Clothing Week

Food week went really well for our group! Next up is clothing. Technically, clothing week should have started Thursday, but I had a migraine and lost a day and am behind. Oh, well. My clothing week will start today (Sunday) and run through Saturday. 

Once again, the goal is a simpler life, a conscious reduction of my options. This week I have reduced my clothing choices to 7: a pair of jeans, a pair of shorts, a dress, my Red Wolves shirt, my turquoise kids ministry shirt, my red Drink Coffee Do Good shirt (Land of 1000 Hills) and a button down shirt. 

We have a group project this week, too. All week, we are collecting items from our closets and dressers. We will take them to church Wednesday night for our class and decide how we want to go about donating them. I'm excited about the group project! There are lots of things we can't all do together, so having a common activity this week is great! 

Once again, in our class video, Jen Hatmaker got us thinking - beyond our own lives and how our choices here affect others' lives around the world. The apparel industry, unfortunately, involves a lot of trafficking and maltreatment of of workers. This is not across the board, but there are many companies that use forced labor, child labor, extremely low wages, and awful working environments to make a profit. What can we do? We can try our best to make sure what we are buying comes from a safe and fair working environment. How? Doing a little research. Or using an app like Free 2 Work. It gives companies a grade on their transparency and ethics. In short, try to buy from companies that don't use forced or child labor and that provide fair wages. Check it out. Join us. The more people who step up, the bigger the impact will be. 

Clothing week begins: now!

7, Take Two

      So apparently I'm about as good at blogging as I am with keeping an orderly, uncluttered house. (In case you are wondering, there are about two weeks worth of mail on the dining table and the cardigan I wore Sunday morning is on the back of a chair. But I mopped the floors today. Please tell me that counts for something.) Anyway, I'm back in my blogging mode after surviving the beginning of school and a crazy August. And I'm super excited about my reason for being back!

      My friend, April, asked me a couple months ago if I would want to co-lead a 7 Bible study for women at our church on Wednesday nights and we kicked it off a couple weeks ago. We weren't really sure what to expect as far as who would want to be involved in it. I mean, 7 can be pretty intense and extreme. But there was lots of chatter about it the weeks leading up to it and our first night, we ran out of books! So more were ordered - and we ran out again this week! This is totally not a pat-us-on-the-back-look-who-came-to-our-class thing. It's the opposite, actually. I've already found myself slipping into old habits. Buying crappy convenience foods. Walking through the mall and finding things I "need". Looking at my phone more than the people around me. It's so sad to me how quickly it all comes back and the things that I learned begin to fade. So, basically, it's time for me to refocus and have another go at it. And this time I have a great group of other women to walk with me! Yay for accountability and sisterhood!

      The 7 study is broken down into weeks instead of months, but deals with the same seven areas. This week is food week and I'm going to approach it a bit differently this time. The first time I did the food thing, my family only ate certain foods for the month. My biggest take-aways from that month were 1) I get a lot of praying done when I am doing a food fast; 2) A person can grow weary of chicken in roughly 1.62 days. What I have really come to realize, though, after watching the Bible study video this week, is how much food I waste. It hit me Wednesday night that even sometimes when I am EATING my food, I am wasting it. How? If I have already eaten my meal and have more - because I WANT it, not because I am still hungry - I'm wasting that food. My body doesn't need it. I could have saved it for tomorrow's lunch. And in my eating 2-3 meals worth of food at a time, I'm wasting time and money spent on more food. Not to mention the food that is in my refrigerator that I decide I don't want so I buy more while what I have goes bad so I throw it out. I've never thought of waste in these ways before, but I haven't been able to shake it the last few days.

      So this is how my food "week" will look this time: I am going to "fast" from soda, candy, desserts, and fast food, while simultaneously paying more attention to the foods I AM eating - specifically how processed they are and how much of it I am eating. I will be on the "fast" portion of if at least through the end of September - possibly October. The "watching what I'm wasting" part? Well, I'm hoping it becomes my new mindset. It's not ok for me to waste food every time I sit down for a meal when others are wondering if there will be a next meal. There are ways to get involved in hunger issues, as well. I don't want this to just be about me and my family. What can I do, from where I am, to be an agent of change for the vulnerable? Here are some ideas:
         - Donate the money I am saving by not buying extra food to a local food pantry or backpack ministry
         - Invest in micro loans to grow small businesses in impoverished areas (Jen Hatmaker mentioned kiva.org in the video.)
         - Get involved with an organization like World Vision or Compassion International
         - Shop with companies that provide economic/job opportunities for vulnerable communities (i.e. Land of 1000 Hills Coffee and, yes, Noonday Collection!)

      I'm ready to get started again - but in a new way, with a new outlook. Here's to a fresh start!

***Caveat - College football season just started. The fast will be put aside for game days. Mainly because you pretty much need coke and chocolate to properly cheer for your team... :)