Anti-Consumerism April or Stop Buying Shit and Shop at the Free Store

In our friday morning free store conversation we had a group of college students from the University of North Carolina join us.  They were doing community service hours for credit in classes they are taking in ethics and philosophy taught by our friend and their teacher Ellyn Ritterskamp.  So before we put them to work cleaning the store, organizing donations, and making sandwiches for lunch we got into a discussion about our consumer culture and its impact on our lives.

We started the conversation with the question about what are some of the negative effects on our lives of our consumer culture.  As there were some business majors with us we thought someone might challenge the assumption that consumerism is a bad thing.  However, no one did so we proceeded with our assumption that most of us probably have more stuff than we need and could get by with a bit less.  We all laughed when somone suggested a new free store tag line, "Stop buying shit.  Shop at the free store."

Ellyn suggested that we could do something as simple as get a library card as a way to check our consumeristic habits.  She said that as a result of doing this a few years back she had saved money and was able to limit her purchases to books that she would go back to multiple times.
Our friend Mark told us about a bartering system in Charlotte about 10 years ago.  He said that he did some home renovation work for a local doctor in exhange for cancer treatments.  He said that this really helped him at the time and that he actually walked away from the deal cancer free and with some money to spare.

Someone else told us about being involved in a project in which a company donated personal hygiene products that were then shipped overseas.  Another friend shared how her dad would take produce from his farm that he was not able to sell and donate it to a local food kitchen.  She told us that it was very satisfying to know that you could give something that could help someone else.

Someone shared about watching a YouTube clip of the actor Peter Coyote talking about a free store art project in LA in the 1960's.  He made the point that enough goods are manufactured in the world that every person could have everything they need to live but money creates scarcity.

We concluded our discussion by talking about the importance of finding creative and relational ways to share the wealth and abundance in our world.