Consumers!

I promised a blog on CONSUMERISM!!! Well, now seems fitting since we are returning to the bus after six months in this apartment. What a lesson! Going from a house to a bus was a HUGE change...for a long time the whole front of the bus was stuffed with STUFF as we adjusted to what we needed and what we didn't need. To some degree this never ended. There was always this exchange of what came in the door and what went out the door. Once in the apartment, though it is truthfully not much larger than the bus, we expanded to fit our surroundings. It is amazing how much stuff you collect in just six months! I can see how useful moving frequently can be - it really forces you to purge again and again. Maybe it was the stairs here that helped me notice this, but it was hard to come into this house without dragging bags and bags of STUFF in all the time. Groceries, library books, things from storage, projects from school, un-ending bags of whatever from mom's house, etc. Again, this exchange of stuff in and out that was CONSTANT and proportionate to the size of where we are living. It is so amazing to witness your own consumerism first hand. I think of all the packaging involved in all of these things, the transportation and gas of it all, the shear stress of manipulating and managing it all. But this is the process we have committed to - viewing our excess first hand and trying to learn how to thin out. To use and need less. And, at the same time, not to participate alternately in a disposable economy where we can just throw it away and buy another when we need it. This really takes quite a bit of thought and planning. One thing we are struggling with is our storage space. Now that we are revisiting what we jammed into storage in the fall, much of it is getting given away or sold off. It takes some time for you to realize what you can and cannot live without. Slowly we come to a place that is a teetering balance of what we are holding onto in storage so we don't need to buy more of it later, versus the cost of maintaining storage space. We are not fierce coupon people like I have seen on those shows with 45 bottles of shaving cream they got for free, so luckily we aren't trying to use that stuff up. But there is the burden of useful furniture and clothes handed down so as not to require entire new wardrobes with every growth spurt.

We have also had the luxury of water and heat included in our rent for the past several months. After counting every drop that came out of our small water tank and using an electric heater sparingly on the bus, we were certainly less miserly and bigger consumers in this apartment than we probably would have been still on the bus. We just filled out a water usage chart for the last week for Girl Scouts and I am excited to revisit it once back on the bus to see the startling difference. I justify all of this by noting that this endeavor is, first off, an experiment in awareness and at least we are trying to bring awareness to our CONSUMERISM. And, secondly, we are living on so much less for part of the year that, for now, it off-sets some of our overages.

As for the bus, we are gearing up to get back in her by May 1st. We had a small hitch with the brakes on one side freezing up after such a long crazy winter. But, with the determined ingenuity of my husband (the un-ending patience of his wife:) and the help of several dial-a-friend/lifelines with mechanical questions she is on the road once again!!!

We still welcome any and all painters who would like to add to the bus mural. This photo is where the famous surf image is destined to appear :) Bus cross-country tour should begin sometime in late June so don't delay! We welcome everything from ocean life, garden activity, roof painting, sun re-coloring (too yellow - looks like a school bus!), to fun song lyrics and sayings all around the bus in sharpie! As for the name, we are currently writing a poem as a family to help us flesh it out a bit better! I will post the poem when we have finished it. Thanks for staying tuned. Check back for more pics, thoughts, and even a podcast or two :) We shall update you soon. Keep on rollin'!