These are posts full of tips that can help you to rethink purchases, money, and the general idea of stuff.

Cold Turkey Paper Towels & the What Questions

Why Does Being Green Cost So Much?

Organizing by Simplifying

How To Start Getting Rid of Stuff – Get Rid of “Maybe” Items

Kid specific consumer info: 

Raising Green Kids In A Commercial Culture

Kids & Shopping – How Kids Can Be Smart Consumers

My Own Little, His View of Commercials, & Tips for Talking With Your Kids About Purchases

As a parent, do you understand the impact of the need for stuff?

Eco-friendly Ways to Reward Kids

Commercials Are Everywhere

November current events at Tree Hugging Family – themes, reviews, news, and more…

[image via Buy Nothing Day]

Post from: Tree Hugging Family

As important as this topic is, many adults can’t even manage to free themselves from commercialism, so how do we also handle kids, who seem almost physically prone to want material items.

That’s what we’ll be covering this week – all week. It’s an important topic, so although, obviously, I’ll be the one posting, I want you to let me know what you think as well.

I think that the New American Dream organization sums up some major components of living with less stuff nicely. There’s more to it, of course, but to get started, here are three main points:

1. Live consciously: be more aware of what really matters in life.
2. Buy wisely: make each purchase, or decision not to purchase stand out.
3. Make a difference: use your actions and words to deal with commercialism.

Without all three components, living less commercially is less successful. Why do you think that is?

I’ll be back to kick this topic off soon.

Post from: Tree Hugging Family

My ideal answer to the question above would be, “Easy, I could just go.”

My main goal for New Years was to get rid of more stuff. Right now, I have more stuff still than I’d like. I’m not a pack rat or anything, I just do have stuff. Over 30 odd years it builds up. In my case a lot of my stuff consists of books, paper items like notes, saved articles and such, and art supplies. If Cedar and I were to pack it up and travel, we’d need a medium sized storage space (for both furniture and boxes). To me that’s too much. Lately I just want to simplify as much as possible.

I have been working on my goals though. Here’s what I’ve done so far:

Went through my files and recycled about half of my paperwork. I saved obvious stuff like tax and medical files and got rid of most of the rest.

Over the last few days I’ve been going through books. I have about 300 or so. Now I’ve set maybe 100 aside to sell at Powells Book’s. This has been really hard. I love my books, or did, I’m starting to feel confined by them though. It’s time to let go. I’m also going to give some away – the ones that are more used looking. In all I should end up about 200 books lighter.

I think I’m going to try and get my art supplies organized too – but I’m still working on a good solution. Because we homeschool, we do use them all, but I think I want less.

Lastly, soon, Cedar and I are going to go through his toys. While I’m not a pack rat, this kid sure is. He has tons of stuff.

If I bought an RV and Cedar and I took off, or wanted to backpack for a while, it would be easier with less stuff. Since that is in our future plans, it makes my goal easier to work on.

Here are some more resources about having too much stuff:

The hidden costs of too much stuff - MSN Money

Stuff Owns You

The awesome Story of Stuff video.

Two of the most influential books to me about stuff have been Your Money or Your Life and Into the Wild. I highly suggest both – although, I don’t necessarily suggest you take off for the wilds of Alaska quite like the kid in Into the Wild did, it’s still a good example of being less confined. They recently made a movie of Into the Wild – no where near as good as the book, but beautiful, here’s some musical inspiration from that flick.

So, how are your green New Year’s goals going?

Post from: Tree Hugging Family