I grew up with a frugal grandma, and I always kind of thought that she was a bit crazy. She recycled grey water from her washing machine to water her lawn in southern california, reused cool whip containers as tupperware, and has worn the same style of clothes since the 60's ( Miraculously through her sisters garage sale and goodwill finds). I always thought of her as cheap and was slightly embarassed. Fast forward to my adulthood I now see that she is brilliant, and somewhere along the line my generation has become warped into thinking that we have to have everything that we see, and that TV is reality. It dawned on me that I've become warped by this and unrealistic and things need to change if I don't want my kids following down this slippery road.
Like many in my early 30's I've racked up debt and paid it off, and racked it up again. Its a viscous cycle of consumerism, and the reality is we don't NEED the vast majority of the crap we have, and it becomes an anchor around our necks wearing us down. I look at my living room and it looks like it was decorated by Fisher and Price, and I know that my kids don't possibly need all that crap, yet I feel I need to give it to them. As the holidays approach I feel hard pressed to change things, to show my children that giving is much better than receiving (especially when you make it with love), and family is what matters most. Last Christmas I wanted to ship my then 3.5 year old daughter off to Abu Dhabi every time we walked into a store. This year things are going to be different, especially now that chunk, the boy is now going to be 1.
