What does this have to do with values? Well, in our home, we wear clothes to keep warm and recognize that beyond that simple need, they are *just* costuming. We cheerfully accept clothes secondhand from friends and relatives, we shop in thrift stores, we make our own clothes, we mend clothes that have rips or stains or missing buttons rather than discarding them for something perfect. When something is outgrown, we make sure it goes back into the cycle of being available to others who have a real use for it. Boxes of outgrown cherished children's clothes cross in the mail between family members, nothing languishes. When we do shop for new clothes, we only buy things from manufacturers that we know do not exploit their workers. If at all possible we make sure we can actually see the face of the producer by buying from work at home moms who are designing and sewing their own brands of clothes. We do not advertise consumer goods, sports teams or clothing companies on our backs. We do not wear company logos even when it comes to secondhand clothes.  We only wear natural fibre clothes for health and environmental reasons. We value the clothes we have and look after them so that they will last a very long time.

I admit it, I love beautiful fabrics and clothes! My needs are very simple, but my wants ... I could easily fill twenty closets. I feel I have a moral obligation to keep those wants in check though. I don't feel I have the right to waste the planet's resources like that, as a member of my family, to waste money like that, or as a member of the global community to put my wants before the lives of other people who are being exploited because a consumer demands inexpensive goods and corporations demand high profits. My son has wants too, but the way he expresses them is a sign to me that his values mesh with mine, that I have modelled these values, not simply talked of them. He wanted a grey sweatshirt for his astronaut costume, whenever we got a bag of secondhand clothes he asked if there was one there, if I went to the thrift shop he'd remind me to be on the lookout for one but accepted that it would take time for it to show up in our lives. He never batted an eye at the grey sweatshirts in the stores in the mall, never whined, never complained that I didn't simply buy him one. Then when his grandmother gave him a grey sweatshirt for his birthday he thanked her genuinely for such a fabulous gift, and has regarded this realized "want" as something with special value ever since.

I can see in my son's behaviour, in his dismissive attitudes towards Pokemon t-shirts and GAP logos that this value is something he has simply absorbed. I've never purposely discussed my view to him on these things, they come naturally to him through observation. Dinnertime conversation in our household might include discussing the fact that sweatshops still exist here in North America and that new immigrants and illegal immigrants are being exploited in them. He'll hear company names I plan on boycotting, but there hasn't been a time when I have actually felt a need to sit down and explain my feelings about this, but all the same he recognizes the names of companies that exploit workers in developing countries and reminds me of that fact when we are going through secondhand clothes. Our solution to the moral dilemma of wearing items from these companies, even though we didn't purchase the clothes, has been to cut out any identifying labels. That was his idea. He contributes to the dialogue about values in our home now; he is no mere observer. He is an active participant in shaping how we live our values and that shows me I'm on the right path.

In the near future I plan on writing about food and shelter, giving and receiving, the three R's, and community. Watch on our main page for updates to this journal!

Dirtwitch