Expensive Fronds 🌿,
What if we put our “clearly the issue is capitalism” the place our mouth is that this 12 months and stopped fucking shopping for new issues as a result of the planet is actually rotting in entrance of our eyes and no person wants extra stuff? It’s time. We’ve to alter our insane consumption behaviors. [Absence of winky joke to break tension and not be a killjoy.] If you’re anxious folks shall be like “wow 🙄 thanks” possibly inform them one thing alongside the strains of “I’m making an attempt to not purchase any new issues anymore, as a result of I’m making an attempt to defer the half the place the planet turns into uninhabitable till not less than after we die.”
So. Here’s a checklist of strategies of presents that aren’t new issues. I’ve included quite a bit which can be free or very low-cost for the opposite good cause to dismantle the tradition of everybody shopping for everybody new issues yearly: life is changing into extra financially precarious for everybody, which sucks.
Items the place folks don’t truly get a factor from you:
- Make a donation in somebody’s title. Might be to…
- Go to the native thrift retailer, purchase jackets, sheets, blankets, one for each individual you’d be giving presents to, and donate all of them to the native migrant or homeless shelter. Take an image of every merchandise to make it tangible.
- Purchase a used ebook for every individual you’d be giving presents to and ship all of them to prisons as a substitute (take a look at NoName’s Ebook Membership Jail Program). You’ll be able to personalize it––ship that individual’s favourite ebook???
Items the place folks truly get a factor from you:
Used Issues
- Used books! Google “used books” there are a variety of websites that promote them. However ideally, go to a used ebook retailer. These shops want help. I hope they exist ceaselessly. Inscribe the ebook with a pleasant notice about why you considered that ebook for that individual.
- Purchase used/classic/vintage issues on eBay/Etsy/at thrift/vintage shops. Right here’s a retailer with beautiful vintage French textiles. The Classic Jesus has a really particular choice of classic and reconstructed Mexican items right here.
Issues that aren’t Issues
- Help physique employees! Get folks massages/acupuncture/reiki periods.
- Are you helpful? Have you learnt sew? Are you a tech individual? Supply to fix garments or restore issues in folks’s home or assist them repair their computer systems or replace their web sites.
- Lessons/workshops/classes — if you realize somebody’s been occupied with studying one thing. Or in the event that they’re already somebody who does Yoga, for instance, discover out the place, swoop in and purchase them a bundle of lessons/
- Make folks meals. Doesn’t need to be sweets. A pal (love you Nika) made my mother and sister and I an enormous dish of paella after my Nana died and that dominated. Dishes that may be frozen may be eaten every time.
- Supply to babysit for folks with infants/children.
- Live performance tickets —verify if their favourite musician or somebody you realize they like has any tour dates arising of their metropolis. Get them 2 tickets.
- Theater/dance/something tickets! Help the humanities. Possibly that is isn’t an excellent form of present to shock somebody with, however nonetheless one I feel lots of people can be blissful to obtain.
- Museum memberships!
- A CSA! (A farm share) – Often a field of veggies a month however there are dairy ones, and different particular ones. Every works a bit otherwise. Helps small farms. You’ll be able to search CSAs by zip code right here.
- Tattoo somebody you’re keen on’s title in your ass. (Helps the tattoo artist and the individual will get to go round telling everybody their title is tattooed on somebody’s ass ceaselessly on.)
- Give folks cash! You gotta pal who’s struggling and you realize it? Don’t be awkward about it. Simply give them cash. I discovered a card in my mother’s drawer as soon as after I was a child from a childhood pal of hers. She was a single mother working 4 jobs to help us on the time. The cardboard simply mentioned, “Don’t point out it. Love you.” I believed that was so good. No person is gonna be mad at you for giving them cash.
Issues which can be issues however which can be higher than “new issues.”
- Shops that promote zero-waste merchandise like The Final Object is a method to nonetheless purchase somebody one thing new however that may then change many new issues sooner or later.
- Propagate your vegetation and present the plant infants! Received a damaged mug you’ve been which means to attach collectively? Good pot. Or punch a gap within the backside of a can and paint it.
- Help artists! That is technically shopping for a brand new factor, however it’s an eco-better model of that and we’d like artwork on the earth!
- My pal Mallika Vora is donating 95% of the funds from the beautiful print (above) of an Acapulco cliff diver to hurricane reduction efforts in Guerrero.
- Los Chachacha (sure, that is my husband, however he’s superior, and shopping for his work helps the work he does in under-resourced communities throughout Mexico! additionally costs are in PESOS not {dollars}.)
- Jessie Lewis, my South African pal in Mexico Metropolis makes some very wild work that I really like very a lot.
Zoe Keziah Mendelson is a author, researcher, info designer, and inventive director. She is co-founder of Webby-winning Pussypedia.web and the writer of Pussypedia: A Complete Information. This submit initially appeared on Zoe Keziah Mendelson’s Substack Find out how to Have Enjoyable within the Apocalypse. You’ll be able to signal as much as obtain the month-to-month publication right here.
Picture by Luca Nicoletti on Unsplash.
