The Necessities Are Optional

This post is not to make anyone feel guilty if you use any of these things.  It's merely to call into question their necessity.  In our society we've say we "need" a lot of things.  In reality, most of the things we think we need are actually just wants based on clever marketing by companies who have a financial stake in making you feel helpless without this stuff or making you doubt your standard of living if you don't use this stuff.  If you want to use things, that's fine, as long as you can afford it.  But, let's be honest--they're luxuries.

As Dr. Sheldon Cooper would say, "We have to take in nourishment, to expel waste, and inhale enough oxygen to keep our cells from dying.  Everything else in optional."

Here are a few random things we've labeled as optional:

We have seven kids and no paper towels.

Never purchased baby food.  Ever.

Baby wipes.
Old receiving blankets cut into wipe sizes and wet with regular water: works just fine.

I think I have one up in the cupboard somewhere.  Can't recall it ever being used.

Breast pump.

Gana has one for work.  I do not.

We have one that is in several pieces in the garage.  "Just in case."

I use them when we are camping sometimes.  Otherwise,  it's cloth.

Cable TV or Satellite.  We have never purchased TV reception.  

We take turns washing and drying the dishes by hand.

Haven't used the dryer in over 2 years.

TMI?

Stroller.  We have one, but don't consider it a necessity.

Good old fashioned handkerchief anyone?

We eat cold cereal sometimes for when we are camping.

Been making our own laundry soap for two years.  Have spent about $10.

We don't have health insurance.
Then again, we don't usually see doctors.

I think people would be surprised by how much little money we make, yet it is possible only because of how little money we spend.

I've been reading Radical Homemakers by Shannon Hayes and it's been rocking my world.  Here's what is inspiring these posts:

"A women's place in the workforce has become the norm in the last fifty years, the American household has changes to accommodate the shift.  Agriculture rapidly industrialized  and generated highly processed foods that supplanted most home cooking; skills were replaced with products, thrift with income, and time with convenience.  As the home became increasingly devoid of enterprise and creativity, few could blame women for fleeing the hearth.  However, during the same fifty years, our health, happiness and well-being have also dramatically declined.  The abandonment of the kitchen, the loss of personal finance skills despite rising household incomes, the relentless increase in busy-ness and the compulsion to replace emptiness and loneliness with consumer products have put us on course for an ecological, social and cultural train wreck....And above all, [Radical Homemakers] were fearless.  They did not let themselves be bullies by the conventional ideals regarding money, status, or material possessions.  These families did not see their homes as a refuge from the world.  Rather, each home was the center for social change, the starting point from which a better life would rippled out for everyone....

"More than simply soccer moms, Radical Homemakers are men and women who have chosen to make family, community, social justice and the health of the planet the governing principles of their lives.  They reject any form of labor or the expenditure of any resource that does not honor these tenets.  For about five thousand years, our culture has been hostage to a form of organization by domination that fails to honor our living systems, where "he who holds the gold makes the rules."  By contrast, Radical Homemakers use life skills and relationships as a replacement for gold, on the premise that he or she who doesn't need the gold can change the rules.  The greater our domestic skills, be they to plant a garden, grow tomatoes on an apartment balcony, mend a shirt, repair an appliance, provide for our own entertainment, cook and preserve a local harvest or care for our children and loved ones, the less dependent we are on the gold."

What things do you consider optional?