A group of six of us from Cambridge and Impington met at Tom’s on Thursday night to talk about the challenge of living with less stuff. The discussion was quite inspiring and interesting. We are all coming from different starting points, with different parameters and different needs. I myself personally would like to go for at least one year without buying any new ‘stuff’ beyond food and toiletries. Unlike other challenges which have been undertaken there are no set rules as such. It can be seen as a very individual thing, but in reality to succeed it won’t work on an individual level alone.
One of the things to come out of the evening’s dicussion was that to succeed in the long term goal of reducing our consumption of stuff is the need to build sharing communities. People between them have lots of different things that all of us don’t possess individually. Rather than buying new things we can share them when we need to. Building a sharing community is key to the process therefore. It is something that must be built on trust and a willingness to make our things available to others. The practicalities of this need to be worked out and relationships grown and developed. I personally see that we are going to have to see a change in mindset from what is my individual property, to what becomes that of the collective to use in a way that best suits all.
If we are to reduce our individual carbon footprints, then our consumption is going to have to drop markedly. There are so many things out there that are duplicated up and down our streets, in our immediate locale and beyond that really we need not buy anything new for quite some time. If we share our skills of repairing and mending, take good care of what we do have, then this will be a big step forward. Improvising with what we can salvage and coming together to find solutions to problems can be of great help also. This project/challenge is not a quick fix or short term but is something that is long term. It is something that will grow, develop and hopefully prosper. I hope we will continue to meet on a regular basis to share experiences and learn from each other and push this challenge as far as it will go.
All in all, I’m really glad I attended the meeting and look forward to the next one. I think this has a huge potential and is something to definitely be pursued. Thanks to everyone who attended for an inspiring evening!