My Mother was a Greenliving Minimalist Before Instagram Told You It was a Thing You Should Be Doing

I took my daughter thrift store shopping a few weeks ago and she was intrigued by the artifacts we found (typewriters and rotary phones). She paused over vinyl records and well-worn china with mysterious histories. She recoiled from clown toys and lingered over cabbage patch dolls marked up to meet the nostalgia tax. She wanted to leave 20 minutes into our scavenger hunt but lost track of time as we came upon a well-stocked comic book and memorabilia section. I explored a thrift store with my daughter and it was lovely.

But I also struggled with one of many difficult realizations parents face when raising a child in a different socio-economic and cultural reality than their own. In this instance, very dramatically opposite to my daughter’s life, I grew up depending on thrift stores for many essentials. Malls, filled with their shiny new and ultra-expensive wares was out of the question. My family could not afford new clothes. I didn’t enjoy an outdoor organic and sustainable Long Beach brunch before browsing a thrift store just for fun. I, in fact, was in the 5th grade the first time my parents took me to a restaurant, and it was McDonald’s. How different our childhoods are, I hope I can transfer the important and edifying lessons of my upbringing and our culture, even in a vastly different parenting reality.

Minimalism

I’ve been thinking about my household’s consumerism. I grew up on second-hand everything. Why buy new when you could save money buying used. The amount of stuff we own. The percentage of single-use and disposable products we buy. How much we waste and spend when we should save and invest. How I now fill voids with things, like new clothes to improve my body image. My mother would recoil in horror if she were technologically savvy enough to lurk on my Instagram page because that is NOT how she raised me.

Terms to Know

• Green Living – Green living is a lifestyle that tries in as many ways as it can to bring into balance the conservation and preservation of the Earth’s natural resources, habitats, and biodiversity with human culture and communities.
• Minimalist Living – Minimalism is all about living with less. This includes less financial burdens such as debt and unnecessary expenses. … For many minimalists, the philosophy is about getting rid of excess stuff and living life based on experiences rather than worldly possessions.

There is a minimalist trend among the well-resourced in the United States, a newish (possible) fad of trying to live well with less, even when you don’t have to. Revolutionary for a dominant culture that long believed bigger and more is better. For those of us who are children of immigrants or whose parents came from subcultures where the goal was spending less and living happily with efficiency. Those who repurposed their old grocery bags into garbage bags. Used old pasta sauces jars and take-out containers as cups and Tupperware. This is not new, sexy or innovative. This has LONG BEEN a way of life. I guess me and mine have always cared about the environment. Black and brown and foreign folk arguably created the minimalist and green living lane, even as we are erased from it in pretty Pinterest pictures and corporate mass marketing.