Yesterday I was wading into my "junk room"--a tiny little place behind the upstairs bathroom, filled with, well, junk--when I set off a tiny avalanche. When I dug myself out, I found myself atop our "old" vacuum cleaner (one we bought a year ago that choked one day on a miniscule particle of dirt and died) covered in wrapping paper, clothes I'd grown tired of, packaging materials that were such huge hunks of styrofoam that they actually made me cringe to imagine putting them into our landfills. I've always been careful to not buy a whole lot more than I needed, but even I have, simply, way too much stuff.

Then a friend emailed me a link to this fantastic 20-minute movie called The Story of Stuff (click for the link) and, in a word, it changed my life.

If you have twenty minutes--heck, even if you don't, MAKE twenty minutes--please watch this. And send it around to everyone you know.

Now I'm galvanized to change, to check out of the system of intentional obsolescence. No more unplanned purchases, no more paper coffee cups from Starbucks, no more waste. I'm going to try to buy more used things; clothes are cheaper that way, antiques are much better made than new furniture. I'm going to fix the things I've broken and try to buy in bulk.

It's maybe not the perfect solution, but if people all over the country begin to do it, maybe we'll be on our way to a healthier system. Cross those fingers!