Living With Less?

I read a quote the other day that said: “It’s not a race to the end to find out who has the most stuff.” and it made me think about living with less.

What do you picture when you hear that? Less cable channels? Less knickknacks? It makes me think about my Granny, who was a teenager during the Great Depression.

When I was a young kid, I liked going through my Granny's cupboards. She let me because grandparents let grandkids do weird things sometimes. I asked her why she kept ALL of the old margarine and yogurt containers and lids, as she had stacks and stacks of them, some almost as tall as me. “Because you never know when there won’t be any more” is what she said.

She didn't mean you never know when you won’t be able to buy any more plastic containers. What she meant was, you never know when there won’t be any more things that come in plastic containers TO buy.

She was a teenager in the ’30s when there were more than just supply chain issues. She went to the store with her list but could only buy what they could offer. This made her thrifty for the rest of her life. I didn’t look at her thrift as bad. I thought it was a good trait. Why buy a new container when you could reuse something you already had? I didn’t realize at the time that she had a fear of not having enough but I did recognize that she had lived through something I could not fathom.

Now, in 2021, we are experiencing what is being called a supply chain issue. The products are out there, waylaid at ports, they just can’t get to us. But what if we never could buy that container of yogurt ever again? Would we miss the yogurt or the plastic container it came in?