Simplicity in a Season of Consumerism

Each month the JVC staff sends out monthly challenges based one one of the four values of JVC. This month it was Simplicity during the season of excess and mass consumerism.

This holiday season, we JV's in Gresham decided that it was time to clean out our pantry. We've noticed that we tend to eat only the foods we really like to eat, going to the store to replenish our stock of favorites and allowing food on our pantry to pile up, and left overs in the fridge to go uneaten. After a few months of occasionally having to throw out vegetables rotting in the bottom of our fridge, and oranges drying up on out counters, it was time to get better about our food consumption. We started a few weeks before the actual week of December challenges: buying only a few necessities on the weekend such as lettuce, apples, eggs and cheese, then slowly using the foods that have been taking up room in our pantry and hiding in the back of the refrigerator. We continued this for about the third week when we joined the JVC staff in their challenges.

Though breakfasts and lunches were sometimes a challenge, it was really cleansing and invigorating to get creative around meal time. We aren't throwing food out anymore and discovered that we had so much food to work with! Another part of our challenge that helped is that we added two more community meals to our weekly schedule. Not only did we use our food more efficiently - making one meal for 6 people rather than 6 individual meals - were were spending more quality time together around the dinner table, being more present to each other, and laughing a lot more. One tasty example is our community dinner from last night: Potato and onion curry, fried rice with pineapple, eggs and broccoli, and Afghan flat bread - all made with ingredients that had been in our pantry for almost a month-DELICIOUS!

We also planned our first energy fast for last Tuesday. We decided as community that we would not use any hot water, not turn on any lights, not plug in anything that didn't need to be plugged in (we left the refrigerator on, but didn't use the oven, stove, microwave or toaster), and were also challenged to not use our cell phones for the day. I messed up right away: I got out of bed, went into the bathroom and turned on the light then immediately turned it off saying "SHOOT!"... or something like that. The day went pretty smoothly. I went to work, then to the gym and worked out reading a book rather than listening to my ipod. I cam home to a dark house and my roommates huddled in out breakfast nook - the kitchen lit up with candles. I made myself a sandwich and grazed in the pantry for a while. We spent our evening playing cards by candle light, commenting on how nice it was to wake up to the natural light in the morning and sharing about our days. Though we may have wanted to just check-out and throw on a movie, we were able to spend a pleasant evening and quality time together in good conversation. Though I did appreciate being able to turn on the lights the next morning.