:: In.a.Mirror.Dimly ::

When I was fifteen years old, my dad purchased an unfinished furniture set for me, picked up some stain and sandpaper, and set me to work on it. I wasn’t too enthusiastic about sanding and staining my dresser, night stand, and mirror, and so he often prodded me to keep working on it.

He promised me that I could take it with me when I moved into my own place, and I did. In fact, we still have that set. We also own several other pieces of furniture and household items with similar, if not better stories.

Then again, we also own things with stories such as, “I bought this desk at Staples,” or “We bought this lamp at IKEA.” Many of those things are either damaged or broken, though I don’t necessarily regret some of those purchases. 

While a purchase from a large retailer is sometimes necessary from the standpoint of a budget or the available options in one’s area, every morning I take clothes out of my dresser I have an opportunity to remember that conversation with my dad, to say nothing of my wife’s dresser that my father-in-law sanded down and finished for her.

Buy a Good Product

Our friends have taught us the value of buying household items that are unique and of high quality. They have built their own book shelves, picked up hand-crafted cutting boards, and commissioned a potter to make their dinner plates. While we eat on our scratched up Pfaltzgraf plates, they have sturdy plates that will last longer than our own and come with a great story.

Buying a good story and a good product isn’t possible for every single thing, and I believe that we have sometimes harmed the local movement by demonizing everything we buy from Wal-Mart or Target. In Vermont Local First groups challenged us to buy 10% of our products locally, which provided a good place for almost everyone to start.

Even this small percentage made a positive impact in the local economy, made buying local seem realistic, and actually encouraged me to increase my local purchases once I found higher quality goods in local stores and formed relationships with merchants.

Buy a Good Relationship

As a Christian I believe that we have a very relational God. Scripture moves humanity toward intimacy with God, and it’s no mistake that the Bible begins and ends in very personal settings in gardens. Jesus modeled a way that is very connected with others and

Perhaps one of greatest problems with our consumer society is the impersonal nature of our economy that disconnects us from the people who produce and sell our products and food. When I get to know the potter who makes the gifts I buy or the artists who create the paintings in my home or craft the shelves, I not only buy a quality product and foster a good story. I also make a personal connection and begin a valuable relationship.

This relational connection is one of the ways we can counteract the harmful cycles of exploitation that come about when the market demands lower prices. Trusting relationships are an excellent foundation for sustainable economies.

A Plan for Buying a Good Story

We can’t create a good story for everything we want to buy. In fact, we can’t. We need to be realistic about our financial and local limitations.

However, here’s a thought, until you have an opportunity to purchase something meaningful and memorable, why not make do with an inexpensive version from a yard sale, flea market, or Good Will store? In fact, the hunt may become part of the stories that you integrate into your home. Our kitchen table is a good example of this.

While living in the Philly area we drove by a yard sale at a big, fancy home. The trick with yard sales at such homes is that you can often find some great stuff, but unfortunately a lot of wealthy folks aren’t familiar with the bargain-hunting mentality of yard sales. However, we found a nice wood table with six chairs listed for $60.

The lady there wanted to get rid of it. She helped us load the chairs into our car. The husband, who came out after we wrote the check, was shocked she’d sold the table for so little. That little story became part of our permanent table, even though we just expected it to be temporary.

When we moved to Connecticut we sold that table and began to hunt for another—something that I must credit to my wife. That search took us through three states before we found the perfect table in the Salvation Army down the road from our house.

While it took more time to hunt for our table, we found a nice, cheaper, and more sustainable table at Salvation Army rather than driving to Wal-Mart and picking up a more expensive table that was manufactured in China. There may be times when Wal-Mart is our only option, but given a choice, I’ll take the nicer table with the better story.

We have a choice. Our lives are richer when we integrate stories and relationships into our purchases. We may accumulate less and spend a bit more, but there’s really nothing wrong with that.