100 mile life

Living with intention means making decisions based on your values. I value the planet and healthy food so I continue to eat at least 50% of my food from within 100 miles of my home. Recently I realized that I also try and only purchase goods made within 100 miles of my home. I am an artist so it’s important to me to support local artists and artisans. I also have made a commitment to spend money on experiences over things. Which means other than a bi-weekly grocery trip and my weekly farm market trip, I don’t go shopping with any regularity.

My brother and I were having a conversation about buying locally made products and he said “the average person can’t afford handmade.” Perhaps, but in this case he was talking about handmade pottery dishes. One doesn’t need nor in my opinion should go out and replace their mass produced dishes with handmade ones just because they want to buy handmade. One could do that and then donate the old to a shelter and that would be a great example of reduce, reuse and recycle. But in this conversation my suggestion was to buy handmade with intention. For example, between two Christmas seasons, my husband, daughter and I all gifted one another beautiful individual serving pottery bowls. They get used all the time and we don’t use our mass produced bowls nearly as much. The benefit is many fold. Eating out of a work of art makes eating an experience instead of a job so we slow down and enjoy the food. We think about what we are putting in the bowl so it’s created with intention. It was a gift so the money spent isn’t extra – it was going to be spent anyway.

I often talk about living with intention; parenting with intention or being in relationship with intention. A 100 mile life is just another example of that intention. I care about the planet and believe climate change is real and man made. So everyday I do what I can to decrease my weight on our planet. Shopping isn’t an activity I spend my free time doing. I don’t buy clothes unless I need them. I don’t buy home goods unless we need them. However, I will buy something if it moves me and is made locally. Thinking about how you are prioritizing your time and money is a way to live with more intention.