I want to make it clear that I don’t consider myself to live an extravagant lifestyle or am I suggesting that you do either. What I am saying is that as a population we live a lifestyle that is not only well beyond what we should be living but that as a population we exploit our environment, other people and that we live in a throw away society where things we make and use only have value for a very short time which is the opposite of the way most of the global population now lives or how our direct ancestors actually lived either. I have some tools that were made in the late 1700’s or early 1800’s and these tools are completely functional and perhaps still better than their modern counterparts. Before the 1950’s or 1960’s we’d buy appliances and furniture that was well made and would last a lifetime and beyond and if something did break, we’d get it fixed. Today, not a lot of fixing going on as things are made to have a short lifespan, become outdated quickly or manufactured in such a way that fixing the item is either impossible or prohibitively expensive.

The way my wife and I life is relatively modest though we both own and drive cars. The car I drive is a 2008 Volkswagen Jetta and her car is a newer more efficient Ford. Combined we’ve only got 70,000 miles on both cars but still that is a significant chunk. It isn’t in the same ballpark with some people who drive 50,000 miles or more a year. We’ve had our Jetta now for 11 years now and the odometer just clicked over to 60,000 miles. That calculates to about 450 miles a month and about 15 gallons of gasoline a month. Nothing to sneeze at but nowhere near as consumptive as all those who live in my area and drive 4 x 4’s or SUV’s for everyday vehicles.

We also live rather simply. My wife is from Germany so she never understood the McMansion phenomenon. I must say that we think along the same terms. Those abominations are just colossal wastes of resources in pretty much every way. Expensive and materials intensive, expensive utilities and they take a great deal of effort to clean. Our house is rather small. Built in the early 50’s it is about 1400 square feet with 1 room being the back porch that was converted into a sun-room. It isn’t terribly expensive to heat or cool. The best part is that we own it outright and have done for many years. We’ve lived here for 20 years now and I guess we’ll probably both spend the rest of our lives living here.

As far as recycling and garbage goes we tend to buy more foods that are whole in nature. Fruits, vegetables, potatoes, rice, beans are our staples. I have been vegan for years now and my wife is pretty close though a definitive hold out. Trash runs twice a week here and we wind up having less than all of our neighbors though a couple of our neighbors are really good in this regards as well. We don’t buy a lot of processed food choosing to cook our own. That can be labor intensive but better in every way to the fast food/processed food lifestyle of so many. We don’t get to buy much in bulk except when we make the trek to Whole Foods in Plano, Tx which is about an hour and a half away. None of the local grocery stores offer these as options though I do know that in bulk grocery stores are becoming very common as it should be. We use reusable bags every time we go shopping and we try to limit our purchase of things that are enclosed in plastic or are made out of plastic. I really hate buying things that don’t last for their primary purpose but are everlasting in a landfill. Just seems like a terrible waste to me. This is a very difficult endeavor as plastic is just everywhere.