Wednesday, November 24, 2010

Ten Things To Do Instead of Shopping

Friday is Buy Nothing Day, y'all.

In honor of consuming less, living more, preserving natural resources, reducing waste, and modeling responsible behavior for my kids, I'm avoiding the mall on Friday. Of course, this is easy for me since I don't live near a mall, I don't generally enjoy shopping, and I absolutely cannot stand the "holiday bustle" of retail environments during the holidays. Really, it's just an excuse for people to be irritable and entitled and shitty to the person making their latte. You work in a coffee shop in a mall for three Christmas seasons, and you'll despise it for the rest of your life too. But I digress.

In honor of Buy Nothing Day, I've decided to compile my own list of Ten Things To Do Instead of Shopping. Here we go:
  1. Bake something yummy
  2. Play in the snow
  3. Read some awesome blog posts
  4. Serve lunch at the soup kitchen
  5. Make a sock monkey
  6. Read a book
  7. Play a game with your kids/friends/neighbor/partner/whomever
  8. Sort through your closets and bookshelves and toyboxes, and send unused items to the thrift store
  9. Read the newspaper all the way through while petting the cat who insists on sitting on your lap while you read the paper, and drink your coffee at a leisurely pace because goddammit you don't have to work today
  10. Make homemade holiday decorations.
What did I miss?

4 comments:

  1. Rachael-

    Here's a suggestion.

    11. Make a donation to a local food share. (FoodShare is a good local one)
    Just thinkin'...

    I would appreciate it if you read my blog, http://emilysvirtualrocket.blogspot.com. The blog is a virtual compendium of articles from newspapers, newsweeklies, and magazines, both popular and scholarly. The articles have a viewpoint toward transgender / transsexual news. If you like it, please put
    "Emily's virtual rocket "under the title commonly called
    "Blogroll". Thank you so much!


    Sincerely,

    ezs

    ReplyDelete
  2. Friday was also the national day of listening, so we listened to stories from StoryCorp most of the day on NPR.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Anonymous11/29/2010

    I love the idea of Buy Nothing Day. Awesome list!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Knit a scarf! It's freezing here!

    ReplyDelete