I am compacting this year and if you do not know what it is ... check this link: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/thecompact/ . If you google the word COMPACTING you will see that compacting is a multi-purpose word. But the gist of it is that I am committed to stop self-gratifying by spending and to make good use of what I have by reusing and recycling. Some of my wealth resides in wonderful friends. That was my greatest lesson this month. I also am working hard at finding folks who want what I need to get rid of. Goodwill is great but putting my cast-offs in the hands of someone who has a need may come back to me in the form of finding something I need in the hands of a friend trying to rid themselves!
January went well ... perhaps I will reflect later in the year and not feel that way. However, there were several things that came up that I started to spend money on... and I stopped. For example, I did not get a calendar for Christmas! I always count on those calendars with my grandchildren's pictures in them. However a week or two into January, Safeway had calendars for 7.99 and I thought .. wow... a sale. But, I held back and within a week I had snagged two calendars (one for work and one for home) thru the generosity of my friends who had extras.
Eating out is a pleasure for me but I am discovering pleasure in cooking. I decided if I were to eat out, it would be with coupons as a 2-fer-1 deal. Well my great friend ended up with an extra Entertainment Book this year and I have a book full of 2-fer's!
My heater broke.. and with January's cold weather, I was starting to struggle with keeping sweatshirts on and blankets all over the house. In some ways it was ok for me when I was alone, but my guests struggled with my cold house and I realized that even something as minor as the temperature makes a difference when you want to be hospitable. On a side note, that might be a good trick to keep visits short. Just turn that old thermostat right on down!
Anyway, a brother from church came and fixed it for me. It was not just an easy fix, because it involved a diagnostic visit to my heater, and then obviously he had to figure out what exactly was wrong (it buzzed loudly when the thermostat tripped.. sometimes for 5 minutes and sometimes it turned on and sometimes it did not) and then go find the part. Heaters are not that easy to work inside of but he still had to take the thing apart and get it back together and turn everything on. Lastly, like I have done so many times on other projects, the next day as he was throwing away the broken part, he discovered an important piece that needed to be inside the heater and he had to come back and do it all over again.
My point in all this, is that he did the work for me as a gift. I could afford the labor and he knew it. But I got to have someone in my home whom I felt safe about. On top of that I had the pleasure of his company and learned some things about him that I never knew. The gift was way more than fixing the heater, but a gift of himself.
If I had had not been compacting I would have called the first heating specialists that began with an A in the phone book. My heater would have been fixed, but I would have missed getting to know someone who had some things to teach me about giving and serving. It was a very good experience.
There were other things in the month.. some rather serendipitous (I think I got that right on the first try!). But all in all.. perhaps if I do this enough, it will become more of a lifestyle than an artificial fast. DKU
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