Over the years i’ve become more and more of what i like to call “a mindful shopper.” It started years ago when Emily was just a tot, buying organic food as much as i could afford, using butter instead of margarine or spread, buying locally made bread instead of the fluff-stuff from the grocery store. Then it was trying to avoid GMOs, so that meant either buying organic or at least choosing the brands that were specifically labeled “non-gmo.” Then i found out so much of our chocolate (and other food) is made by child and/or slave labor, so i started shopping with that issue in mind. At about the same time, there were reports coming out that companies like Starbucks and Kraft (under the Senomyx company) were using aborted fetal tissue in their research & development, so we started boycotting those companies. (It wasn’t long before i read an article that said Starbucks had cut the ties with Senomyx, so i went back to patronizing them. Guess i was wrong.) So, while still trying to live on a very limited budget, i did what i could to make sure i was feeding and supplying my family with products that were healthy as well as not adding to the oppression of others around the world.
Last week i made the statement that i couldn’t understand what all the frenzy was about concerning this latest revelation that Planned Parenthood has been selling dead baby parts to a number of companies, because i couldn’t get past the knowledge that the babies are being murdered in the first place. I’m sure i inadvertently gave the impression that i didn’t care about what was being done with these babies after they are mercilessly and brutally ripped from their mother’s womb and and then dismembered and shipped off to be done who-knows-what with (seriously, do we really know the full extent to which they use the dead baby parts?).
In fact, i have been in shock and unable to get this off my mind. I stated in my post that i would be referring to the list of 38 (or 40, or 41, or 77, whichever it is) companies that support PP. Indeed, that very day and the next couple of days i discovered that many of my family’s personal care and household products are, in fact, made by these very companies that support PP. Unilever makes our Tresemme hair gel & mousse and our Caress & Dove body washes. Johnson & Johnson makes my Aveeno cleanser, moisturizer and shampoo. I never buy anything but Charmin bath tissue, but yesterday i discovered that Charmin is made by Proctor & Gamble.
So a few days ago i went to Ulta, a major beauty supply chain store, to see what more ethical options there were. It was nothing but deflating and discouraging. I was focused that day on just finding a new face cleanser because i was nearly out, and almost every cleanser brand i picked up was made by Unilever or Johnson & Johnson. Even Burt”s Bees - ah, surely Burt”s Bees will be safe - is a subsidiary of Clorox (also on the list of PP donors)!
So my point in all this is, i am astounded and overwhelmed how wide-spread and far-reaching these PP “business” practices are. And being the sort of analyzer who naturally looks at the big picture, i’ve spent a lot of time trying to figure out how we got here, as a nation, a society, where we can’t even buy normal everyday, non-hoity-toity products from companies without indirectly supporting an organization that murders babies and then sells their body parts. How did we get to this place? No doubt there are many factors, but the one i keep coming back to is that we as a society are too materialistic, consumeristic, greedy, self-indulgent. I know the same could be said for every society since the beginning of time and that’s true, but seriously? Has there ever been a time in history comparable to today? Can you seriously and honestly look at where we are today and say that it’s the same as always? A culture or society or generation where nearly every single person has such an extreme sense of entitlement?
We want things at the cheapest price possible so that we can have as many things as possible.
How often do we go to whatever store and see things that are new or on sale or clearance and just buy them without thinking about where they came from or what went into making them.
We’ve got to change that mentality. What does it take to get by? What is the minimum? For instance, do i really need to have 5000 recipes in 50 different cookbooks and magazines in order to adequately feed my family of 4? Because my habit is to go through some of my favorite-but-not-used-very-often cookbooks looking for Great Ideas for Something Different, make my shopping list based upon said ideas, buy necessary ingredients, then after several days i can’t even remember what recipe i bought that wheat bran/oat bran/rice wine vinegar/red wine vinegar for.
There is already so much material written about our spending-storing-hoarding-wasting-polluting habits, so i’ll not waste much time addressing it except to say, this is where it’s gotten us. And it’s not just this latest issue with PP that’s at stake here. It’s the slave-trade industry, it’s GMOs, it’s so many other social issues.
What i know is, until last week, i was a mindful shopper trying to make sure my dollars were being spent to bless and not oppress others, and now, after this revelation, i’m thinking that i’m just flat buying too much stuff. And our family doesn’t even buy nearly as much stuff as the average Western family because we’ve purposely tried to live simply, without accumulating much stuff, so we’d be ready to go whenever God called us to something else. We live in an apartment, by choice. Every single piece of furniture we own was a hand-me-down with the exception of my cedar chest, and that was my high school graduation present from my parents, made by my classmate, Steve Ball, as a project for his shop class. We also bought 3 pieces from a thrift store/consignment store/friend-of-a-friend; the rest were given to us. The majority of the clothes in our closets come from second-hand shops. And still, i am now thinking that we, our family, just need to radically put a plug on buying stuff.
I have no idea yet how i’m actually going to carry this out. For now it’ll be a little bit easier just because we happen to already be moving out of our apartment by the end of August. My plan already was to spend next week gathering every. single. thing. into one area - the living & dining area - sort it all into categories (decor, books, kitchen, etc.), figure out what i don’t have to have anymore and how to bless someone else with it (or throw it away if it’s not useable), then box and store what’s left till we get back from our trip. One thing i don’t want to do is get rid of something thinking that it’ll be easier to just replace it when we get moved. That’s defeating the goal of buying less stuff. But i also don’t want to have to move and store a whole bunch of stuff, so it’s tricky.
But here’s what i do know: something has to change. HUGE changes. We as a family cannot go on buying/accumulating/storing/moving/wasting/rinse & repeat all until we die. We can’t. There is now too much at stake. Unborn babies lives. Slave children’s lives. Oppressed women’s lives. The working poor’s lives. This is going to take lots of time to research and figure out, and time is something i don’t have much of right now with moving/getting Emily moved back to college/getting ready for our trip. But we need to start by buying fewer things.
I’m hoping more people will do likewise. We need to wake up and affirm to the world that abortion is not ok. The abortion industry has got to go. And maybe you have other ideas for bucking the system. It’d be fun to share ideas of what’s working and what’s not. I would love to hear them.
