definitely revealing and makes you want to cut your cards up right quick.

5.16.2009

power of the purge



I've been doing some spring cleaning around here. I maintain a fairly clean ship but not a very tight one, which is my shorthand for saying I don't go very deep in my weekly cleaning sessions. Jaren and I like to joke about me being the macro cleaner and he's the micro. I do broad strokes over all surfaces and he will take something like the blender apart with a screwdriver and wipe down every single surface. (True story!) I vacuum, I mop, I dust, I "bin" the toys, but the detritus in drawers and cabinets only gets sorted a couple times a year. This past week was one of those big sorting weeks. I tackled the tool shed and under the kitchen sink. I waded through drawers of cast off receipts, coupons, and old flyers for such and such. I think paper goods are my organizational weak point. I have never found the right system that lets me keep my desk or my kitchen counter free of paper clutter. More and more I'm finding the computer and the internet to be my savior in this department, just by signing up for paperless billing and autopay, and realizing that I can always look up necessary info via Google, has saved me from stacking another thousand sheets of loose paper! Amen. But I still have a long way to go.

While doing my big cleaning purge, I've been trying to be mindful of how to dispose of the unwanted stuff. In the interest of frugality I've been listing a lot of the useable stuff on Craig's List to attempt to resell, and what I don't sell I plan to donate to a thrift store. I oh so responsibly rid myself of 20 gallons of old, curdled paint that we inherited when we moved into our house by taking it to the hazardous waste recycling center at Murray City Public Works. Cleo and I went and got spring pedicures with an old spa certificate that I'd forgotten about in my bedside table drawer.

I really believe all the hype that having less clutter and stuff around you makes you feel lighter. It frees up not just physical space but mental space as well. Just knowing I was no longer holding a spot on the closet shelf for that old wedding present I will never learn to love or use makes me sleep a little deeper. Do I really need 3 red fleece blankets, and how did I get 3 red fleece blankets again?

Why do we hold on to things? Is it a throw back from some evolutionary edge that encourages species to stockpile against long, hard winters? Even this can't possibly explain the irrational need so many Americans have to store boxes of stuff in off-site storage that may never see the light of day again. Clearly anything you can safely put in storage and forget about is not something you need any longer. I read up on the self storage business recently and learned some very interesting facts: 1 in 11 American households now owns storage space, we now have 2 billion square feet of storage units for rent in this country, most storage space is upwards of $40 a month, turning the storage business into a $200 billion/year industry and making it the fastest growing sector of commercial real estate. All I can really say to that is Yikes! And it makes me want to pledge to never need an off site storage unit to house the things I own.

This week made me realize something very clearly. Purging makes me feel empowered. It makes me feel like I know what I have. And that is a goal I'm setting for myself. I want to know intimately what I own. I don't want to find myself surprised that I have 3 things of Elmer's Glue and 2 bags of tea lights and a gift certificate to a spa from 2 years ago....I want to know what I have in every nook and cranny and to make use of these things, not just have them to have them and let them gather dust. Are you with me?