The Good Life Lab

by Wendy Jehanara Tremayne

  Check in with your sanitation department to find out what reuse materials are available. Often recycling centers collect but do not recycle materials. These materials can be obtained for free. If you are new to a rural area or small town, befriending a local who knows the ins and outs of available materials may prove very helpful.

  Seek simple, unabstracted natural materials such as cotton, wool, linen, hemp, stone, wood, and metal. Natural, simple materials have not been severely processed and are often compostable. I have composted entire cotton sheet sets and clothing made with natural fibers by using them to line garden beds. Unabstracted materials have a lower cost to the environment, are more durable, and are more easily repurposed. Even when these goods have been made into something, they remain raw materials. In this way they are inherently more valuable.

  Go a step further by learning about the raw materials that are natural to your area. Favor natural, local materials for building and making things. Find out about how the native population used local resources. Seeking out such resources may very well have the added benefit of getting you to visit beautiful places.

  Mikey and I discovered that the gooey middle of New Mexico’s prickly pear cactus had been used by Native Americans to make a waterproof, antibacterial additive for mortar and paint. When we started to use the cactus goo ourselves, we saved hundreds of dollars and replaced elastomeric paint with something we make ourselves from a locally abundant plant.

  Following what the natives in our area once did, we chopped up prickly pear cactus pads with a bucket mixer to get the goo inside, and then mixed it with paper, cement, and umber to make a water-resistant coating.

  Invasive species present a good place to look for free materials. Salt cedar, a tree that was brought to the United States from Asia, consumes too much water to be welcome in the Southwest. This makes it a resource whose harvesting has no negative consequences. We harvest it in the desert and use the wood for thatching outdoor projects, reinforcement grids inside papercrete slabs (for tensile strength), and firewood.

  Consider everything you buy your responsibility to deal with — including the packaging. Find a new owner for what you acquire and no longer want, make something out of your waste, or (better yet) don’t buy what will later be unnecessary.

  Part of this responsibility is to know where your waste goes. It’s not good enough that waste be taken away. You may be surprised to learn where it all ends up. Recycling has a carbon footprint, too.

  Buy goods from people rather than from corporations. People-made goods have more inherent value than machine-made goods.

  If you must buy new goods, hold companies responsible for the products they produce. Follow up on warranties to prevent excess materials from going to landfills and to encourage better manufacturing practices.

  Buy used goods. Most things can be found secondhand, on eBay, or in the trash. Chemicals used in industrial manufacturing processes dissipate over time (they off-gas), making used goods less toxic. Once I know what I want, it appears in the waste stream in no time at all. I specify details like materials and color, and my finds have matched what I imagined.

  The goods we own and mingle with in our daily lives are a reflection of us. Buying new goods is no crime, but by considering what we buy, we create the conditions that allow us to appreciate what we own. Flimsy goods that produce waste and pollution come with resentment. Goods, used or new, become special when we value them. Consider the process by which things were made, their durability and longevity, their cost to life.

  Here’s a desk I found for $20. It is solid wood and has good lines, so I sanded it down and refinished it with linseed oil.

  I found this wire chair from the 1970s in the trash and gave it a fresh coat of paint. I reupholstered the cushions in sturdy shade cloth.

  Fix what breaks. Fixing things is a way to explore materials and find out how things work.

  Consider this motto when acquiring goods that may be designed with planned obsolescence in mind (or at the very least, to prevent opening and tinkering). If you try to fix something and fail, you will still have gained experience and some spare parts.

  If you can’t fix it or open it, you don’t own it.

  — Mr. Jalopy, a west coast maker

  Consider context. Living a decommodified life in a commodified world presents compromises. Our world runs on batteries, one of the most toxic substances in landfills. Mikey created a battery desulfator that revives batteries and extends their life, thus reducing what goes to landfill. But the parts Mikey uses to build his desulfators are manufactured and come at a cost to the environment. We use manufactured appliances like sewing machines and welders to build and make things out of waste. We use computers to learn how to live more sustainably and share what we know.

  To reduce the impact of the waste created by these modern aids, rely on the waste stream. Purchase used computers a couple of generations out of date and sell the ones you’ve been using; drive older cars, fix them yourself, and power them on alternative homemade fuels; use gadgets and tools that are refurbished, and fix them when they break. Source new parts carefully. Choose materials that have the lowest cost to the earth.

  When creating new goods, create things that solve problems. Then share what you have made by using open-source plans and the Creative Commons.

  Think backward. Start by considering any manufactured thing. Track the item back to the raw materials from which it came. Note the rubber tree in the tire, the cotton in the thread of a textile, the silica in a glass pane. Search out the processes used to abstract the raw materials used to create a product. Ask questions: “How did silica become glass?” As you follow this chain of events, contemplate the energy spent, cost in CO2 emissions, and the pollution caused. Count the labor and time invested. Consider the longevity of the product. How long is it meant to last? Thinking like this allows us to locate ourselves in a commodified world; it makes evident the repercussions of our decisions. Seeing the whole picture enables us to act more responsibly and make choices that preserve life.

  Try contemplating two different objects: one natural, such as a leaf or the carcass of a bird found roadside, and an abstracted object such as an electric hair dryer or a bottle of shampoo. Observe what these objects are able to tell you about themselves. Natural objects, when contemplated, can reveal things about the laws of nature; manufactured goods mostly tell about the decisions that people have made while building a commodified world. Notice two kinds of knowledge, natural and acculturated, and consider their value.

  Avoid debt. Debt makes for immobility and congestion; flow stops. Debt limits freedom — the ability to act naturally in an arising situation — by tying us to obligations from the past. Avoiding debt helps us live freely in the moment.

  Avoid gossip. People who see the bright side of a situation are the beneficiaries of a luxury. They feel that they have enough. Poor manners and complaints are signs of the feeling of lack. Gossip spreads rumors that this world is not good enough, evidenced by the flaws noticed in other people. Every effect has a cause, and every cause a reason. Concealing the flaws of another gives those who act from a feeling of lack a chance to consider something different.

  Seek abundance (not wealth). Wealth is related to riches, fortune, money, capital, finance, and assets. Abundance is related to bountifulness and plenty. Wealth is unreliable: markets go up and down, economies crash, money increases and decreases in value. Wealth produces worry and the need to protect one’s assets as well as maintain them. Wealth does not regenerate.

  Abundance is not contingent on these things. It is an experience, a gift, a felt view of the world that includes being part of it and supported by it. Abundance is not counted: it is celebrated.

  Mikey and I have witnessed inspired people seek out an abundant life. They changed the work they do in the world, freed themselves of financial ties, and transformed the way they live. Once they reached genuine abundance, they took on debt out of desire for wealth. People los
e their way doing things like picking up a second property for investment and a new mortgage. Then the garden is forgotten, there’s no time for making cheese and wine, and goods are bought instead of made. We’ve seen friends turn their own cottage industries into self-imprisonment by taking on debt that caused them to turn their focus back to earning money.

  Real quality of life is freedom from worry. It means working hard and having free time, growing and making high-quality food and goods, getting plenty of sleep, and having time to play and contemplate. It includes recognizing yourself as a creative being tied to the rest of life. Balance is key.

  Reclaim your skills. Some people achieve their highest goals working with and for others. But too many of us go off to work knowing that what we do for employment does not fulfill our heart’s desire. For many of us, working for others is something to do while figuring out what we most love to do. Apprenticing is even better. You’ve figured out what you wish to do and have found someone to show you the way. When you have a full-time job working for someone else and limited free time, you can easily forget to search out what you have to offer the world. Living a decommodified life is an invitation to discover what you most love to do. Not all of us have to leave our jobs to find purposeful work. Some do. If you should become voluntarily unemployed, consider reclaiming the skills you once gave to your employment. Our jobs contain morsels of our own desire that we modified to meet the constraints of a commodified world. Seek out those morsels. They contain clues that may help you discover what you most wish to do. For my job I produced events like press conferences and product launches, and I promoted my clients’ products and pitched them to the media. I turned these same skills around to create Swap-O-Rama-Rama, which required event production and promotion skills. When Swap-O-Rama-Rama became a success, free of the constraints of a profit-driven employer, I made it into a gift. After you take back your skills, you may find that you also have a gift.

  I wear gloves to protect my hands from ocotillo’s sharp barbs. We sell a tincture of ocotillo, a remedy for bellyache, in our online store.

  Consider a cottage industry. When your time is your own and you’ve secured the basics (food, shelter, power, fuel, and domestic goods), you will likely have an idea about the things you would enjoy doing for the small income a maker of things needs to live abundantly.

  Our cottage industry sprang up from Mikey’s wish to design electronics and my desire to get to know the plant kingdom.

  A successful mail-order cottage industry does require access to a post office and regular delivery by the UPS and FedEx. It also requires a good Internet connection. If you choose to live in rural areas, these simple things that are easily taken for granted can be hard to come by. Even if you are selling your goods in a brick-and-mortar environment, you can’t be hauling them into town or driving 50 miles for supplies. Living in town has perks, such as a sanitation department and recycling center that offers free waste materials and dumpsters full of reusable materials. Living in a town, however small, offers amenities that make it possible to sustain a mail-order business from home.

  Unbrand yourself. Our lives have formed around civilization, so naturally we take for granted the way things are. Branding and advertising are so pervasive in our culture that we hardly notice that we are being marketed to all the time.

  Reclaim your home by making it an advertisement-free space. Remove or hide branding. At Swap-O-Rama-Rama events, branding on clothing is covered over with new labels that say Modified by Me. In my own home I tear branding labels off and throw them away. Repackage premade goods by moving them into unmarked containers. For example, dry foods can be purchased in bulk and stored in mason jars.

  Since branding divides people into socioeconomic categories, cover or remove branding on clothing. Removing branding from your body allows people to see you for who you are rather than by how much money you have (or don’t have).

  Abandon trend. Trend is a cycle that necessitates throwing away perfectly good things and replacing them with newly bought goods that come at the cost of money, labor, raw materials, and energy. The decommodified lifestyle of a maker of things is a shift from devouring resources to savoring them. Instead of throwing away what you have acquired, learn to appreciate goods and keep them useful even as they wear away and break down. Then consider if they have any value as a raw material. Repurpose the parts. This is especially possible if the things that you consume are made of natural materials such as wood, metal, stone, and natural fibers.

  Nothing says conformist like trendy goods. Avoiding trend shows others that you are conscientious and considerate, and that you think for yourself.

  Lighten your paper load. Life is not to be lived shuffling paper. Limit the paper files you are willing to store and manage. I choose never to hold on to more paper files than what fits in a single, smaller-than-average file cabinet drawer. If the drawer becomes stuffed, that tells me that my life has gone off balance. I regularly sift through my paper files and thin them to what is essential.

  To reduce the time you spend processing the messages of advertisers, get off mailing lists. Send junk snail mail back to its sender. Tear off the back page of catalogs, the part where your address appears near the address of the sender. Circle your address and write Remove from list next to it. Circle the sender’s address and write TO: next to it so the mail delivery person knows where to send it. Put a stamp on it and drop it in the mailbox.

  Receive bills digitally so that your mailbox is a place for good news. Choose a few people you love and send them handwritten letters. Soon your mailbox will be filled with replies from people who love you.

  Go on a temporary media fast. For a period of time avoid computers, newspapers, magazines, e-mail, blogs, and all other media. A media fast revives the emotions and the senses. If you have ever wondered how you can tolerate the violence in movies or why you do not cry when watching bad news reported by TV reporters, it is because media desensitizes us. Feeling nothing is not a natural condition. Feeling emotion is natural. A media fast revitalizes our ability to feel these natural emotions.

  Get rid of the TV. There’s a reason they call what is broadcast on television programming. Television inserts contrived ideas about life into your consciousness. Life is much greater than what’s being offered — even on a gazillion channels. Turn to nature for entertainment. Nature is alive, always arising, and always new, whereas what’s on TV is comparatively predictable and repetitive. If you are concerned about missing something important, choose a few web-based media and rely on them for news of the world. Choose news sources that report good news. They do exist!

  Though I chose to give up TV entirely, I know that not all of what is on television is junk. Consider balance. We need only give up the things that have control over us. When balance is regained we can return to the things we gave up, with caution.

  Make a pledge. A pledge tethers you to your wishes. Once you make a pledge, you might discover that the universe’s department of pledge-keeping has assigned you one of its helpful employees.

  Watch out for goblins. Goblins come in many forms. My goblins matched the attributes of the career I gave up. They came in the guise of fame and money. They are inevitable. When we set out to do something purposeful, and usually right when we’re nearing our goal, goblins appear to ask, “Do you really mean it?” Answer, “Yes, I do,” and keep moving forward toward the goal of your pledge.

  Acquire fundamental knowledge. Remember what the poet Rumi said: You are that which you seek. Seek knowledge. Take classes in sewing, welding, woodworking, cooking — whatever sparks your curiosity.

  Pick up a pocket reference guide and peruse it for fundamental information such as the periodic table, the attributes of the elements, melting points, and types of measurements.

  After Mikey fixed the swamp cooler, he came inside to hem a pair of pants.

  Know where you stand. Learn the directions (north, south, east, and west) from your home and from major landmarks. P
ractice the directions from different locations in your community.

  Know the equinoxes and solstices. Observe the sunrise and sunset and the moon cycles. Consider your cosmic address in the solar system. Phases of the moon and the light of day and dark of night affect how much energy you have. Keep a diary of your energy levels and the phases of the moon, times of day, and seasons. This diary will reveal your place in the rhythm of nature and indicate when it is best to rest and when to apply yourself fully to a task.

  Claim your own outdoor place. Find a spot in nature to visit for a few minutes every day. Earmark this spot as an extension of yourself and as your natural home. Use this space to see nature in all its forms, seasons and conditions. Be sure to show up in the rain, wind, snow, and sleet and at all times of day and night. This will help you appreciate nature, tune yourself to it, and remember your relatedness to life.

  Elephant Butte Lake is one of the places I regularly visit to witness wildlife, the seasons, and weather.

  Contemplate nature. Commodified life has taken us so far from nature that we forget that we are part of it. Start each day by revitalizing your senses with 20 contemplative breaths, 5 for each of these elements.

  Earth. Close your eyes and breathe in and out through your nose. See the color of the earth: fields of wheat in autumn, yellow. Notice that the direction of this breath is horizontal. Imagine your breath extending out just above the ground and along the earth’s surface. Watch it find valleys and climb mountain slopes. See it move between the small and the large, through blades of grass, and around boulders the size of skyscrapers. Let your breath spread over the whole earth and search out the magnetic field that surrounds the planet, solar energy stored in plants, telluric energy of the force of gravity, mineral in the rock, and life in soil. Notice what you have in common with it: your body has a magnetic field, gravity holds you to the earth, the plants are your sustenance and medicine, your teeth, nails, and bones contain the minerals below.