You know, sometimes it’s hard to be a Green-eyed Momster. Some days I get a wave of my shoe coveting days, I get little blue and feel like a little Retail Therapy would be just the thing. It’s an old, familiar feeling that I fight, even though most of my Retail Therapy over the years was happening at the Goodwill and Salvation Army. My thing has never really been so much about new, just new to me. But now that I’m simplifying, I’m trying to weigh every purchase, new, used or recycled, with a complex formula of need+usability-lust, balanced with how it was made or grown, and how much it costs. It gets tiring, and sometimes I just want to forget about responsible shopping and buy that cute Old Navy hoodie, not thinking about if it was made using child labor (which it almost certainly was).

And then I meet someone who both puts me to shame and inspires me to do better. Most recently I discovered that my neighbor is Katy Wolk-Stanley, whose great daily blog, The Non-Consumer Advocate, is filled with challenges and encouragement. I love her tag line, which is “Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without.” She’s made a Buy Nothing New compact, which she has followed (with a few exceptions) since January 2007, and she’s undertaken a Waste No Food Challenge that she writes about with great humor.

It all makes me feel a little overwhelmed, and like I’m not doing enough these days. Gone are our Car-Free Tuesdays, at least until I can afford a bike to get Georgia to school. Plastic-free Week seems so long ago, and adjusting to a changing lifestyle means experiments like our fun lights off for Earth Hour have to be put aside for a while. But I’m cutting myself a little slack. I’ve got a just-turned-five-year-old who just started Kindergarten, and I’m embarking on a busy new work schedule; I’m paddling my little green canoe through bumpy, frothy, unfamiliar waters and it’s hard enough for me to help Georgia through this transition and gather together a healthful, mostly organic dinner every night.

Even just reading Katy’s blog gets me thinking in the right direction, though. I’m assessing my food waste – we don’t throw away a lot of food, but we could do better. And I’m wondering about the Buy Nothing New pact. One of the reasons I don’t do much resale shopping anymore is that my time is more valuable than my money right now. It’s much easier to shop new, and much more time consuming to dig through resale shops to find nice things. And we don’t buy much anyway! But once my time isn’t at such a premium I think I’ll see if I can find a nice pair of wonderful, ridiculous heels, just for old time’s sake!

Photo credit: Porcelaingirl