Skill #2 for Making a Home: Life-Serving Economy (Pt. 1)
From Radical Homemakers’ Seven Essential Abilities for Homemaking. Introduction post found here. Skill #1: Nurturing Relationships here.
Shifting to a Life-Serving Economy
As I see it, a life-serving economy emphasizes activities that sustain life over activities that purely generate profit or wealth. It has sometimes been summed up in the phrase: you can’t eat money.
This is a hefty one, so I’ve divided it into two posts. In the words of Radical Homemakers:
The essential job of a radical homemaker is to “build a bridge that crosses us from the dominion of an extractive economy” to a life-serving economy where we fulfill material human need rather than pursuing the generation of “wealth for its own sake.”
The message here is not to return to a subsistence economy (that’s not entirely possible or desirable for everyone to do anyway). Instead, it’s about reframing our economy to a human scale, focused not solely on profit but instead on fulfilling the needs of those around us.
I’ve taken the below principles of a life-serving and applied them to our current moment:
Practice thrift, frugality, and debt-avoidance
Transition from net consumers to net producers
Minimize waste
Barter and trade
Use what you have
Spend money where it matters most
Introduce children to the concepts of a life-serving economy early
Understand “enough”
This post will cover #1-4.
In the time of COVID-19:
1. Practice thrift, frugality, and debt-avoidance
In a post-coronavirus economy where I know more people unemployed than ever before, these principles seem like no-brainers. The key here is that when things return to whatever new normal emerges, we remember that we were okay with less. That capitalism and the societal pressure and systems that encourage us to want more, buy more, make more, work more, usually aren’t actually essential for us to live well.
2. Transition from Net Consumers to Net Producers
Radical Homemakers writes: “These people do not see the performance of their own bread-labor (labor for basic needs) as a hardship… The work of Radical Homemakers is, almost inadvertently, rich with meaning and purpose.”
In some ways, I have never seen the people in my circles produce as much as I have during quarantine. Or at least, producing in a way that is for themselves and their own needs or purpose. In normal times, they might be producing work or value for an organization, for the systems of capitalism all around us. But in recent weeks there’s been a shortage on yeast and flour?! People are doing the hard, patient work of sourdough baking, not because they are being asked to, but because there is meaning and purpose in producing for themselves.
The Radical Homemaking mindset asks us to continue to remember, when things become the new normal, that there is joy and value in producing to sustain ourselves and our community.
3. Minimize waste
Waste is a matter of perspective. My coffee grounds can be my garden’s food, my hand-me-downs can be my sister’s new favourite outfit. Radical Homemakers are skilled at working thoughtfully and making use carefully. And they also think critically about whether something others might waste could be a resource. There was a section in the Minimum Viable Planet newsletter the other day about thinking in circles rather than straight lines.
“Danae went on to elaborate on the idea of getting things done while getting things done. She writes:
‘if I'm weeding, I'm simultaneously gathering mulch for my fruit trees -
if I'm shredding paper, I'm creating mulch for my raspberries -
if I'm sweeping, I'm adding to the kitchen compost bin -
if I'm mowing orchard pathways, I'm gathering nitrogen for the compost tumbler -
if I'm changing water in bird baths, I'm watering mints planted at the base of bird baths.’
I love the idea of a circle of actions, a thing that helps another thing. It’s circular economy without all the bureaucracy. It’s circular thinking without going in circles.”
The concept of Cradle to Cradle (the design text by the same name is one of my stand-bys) is useful here. A cradle to cradle perspective believes that things should be designed so that the end of the lifecycle feeds positively into something else. Waste = food, trash = resource, etc. Rather than just thinking through the lifecycle of things we purchase or create to their disposal in the least bad way we can, cradle to cradle asks us to consider how we can design their demise to be a net positive. In a time where we’re making due with what we have, stretching out our resources, and drawing on our community, we can begin to see how unnecessary so much of our waste really is.
4. Barter and trade
I spent the last two years living in Toronto, where an app (previously a facebook group) called Bunz was a huge part of my life. Bunz is basically a marketplace based on bartering, where users would post items they had and what items or services they were searching for in return. I had someone come by and fix my speakers, I got a laundry hamper for a roll of film, a bucket of paint for a bottle of wine, etc. etc. There were all sorts of spin-off facebook groups too, a Bunz group for people in need of someone handy or offering their handiness, a Bunz group of people wanting to practice cutting hair and people hoping to have theirs cut for free. It was the most amazing example (and snapshot) of how resourceful, plentiful, and rich the Toronto community was without actual currency entering into the equation.
In quarantine times, I’ve seen informal Bunz-style networks springing up all over the place. Mutual aid groups, care-mongering pages, and, of course, the drop-offs of sourdough and baked goods and the products of new hobbies being dropped off on friends and neighbours doorsteps. There are so many things I am good at and can give, and so many things I am bad at or uninterested in that someone right around the corner could love doing. Seeking local, alternative, already-made options rather than the most convenient, cheap, or newest option is a practice. The more we do it, the better we get at it, the easier (and often more lasting and cost-effective in the long-term) it becomes.
Times like right now when people have less to spend are good times to remember that there is so much out there already, it’s just not equally distributed. If we do a better job of making the things we don’t need or use anymore available to those we might appreciate them, we can find networks where others will do the same for things we might need too.
To be continued in Part 2.