Best of 2009 blog challenge – unabashedly female

image by Ivan Walsh, Flickr

Day 18 of Gwen Bell’s Best of 2009 Challenge is to be about shopping and spending mad money.

I’m not much of a shopper. I really don’t like it much at all. I can’t spend much time in stores as the experience seems to cause me to leave running for fresh air and green scenery – and, not the green of mad money.

It’s not like I don’t like things. I like them too much. I just don’t like spending time shopping for things.

When I looked back on 2009 to reflect on where I have spent most of my mad money, I realized four things about 2009 and shopping:

1) I began the year with much more stuff than I had in 2008. My mother passed away in 2008. I found many meaningful things that belonged to Mom that I wanted to keep. I brought them home. Over the course of this year, I began to really consider what I own, and how much of it I really needed. I realized, I want to pare down consciously. I’ve got some work to do on this. It’s always been hard for me to let go of things. I seem to bring things in, without taking things out.

2) I became more conscious of the unconscious identity I had adopted (fed my our media and advertising ways) of consumer rather than citizen (shout out to Lynne Twist, author of The Soul of Money), and the effect that has on not only our planet, but our psyches.

3) I noticed I had a pattern of buying things on sale, or things that were a good bargain, rather than consciously choosing beautiful items that I feel drawn to adorn my body and home with.

4)Â I desired to spend more of my money on good, wholesome, organic food, which caused me to spend a bunch of money on food.

So, if I have to be honest about where I spend my mad money, I spent it at Whole Foods. It sounds sort of funny as I write it, but it’s so. Shopping at Whole Foods is much more peaceful and green-filled in a whole different way.

Workin’ on moving from citizenshopper to citizenshipper.

This post is part of Gwen Bell’s Best of 2009 Blog Challenge
Day 18 Shop. Online or offline, where did you spend most of your mad money this year?

bumppackage

Packaging. For the best of 2009 Blog Challenge, our prompt today is Best Packaging of 2009.

When I read this, I immediately thought of how many times I’ve cringed this year at how things are packaged and how much waste is involved. So much of the time, packaging is extraneous. We just don’t need so much of what is used to wrap things up. In fact, we just don’t need so much of what gets wrapped up in more of what we just don’t need.

As I thought about packaging for this post, I remembered back on the things I purchased, or received, that came in beautiful packaging. I’m all for beautiful, thoughtful and well-designed packing that is necessary, and hopefully, useful on its own.

Which brings me to the best packaging I encountered for 2009. Leave it to nature to provide packaging that works and is beautiful and useful, even after the gift is delivered. Our design, as women, is a breathtakingly beautiful form that clearly follows function…on so many levels. We are designed to give birth to a myriad of creations, just one of which is babies.

My daughter, the beautifully designed mom, delivered the gift, Jamison, in April.

This post is part of Gwen Bell’s Best of 2009 Blog Challenge
Day 15: Best packaging.
Did your headphones come in a sweet case? See a bottle of tea in another country that stood off the shelves?

Tag: Best of 2009 blog challenge

Citizenshopper to Citizenshipper

Nature’s Design: Beautifully Packaged