Vegetarianism, Scrapbooking and Cults

When I first started down the road of non-consumption, I didn't put that much thought into it. My first thought was, basically, I'm not going to get crazy about this, but I'm going to try and just buy less stuff. I hadn't really stopped to consider exactly WHY I was buying less, but it just seemed like a good thing for many reasons. It's odd because in many ways I am a very rational person, and yet this isn't the first time I've embraced another way of life without really thinking. I was a vegetarian for four years in college, and I never was able to fully articulate the reasons I was a vegetarian except that ... it felt right. Hmmm. Does this make me a prime candidate for a cult?

In any case, I kind of just figured I would just not buy durable goods and that would be that. But, as I got more into this challenge, and as I started doing more reading online about people doing similar things, my not-buying-durable-goods mentality started seeping into other aspects of my life.

For example, scrapbooks. I love making scrapbooks. I know that it is not exactly the hobby of choice for most twenty-something women without any children, but whatever, it's what I like to do. Initially, I figured that scrapbooks fell in the gray area between non-durable and durable. So I thought, I could buy a scrapbook because where on earth was I going to find a USED scrapbook. But I kept putting off buying one, and putting it off, and putting it off. And finally I realized that it just felt ... wrong to buy a scrapbook especially since the whole point of scrapbooks used to be that they were made out of SCRAPS. And now yes, you can buy specialty papers and ribbons and so forth, but that's because NOW, we are all crazy consumerists.

So I decided that there was no question, I just couldn't buy a scrapbook. I would have to make one. Which posed a problem for me because I am not a crafty person by any means. Pasting photos into pre-made books was as crafty as I get. How was I going to CREATE a scrapbook. After looking at options online that involved elaborate binding of paper bags, I finally rummaged through my cupboard and came up with a nice red binder and some fancy wrapping paper. Voila! My scrapbook.



And then the total score- I was going to buy 100 percent recycled cardstock to go in the scrapbook. But I went to my mom's house for a weekend, and took the opportunity to do some cleaning out of my old room, and I found a whole pack of 100% recycled scrapbook paper that was left over from my college scrapbook and has been sitting in my bedroom at home all this time. So the result was a wonderful scrapbook created from things I already had and also free! It's not the most beautiful scrapbook I own. But I think it's my favorite.