Starting with the Household

You can’t turn on a radio, computer, or any other form of media today without finding someone who wants to sell you something or do something for you. Some of those things are helpful, but many of them just fill closets, shelves, and then storage units.

We have become a nation of consumers. The average American has $14,000 of credit card debt. Gone are the days when most households were self-supporting, places of enterprise and production. Now the national pasttime is leisure. We live for retirement and the weekend. If we couldn’t buy it, we couldn’t have it.

What if instead of being consumers, we began to turn inward to think of ourselves as producers? What if we made it our goal to produce, as much as possible, the materials, the products needed to sustain our own household? What if we started out, not to make money, but to generate the stuff we need to live? While it might not result in never going to Walmart again, it might by degrees, result in having more time for the things that really matter.

So many of those work from home commercials start with the simple but deep desire of many people, “Do you want to spend more time with your family?” Eliminating from the discussion people who do not want to spend more time with their families because… well, they don’t, and we could probably agree that most people have the ideal of family first. (I say ideal because they would say that family comes first even if the reality is something quite different.) They work to provide for their family. They work so that their family can take the money they make and spend it on products that others make. They trade their time for money. They take that money and buy products. Since economists tell us that consumer spending accounts for over 60% of economic activity, this spending is necessary to keep “the economy” going.

The root of the word economy (and the meaning of economy still if it is properly understood) is in the proper administration of a household. The English words “economy” and “economics” can be traced back to the Greek words οἰκονόμος, i.e. “one who manages a household”, a composite word derived from οἴκος (“house”) and νέμω(“manage; distribute”); οἰκονομία (“household management”).

So what if instead of spending as much time at a place of employment or emphasis on earning money, more time and energy was spent in the actual production of the physical things necessary to sustain the family — raising food, making clothing, maintaining shelter, and providing fuel for heat?  To be sure it would require a radical shift in lifestyle and thinking for most families that I know to leave the “mainstream society” and embrace a life with this level of daily labor. A life without all of the stuff of society would not sound like much of a life to most people I know. But I am not suggesting that one would have to start there.

A family could start small, but it might begin to move us in a healthier direction. Here are a few thoughts.

1. Grow a small garden. Eat and can what you produce.

2. Buy a wood burner, collect your own firewood, and begin to supplement your heating bill.

3. Try planting 10 dwarf fruit trees in your back yard. It will take awhile for them to come online, but when they do, you’ll be glad you did. Think of each tree as an investment. This is x lbs. of fruit you won’t be buying from the store.

4. Join a local CSA. Yes, here is the plug for Victory Acres and all the other farms like it. Look at it as a practical way of expanding the size of your garden. If you get all the extras in addition to your weekly share, you can really stock up for the winter. Every bag of green beans you freeze, is one less you will have to buy.

5. Think twice before buying another thing you really don’t need. Reduce, reuse, recycle.

6. Do things for yourself. Change your own oil. Recently, when I discovered that calling a repairman for my dishwasher would start with a $85 service fee plus parts and $60 per hour for any needed repairs, I decided to do it myself. A 5 hour project and a $10 part from Sears had me “paying myself” $400 for that day’s work. Don’t buy the lie that time is money; time is NOT money.

7. Trade help the old-fashioned way. Instead of hiring a professional, meet your neighbors, talk to your friends, barter, and trade goods as well as services.

Starting with the internal economy of the home, the household, means that you (eventually) have something to share with others. When you start by buying from yourself, you save a lot more than money. You are developing enterprises that value everyone in the home. You are creating “employment opportunities” that become training grounds for children who will grow up to do the same in households of their own.

It’s not just about saving money; it’s about saving our families. It’s about breaking out of the crazy, treadmill cycle on which everyone else is running. It’s about getting back to a kinder, simpler way of living, a life that starts with the household.