everybody i know uses starbucks to justify their purchases.

even me.

it's so great. breaking down something in terms of how many frappalattacoolios or whatever always makes it sound extremely affordable.

it makes a lot of sense, actually. we think nothing of blowing $4.75 or so on a coffee or smoothie or drink in a bar. but spending $47.50 on yet another trinket gives us pause. do i need this? is this worth that much? a $579 eames chair (for example) is 100 after work drinks at happy hour. the side chair ($349) is 100 Mango keffir drinks from Ronnybrook Dairy (god i love those things, i get one every time i go to whole foods...).

or, to bring it in a direction i constantly find myself thinking about, if you have a pack-a-day cigarette habit and your usual brand is, say American Spirits, that's $8 a day. $56 a week. more than $200 a month. if you quit smoking, you could take a short vacation to europe or across the country 3 or 4 times a year. you could move to a nicer neighborhood. you could get the sweetest cable tv or cell phone package they make and still have money left over every month. you could have an extremely high-end dinner in the newest hottest restaurant every month. if you saved that cigarette money for a year, you could put a down payment on a car.

Although I love this site, the ads for mattresses (google-streamlined though they are), right in the middle of an entry about the simple life, are a bit much. Is the ad connected to your comment about your mattress purchase? Why not a Starbucks ad too? Perhaps irony was your goal.

Progress is half knowing what you're talking about and half doing something about it. Knowing what you want fuels the drive of ambition.

So. It appears that you -are- making progress. We like this.

This morning, I made progress as well - I cut my closet in half, donating a half of what I cleaned out and tossing the rest.

Just remember: Deep breaths. Deliberate moves. Be confident and nothing can rain on your parade.

I agree with the placement of the google ads...but the subject/object advertised are generated automatically, by the page content.

I have found the problem with justifying my purchases by comparing to the coffee or whatever is that despite the truth in it, it's not that I'll actually stop buying the lattes to support the purchase. Though, this thread and my own recent thinking has had me trying to abstain from buying coffee out. This isn't so much simple living for me as it is trying to be more financially responsible. Making choices rather than having those choices dictated to me through advertising and what I am expected to do. I'm not saying buying coffee is bad, just that I realized I was doing it just because that's what I did--not that I was really deciding to have a cup of coffee. I was almost sleepwalking or something (even if it was an afternoon cup!). Just buying because, well, it was there. I have realized I'm not saving as much as I should. When I was making less money, it was "well, I can't save because I'm earning so little." But, now that i have a higher salary, what's my excuse? In that book I listened to "the Cheating Culture," it brought home that media, etc leads us to try to lead lives that are outside of (above) our own income levels. I wouldn't call trying to keep a stricter budget simplifying, but I think as I try to keep to this, I will lead a simpler or at least more rewarding life. I've been trying to do more inexpensive things in my spare time, too...because I realized everything I did involved money, and too much of it! It becomes habit. Knee-jerk reaction when you think 'what should we do tonight" is "go out to dinner/to a movie" or whatever. I'm trying to entertain more at home...it helps me appreciate the people in my life and my home more.

Since your post referenced the larger picture via "An Inconvenient Truth", I think it makes sense to humbly admit that none of us - despite our coffee, closet or advertising realities - are living anything close to simple. Simple is not about spending, but it can certainly begin there, just at it can start with the Buddha, getting cancer, travelling abroad or choosing not to deny the fact our collective lifestyle is entirely unsustainable and poses a threat to everyone.

That said, it is a lovely sunny day, bringing forth yet another 'heat wave' - get out there and sweat the truth!

;)

exactly, Christine.

i'm dealing with the exact same situation. earlier this year i got my first job where i make more than just enough to pay for my basic necessities. and i've found that most of that surplus has disappeared because my approach was to stop worrying about money all the time and generally subscribing to the mindless affluence we are marketed. and since each purchase was less than $20 or so, i wasn't really thinking about it. and it felt good to be able to go to a movie, buy people drinks, leak money like it's going out of style because "it's only $10."

and then i realized that i'm making twice as much as i realistically "need" to live on, and i hadn't saved a penny. more than half my money every month was going to "dinner and a movie" type shit i don't really care about. and the long term purchases, while useful, had more to do with what one "ought" to have than what i myself really want right now. i've been trying to take a long trip to a nonwestern country for several years now. rather than saving up for that, i bought cab rides and paperbacks and a computer.

that's part of what the 8 week cure is about for me (though the cure itself is going to require some expenditures). i need to sort through my space and hone it to what it needs to be for the time being. not "what i would ideally like it to be after reading last month's Domino" but what i need. i need a better landing strip. i need some kind of recycling bin. i need more hooks for hanging the crap that ends up in a pile on the floor. i don't need Jamba Juice on the way to work every morning.

i hope this doesn't get me kicked off the site, but i don't buy starbucks coffee b/c 4 bucks is an absurdly high price to pay, plus they have driven the smaller guys out of business. if their corporate goal is to really have a starbucks on every corner, that is yet another reason not to support them. i'm for a more local aesthetic.

the other gripe (sorry!) is that, while starbucks carries fair trade coffee, what they use in most of their drinks is not fair trade. so where's all the profit margin going?

Leslie, I'll be booted with you! There are three Starbucks within five blocks of us (and more beyond that), and I rarely go in one.

I'm boggling at the yuppie veggies as much as at the $800 mattress. Sorry! If you took them home and actually cooked with them, more power to you.

Honestly, given a choice between 100 happy hour drinks with people I like and an Eames chair, I'd take the drinks. (And I don't even like bars...) The chair won't love you back.

I don't like that little march of google ads in the middle of the post either. And, feedback to Google (not that they're going to see this), I would never, ever, ever click on any of this invasive little intruders.

this=those

Hey wende, leslie.... I stopped going to starbucks because of all the pretentiousness that i witnessed when i would go in for a simple cup of coffee. I call it the "Soho Syndrome". I work in Soho (have for about 15 years) and the syndrome is that "since all the kewl people go to Soho, I must be kewl too since I'm in Soho" or since all the kewl people get their latte's at Starbucks, I must be kewl since I go to Starbucks too".

opoponax- loved the Karl Marx quotes.

Vow ! I never did think that there are people who avoid starbucks ? or have decided to have a cable or have decided to eat in fine crockery ( not merely bring it out on Thanksgiving) Or would not be somewhere to be termed "Kewl".

Though I stay on the otherside of the river and would be going to the city very frequently ( though I do not work ther ) my friends thought I was hanging out in kewl places and eating in hep restaurants until they offered to come out with me and enjoy the ' free events ' in the city and ate at places where we get economically and good food. They were surprised that we could still enjoy the city without having to break the bank.

As rings put it living simply means finding peace and joy. To give back to nature and others without expectations, To be sustainable in one's living and To live peacefully in boundless joy
is my mission. My neighbour remarked of me the other day, you have a lot of space in your house. How do you have the discipline to say "No" when you can afford to buy. ? I guess everybody goes through that. The answer is to live in appreciation of the fact that the best thing out there is nature and you still can't buy it , but can live in it. The best things in life - air , clean water, good light are free but priceless.

My very frugal grandmother, who spent her summers gardening and canning, said that you should always spend money on good shoes and a good mattress. Of course, everything in her house probably cost less than $800.

Since we've been talking about dumping the futon in favor of a mattress and this discussion reminded me, I looked up Consumer Reports' latest analysis of mattresses.

Their conclusion was that there's no clear, objective difference in wear or sleepability between a full mattress that costs you $1,500 or more and a full mattress that costs you $450 at Sears, though there will definitely be individual differences in what you like to sleep on.

I may drag the husband to Sears this afternoon.

I guess I'm lucky in that I was never bitten by the Starbucks bug. I don't boycott Starbucks. I do have a problem with its predatory marketing, but my biggest problem is this: The coffee is no good. I can get much better coffee for less at the independently owned cafe at the corner of my block.

I suffer from some of the same spending anxieties other folks here do. I mean, I just bought a Nelson ball clock for $300, then I agonized over spending $4 on liquid hand soap. Completely irrational.

Opoponax, I did the Cure, and it cost what I consider a small fortune. I replaced the furniture that either wasn't holding up or didn't meet my needs. I treated myself to a couple of decorative-yet-functional things like the Nelson ball clock. I was able to offset some of the cost by selling some things. The expense was worth it to me.

"We believe multitasking is a moral weakness."

I meant to post these links. I think people interested in mindfulness and slowing down might find them entertaining:

http://www.slowdownnow.org/

http://www.hurryfaster.com/

The first has many links to interesting, related sites.

wende - why don't people like futons? I love my futon. I've had it for about 5 years now and it's super comfy. I would never buy a mattress now because I don't find them as comfortable and they're way more expensive than a good quality futon (I've heard some people complain about futons getting body-shaped dents worn in them, but I've never had that happen, so I think that must just be the ultra-cheapo ones).

Allison -- We very happily did futons in our 20s and 30s. Cheap ones, pricey ones, you name it. We futoned with joy. We futoned with satisfaction. We didn't always even bother to futon with a frame.

Around the time I turned 40, my body rebelled against the futon. This last one wasn't el cheapo, and it has become a major source of discomfort. I'm just emotionally ready for a real mattress here. There goes my bohemian youth. *sigh*

I use my futon mattress (the good quality one ) on the rangeley bed ( bought 2 months ago. Thanks to AT) . I have been using the futon mattress for 6 years now and it is still doing very good.

I am currently writing in from the city that had 7 bomb blasts in half an hour few days ago( Bombay).I am amazed to see the help that are given to strangers. People who live in the shanties offering food and water.
Transporting injured people without thinking twice if they are infected. They do not even stop to put on gloves. If they wait for the gloves to come, it might be one more loss of life. It is said that a particular religious organization has a hand in it, but I am surprised to see the unity displayed by people across several religions offering to help each other. I was in DC when the pentagon fell on sept 11. People were frightened to death. Bombay is the financial backbone of the country and the city is already up and running ....

I am shocked that people in NY are limiting themselves to design , starbucks and consumerisim when it comes to writing about simple living. I am a fellow NYorker who is urging you to come out and travel and see what people are doing to simply live ... yes to simply live

New Yorkers were pretty altruistic after 911.

Hello. My name is Jonathan. And I'm a recovering futonista. I hit 50 and my back said, no way. Curiously, though, a good futon on the floor is still comfortable. Once I manage to get down to crawl onto it.

As for Bombay, usually incidents like that -- and the Twin Towers -- bring out the best the people -- which is a nice affirmation of the inherent kindness of strangers. However, one cannot, and should not, imply that my tragedy is more devestating than your tragedy. That trivializes both.

Here endeth the lecture. Back to futonista jokes and anecdotes.

I hope you weren't lecturing me, JonathanB, or I'll be even more annoyed.

But I couldn't agree with you more.

One of the luxuries of a fairly peaceful, generally affluent society is that we *can* obsess about Starbucks because more serious worries aren't forced on us.

We are now the proud owners of a $400-on-sale mattress from J.C. Penney, to be delivered late next week. It felt good. If it hadn't felt good, we would have kept looking... but it did, so we had the afternoon to do other things we wanted to do.

we are around 2.5 to 3 percent of the earth's population and we cause around 30 to 40 percent of the earth's global warming.

Every 1.5 People in America have one car - oil being burnt. free oil or cheaper oil i must say. After all after the middle easterners and the people of iraq are put to death we can rule the oil empire with no fear of being attacked or being condemened ! ( We still rule the oil empire anyway )

Recycle, Reuse is a fashion in our country.

Nobody attacks America (until the attack on America last year ) America attacks other countries. We have attacked 20 or more countries in the past 40 years to save western civilization !

We make nuclear bombs but condemn and attack others who make them. We attacked Pearl Harbour to test our nuclear bombs !
We live in constant fear that we will be attacked ( for more info read confessions of an economic hit man by John Perkins)

We plot to topple governments, make nations bring to war among themselves so that we won't be under threat

We captured other peoples lands and call them our own in 1492 and drove the natives to the reservations giving them subsidies !

We are definitely "obsessed " to not help others live simply.

John Perkins also wrote a book on SHAPESHIFTING.

Oh holy crap "artist" take that shit elsewhere. That's right, we all suck.

Well, if China keeps consuming oil at the rate it has over the past couple of years, there won't be an oil empire for much longer. There won't be any oil left.

I think the U.S. contributes to global warming, but the U.S. is not the world's worst polluter. Look at Russia and countries in Eastern Europe.

I think you can blame the U.S. for a lot of things--but not for everything. That's just being stupid. It is way too easy. And anyone who believes that crackpot conspiracy theory about Pearl Harbor has a screw loose.

Back to futons . . .

Yes- lets keep the paranoid conspiracy theories for the tin foil hat blogs.

However, Jeffery, the U.S. IS the world's worst for greenhouse gas emissions per capita. Other countries may be more polluted in other ways but on average the U.S. is responsible for 22% of greenhouse gas emissions even though we are only 4% of the world's population. We can partly blame this on our expensive interstate highway system as the primary infrastructure for the delivery of goods and services, and the subsequent deinvestment in public transit and rail over the past 50 years.

re: latte's
and perspective
the minimum wage is $5.15

Henrietta-- no, not you, I was more trying to head things off at the pass.

and the rest of you -- I was under the impression that the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor.

As for Perkins, what, you've never seen Werewolves of Wall Street?

As for futons, Starbucks, and pollution: the first two are counter indicated -- enough time on the futon, you won't need the Starbucks; enough Starbucks, and you won't need the futon. As for the third, pollution is also a good description of the level of discourse on the subject here.

Maybe everyone is going to Starbucks because they simplified their lives so much, they gave away their coffeepots.

You CAN go too far with the decluttering, my friends. :)

I don't understand why people NEED to be drinking coffee all the time - its like a drug compulsion - see a coffee shop, gotta buy a coffee - coffee break time is 11am - if you're drinking one at any other time of the day ask yourself why...

"As for Perkins, what, you've never seen Werewolves of Wall Street?"

Ha! It's all connected...

valerie, that's so funny!

I have totally thought about the price of a latte v. minimum wage before. Not even just in relation to Sbux, but also any fast food establishment. Even if you're getting a value meal, that person who's ringing you up would have to work an hour and a half to buy the same thing. It's a damn shame. I try to harken back to the days of making minimum wage (when my parents were in essence still supporting me in high school and college) and think "is this coffee really worth an hour and a half of work?" even if it's not my hour and a half of work.

I think that Starbucks is just a good frame of reference for me for useless spending, but it can spill over into so many areas, I'm sure. And, coffee totally is like a drug. For me, it's both "I really feel like having something to distract me from work today" and "I need this to keep me awake and alert."

The argument for fair trade goods is sort of moot when we purchase these from providers in our country that don't even pay their employees a fair wage.

However, when I was in university, I worked at Starbucks for a while and it wasn't bad. You get better than minimum wage, and full benefits after working 6 months, for a minimum of 20 hours a week, and you get stock options and tons of other benefits. That's why starbucks isn't so bad. They also have progressive human resource policies, and have responded to customer pressures for the use of recycled paper products, they recycle their own products, and the location I worked for donated day-old baked goods to a soup kitchen. Anyways... I don't work for them anymore, so I'm not advertizing for them, it's just that it's probably one of the best mcjobs you can get.

I once wrote an article on Starbucks which I called Starbucking and which made the rounds of Wall Street (although possibily only to the werewolves there -- plus the odd werebull and werebear as well)and their admirable employment policies are not in question. What is is the quality of the goods and services as well as the attitude of the java jockeys.

For years a group of progressive economists have prepared a "Big Mac index" to provide a more nuanced and pragmatic comparative index of economies around the world...reading this string made me think it might be more appropriate for them to undertake a "Starbucks index."

Personally, I can't believe how many people I see every day hauling around cups from various "gourmet" coffee chains; I just don't know how people afford it! I do love the stuff, but there just aren't that many nickels in my sofa every day.

//John Perkins also wrote a book on SHAPESHIFTING.//

[raises hand] Is that a jab at his credibility? Your inflection doesn't really come across on the internet. (Just curious.)

I think that if you question whether Perkins' having written a book about shapeshifing undermines his credibiility suggests that you've never read the op-ed pages in The Wall Street Journal.

Let's just say that while I enjoyed hearing the swashbuckling Perkins tell the tale of his fall and redemption (Claudine, you spider!), I think he's dubious.

JonathanB got in ahead of me with a way better answer.

Oof.

And where's my editor?!

I meant to write "his tale of fall and redemption."

Oof again.

TIM, while I agree with the gist of your last post, I think that you have underestimated the amount of freight that is carried by rail, as well as mixing up freight rail investment vs. passenger rail investment.

See this for more:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_transport_in_the_United_States

38% of total freight transported in the US in 2000 was a pretty big number and far exceeds the percentage in Europe which is often held up as an example of good rail usage. Granted, passenger rail usage is much higher which is why you using freight and passenger rail to prove the same point does not work.

I will agree though that govt (both democratic and repbulican) has been responsible for strangling Amtrak with meagre funding vs interstate funding.

BTW, we NYCers should give ourselves a pat on the back with a stat like this:
"About two-thirds of U.S. rail riders and one in every three U.S. mass transit riders lives in New York City"

all of this talk about simplifying will really come to a head when "peak oil" rears it's ugly head and life as we know it will be totally turned upside down.

Thanks, but I think it's more a case of needing something more compelling to do than haunt the posts on AT

//Let's just say that while I enjoyed hearing the swashbuckling Perkins tell the tale of his fall and redemption (Claudine, you spider!), I think he's dubious.//

Okay, because without further support that comment just dangling out there makes him out to be some sort of split-personality New Age crazy. It should be clarified that his book isn't about cellular--animistic-type--shapeshifting so much as it is about personal and societal transformation.

johnperkins.org

We report. You decide.

Yeah, I guess that website's not really helping my cause any ; )

Ha!

At least YOU are helping your cause.

Just an add on re Star Bucks I refuse to call a small anything but a small and I will not ask for a Grande...because it is pretentious...and that old bumper sticker still applies "live simply so that other may simply live".

Shannon, let me thank you for linking to that poem. It was beautiful, and almost made me cry. Thank you.

I always find your posts to be beautifully worded and a joy to read.