Use it up or pass it on

Two easy eco actions in precarious economic times + RETREAT ANNOUNCEMENT 📣

Before we begin, it’s election day in Canada! If you didn’t make it to early voting, don’t forget to go to the big show TODAY. If *recent events* have shown us anything, it’s that one should never take democracy for granted. Also, please, please do not vote for our own little Trump, Pierre Poilievre, who in his career has voted against climate protection 400 times and whose plan has the government abandoning the regulation of all greenhouse gas emissions and embracing the creation of more pipelines, which spells nothing short of climate devastation. The health of the planet is our health — to imagine otherwise is deluded and incredibly dangerous. Whatever tax breaks he may offer cannot buy a safe, healthy world. (And, of course, he has some other truly noxious views around LGBTQ folks, truth & reconciliation, reproductive rights, and more. So many good reasons to cast your vote for another party!)

If you’d like to compare how various parties responded to environmental issues like carbon reduction, oil and gas subsidies, biodiversity loss, environmental racism, Environmental Defence has a round-up here. And if you’d like to vote strategically, SmartVoting.ca can help you out.

Okay, back to our regularly scheduled programming . . .

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“Am I imagining things,” asked my partner tentatively one evening, “or have you been taking my deodorant out of the garbage?”

Reader, I was busted. I laughed about it until I teared up.

My partner hadn’t used it up completely, you see, and there was enough for my smaller pits for a week or two. But I knew once it had been in the trash, he wouldn’t want it on the counter, so every day I just used it and then set it gently back in the bathroom garbage. Seems logical to me???

What can I say, using it up gets me fired up! My favourite low-waste tool? A really pliable small spatula to get everything out of a jar or container. Once I watched someone who shall not be named rinse out a yogurt tub with at least half a cup of yogurt still in it, and honestly I think about it more often than I should. My kink is making salad dressing with the last of the mustard in the jar, or a cup of tea in the jar to use up the dregs of the honey. These are small but satisfying actions, that ensure precious resources literally don’t go down the drain.

In the new world of Trump’s tariffs, prices are only going to climb — and they were already, to put it mildly, crushing. So there’s no better time to take stock of all the resources we already have and then put them to good use.

I’ve been repeating “use it up” like a mantra lately. That means food in the pantry, all the little toiletries you might be saving for the “right time,” the good stationery, the fancy candles, whatever it is you’re hanging on to. One of my toxic traits is definitely saving “nice” things for a special occasion until they are no longer nice. Woman cannot live on tiny toiletries alone, but she may save them like she could.

I used the winter holiday break this year to do some deep cleans and reorganizations of various “trouble areas” of the apartment, including one essential but miserable to access L-shaped, sloped-ceiling closet I call Narnia but is really closer to Mordor. That revealed a few things I didn’t know I had, including some replacement drinking glasses and a box of lasagna noodles from 2014 (which was probably edible but I did throw out, we’re not living in The Last of Us).

More recently, I unearthed out about nine different kinds of honey in various-sized jars, because I can’t resist taking home a tiny honey jar from a fancy restaurant and I’m often gifted honey, so some beehives may have less honey than I do. So my partner and I had a honey tasting and ranked them, and now we are going to use up that honey, one tiny jar at a time. This will not only give us sustenance but some prized space in our overstuffed cupboards. (Another of my toxic traits: overvaluing stuff and undervaluing space.)

It’s easy to become an accidental hoarder when we don’t want to dig in and assess what we have, or we don’t want to deal with what we find. I’ve written about “decluttering” in this newsletter before, and if you find yourself suddenly wrapped up in rage spring cleaning, check that out for tips on how to rehome responsibly. (Reminder: dumping random boxes of assorted goods at your local thrift store is not the best practice, nor is leaving boxes of things out by the sidewalk in all weather, which earns a hex from me if I walk by.)

So you want to declutter

The Western individualist culture promotes a bunker mentality of saving things “just in case,” and when enough people do that, we end up producing way more than we need to: more mining and drilling, more factories pumping pollutants into air and water, more transporting of goods, more packaging, and ultimately more headed to landfill.

Because I love a deal, secondhand stuff, and also saving useful things from being trashed, I hold on to more things than I should. By doing so, I could be denying people the opportunity to make better use of that thing. (I will not disclose how many canning jars are in my home.) If resources should flow, my hoarding creates a dam.

Which is why “pass it on” is also a great option. As a side effect, sharing can offer its own dividend: stronger relationships. (More on building relationships and community here and here.)

What does community care look like? (Part 2)

The traditional potlatches of Indigenous Nations of the Pacific Northwest keep gifts in motion so resources don’t stagnate and ferment into inequality; they also strengthen relationships through these celebrations of abundance and goodwill. This is not, however, the European way, and as Robin Wall Kimmerer explains in The Serviceberry, “this ritualized redistribution of wealth was banned by colonial governments, under the influence of missionaries in the 1800s. Potlatches were seen as contrary to the ‘civilized values of accumulation’ and undermined the notions of individual property and advancement essential to assimilation to the colonial agenda.” (The colonial mindset positions Smaug the dragon as far better off than the hobbits pottering about in their little earth homes, having feasts and getting high. But who would you rather be?)

At the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, MA, Western meditation giants Sharon Salzberg and Joseph Goldstein have a simple generosity practice: if you have an impulse to give something to someone, you simply do. It’s a practice I aspire to, and achieve at least some of the time, because generosity feels good. It shakes us out of a scarcity mindset, fosters faith that we’ll be able to access what we need.

What if we could see possession as temporary? Because it is, in so far as we’re temporary. One day even your most prized possessions could be tossed into a driveway dumpster or sold off for pennies on what you paid. Anyone who has helped dismantle an estate has seen how quickly cherished objects become junk. “Generosity is about embracing that understanding that you’re a steward, not an owner, of resources and learning to use what’s available to you to serve your community and your world,” writes Dana Miranda in You Don’t Need a Budget. While their books are very different, both Kimmerer and Miranda are highlighting economic systems based on the flow of resources, not hoarding of them.

So as you go through your spring cleaning, ask yourself: Am I hoarding this? Is today the day I use up my one wild and precious tiny shampoo? Or should I let this resource flow on? Are there sharing spaces, like community fridges/pantries, little free libraries, or Buy Nothing groups that would help me rehome things? My food co-op has small libraries of leftist books, cookbooks, clothes patterns, and zines all available to borrow. It also has areas to pick up a reusable bag or leave one and various containers donated by members that others are free to fill with bulk groceries. And of course the co-op is home to my seed library, and what better than seeds to remind us that the living world is a model of abundance. All of these little areas in one store are pools of common resources that, as Kimmerer advises, keep gifts in motion.

As you take stock of what you have, you will likely find you have far more than you thought, more than enough to share. An abundance mindset can sound woo-woo, like The Secret 2.0, but when our entire economic system is built on atomization and not-enoughness, appreciating what you have and sharing is a small, radical act. It’s a practice — your impulse for generosity becomes stronger over time. Trust me, I release far more things into the world these days. In fact, I’m almost ready to part with some jars.

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The climate feelings retreat returns June 21

This year on the summer solstice and Indigenous Peoples Day, I’m so happy to bring back our one-day climate feelings retreat. In all the chaos and tumult of this time, do not underestimate the potency of giving yourself a day off to connect with good-hearted people, a nourishing space, your deepest values, and the trees and the birds and the sound of the wind through the meadow. Whatever you’re feeling, I can tell you you’re not alone, but it means a lot more when you can actually experience that in person.

We’ll talk about our climate feelings, yes, but also walk in the woods, do gentle yoga looking over the fields, and let our nervous systems settle. We will care and be cared for. The many crises of this world, of everyday life, would tell you this retreat is a luxury or a frivolity; I can confidently tell you it is anything but. If you have questions about it, please do reach out.

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Parting wisdom

“We are already kin, whether we like it or not. So how can we live as though our living depends on one another?” — Prentis Hemphill, What It Takes to Heal

“I find myself slowly changing from an agent of change to an agent of care. I’m less confident in the impact my activism might have on policy than I am about the impact my care may have on other human beings, as well as how they might trickle up to the systems that need changing.” — Douglas Rushkoff, “Everything Is In-Between”

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Link love

• Speaking of using it up, I’ve gotten a lot of joy watching chef Justine Doiron challenge herself to make meals that use up all the odds and ends in her pantry. (Find many instalments in her reels.)

• As a person who likes homestead-y content but who condemns both the idea of self-sufficiency (a myth!) and the increasing right-wing rhetoric that dominates many homesteading communities,

  Ganga Devi Braun
  ’s “Villaging, Not Homesteading” was a tremendous relief. This is the world as I dream of it.

• I’ve been fondly reading Sameer Vasta’s newsletter for many years, and this edition, in which his daughter asks about planting trees, really tugged on the ol’ heartstrings.

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Sending you courage and comfort this spring,

Jen

P.S. If you’re in Toronto, I’m hosting two plant and seed swaps in May: one with the Good Swap on May 14th at CSI Annex (tickets will be available on Eventbrite soon; you get into my favourite clothing swap too), and one at Karma Co-op on May 17th from 1 to 3 (no ticket required). Come say hi and practise sharing plant abundance.

Five Minutes for Planet is written by me, Jen Knoch, and edited by Crissy Boylan. Opening photo by Aniket Bhattacharya on Unsplash.