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Sustainability is Simple Living
LEE SIMPSON ON HER YEAR OF BUYING NOTHING
Lee Simpson may seem like an unlikely candidate to don the mantel of anti-consumerist advocate. She is,
after all, the former publisher of Canada's most successful women's lifestyles magazine, Chatelaine. But that is just the
first of many surprising things about her new book. In My Year of Buying Nothing, Simpson invites us to witness first hand the struggles she faced, the decisions and compromises she had to make, and the epiphanies and
wisdom she won during her year-long attempt to shed her "consumer" skin and live a more sustainable, more authentic, more earth-friendly life.
In the 1980s and '90s, Lee Simpson oversaw the heady days of women's magazine publishing.
Although proud of the excellent journalism featured in her magazines, and of the pioneering
work of the editors she worked with, her primary role as senior executive was to ensure that a
maximum number of advertising pages got sold. "I was part of the data analysis and market
research conglomerate that helped consumer predators know your weaknesses and exploit them
mercilessly."
Who better to lead the way to a post-consumer lifestyle than someone who is intimately familiar
with the pitfalls and dangers, and the challenges of the way forward.
Order your copies now! Click HERE.
SHE KNOWS WHAT SHE'S TALKING ABOUT
 Lee Simpson was the first female publisher of Chatelaine, Canada's most successful women's
lifestyle magazine. As such, she worked contentedly as one of the primary voices in marketing to
women for 20 years. Always a champion of change, she left the communications industry in
2000 to earn a Master of Divinity degree to match her MBA, and was subsequently ordained as
a minister in The United Church of Canada. Lee lives with her husband and dogs in Nova Scotia,
on three seaside acres. She works part-time in local congregations and as a freelance writer, and
full-time helping others believe in the power of the individual to save our planet from ecological
disaster through simple changes in behaviour. Her year of buying nothing was documented by
The United Church Observer to help spread this message.
"Have you wandered through the toy aisles at your local Big Box store recently? You probably
wouldn't think that this would be the backdrop for a life-changing epiphany. But it was for me.
Right there, in the midst of the puzzles and the puppets, just weeks before Christmas,
somewhere between the pink-fluffy-crystal-princess section and the camouflage-monstertruck-
superhero row, I hit the wall. That would be the wall of consumer overload. I had a
revelation: the purchase of a toy for a two-year-old could be likened to enrolling our offspring
into a cult. A cult of gender-stereotyped, manufactured-offshore, corporately-branded, nonrecyclable,
plastic stuff ... I was buying my favourite child a ticket to a dangerous and
addictive lifestyle. This eye-opening moment was made ten times worse by the fact that I
helped invent this nightmare ..." - Lee Simpson, My Year of Buying Nothing
THE REVIEWS ARE FLOODING IN
"Oh, how we fill our lives with things we don't need and often don't even want! In My Year of Buying Nothing, Lee Simpson is always entertaining as she shares her own discoveries of the stuff that clutters our days without making them better, and is then
trucked off to the landfill unloved. Through her own experiences, helped by family and friends, she reminds us that it's not having it all that makes us happy, it's appreciating what we do have. It's a very timely message and Lee Simpson actually makes it fun to hear."
- Rick Wolfe, Advisor to Changing Businesses at PostStone
"There are lots of books telling us to be more environmentally conscious consumers. There are lots of books telling us how to spend less money. However, there are not lots of books that take these topics and discuss them in such an original, useful, charming and reader-oriented manner. This is a great read with great insights."
- Alan C. Middleton. PhD., Assistant Professor of Marketing, Schulich School of Business, York University
AN EXCERPT FROM THE BOOK
What I did while I wasn't buying
Believe this: you would have time on your hands if you gave up buying stuff. It takes hours out of your life to acquire things. Sit down right now and look at the past month of your life. How much time might be gifted back to you if you weren't driving to a store, strolling down a street window-shopping, or struggling through a mall on a Saturday afternoon trying to find the perfect _______ (shoes, chair, lawn ornament, Christmas present, wallpaper - you fill in the blank).
Shopping takes up enormous amounts of our time. We go with a friend and make it a social event. We devote an entire day to doing retail chores with a spouse. We teach our children by example and then wonder why they bug us for a larger allowance, their own credit card, and seem obsessed by material possessions.
When you have figured out how much time you spent buying stuff, think how you might have spent that time instead. I used my new-found time in various ways, but there is one day that became iconic for me.
There are high-water marks in every collector's life. During my YBN, a period of low tides was actually the high-water mark time for me, for I collect sea glass.
I met my paternal grandparents only once. They took me to visit the sea near where they lived in England. Strolling a Bournemouth beach, Nana Katy bent to retrieve a glass pebble. Slipping it into my 4-year-old palm, she told me about "mermaid tears."
Neptune, so the story goes, that bully god of the oceans, forbade willful mermaids from exercising their powers to change nature's course without his explicit say-so. One sea-maid adored from afar the handsome ship's captain who traversed her watery territory. When his vessel started to falter in a wintry storm, her beloved was left clinging for life to the wheel of his ship. Our wayward mermaid defied Neptune and calmed the waves, permitting the brave captain to save his ship. Neptune was furious and banished the sobbing mermaid to the depths. To this day, so the tale goes, her tears wash up on the shores of the world as sea glass.
I save my bits of legend in multi-coloured layers in a high glass jar, a parting gift from my brother-in-law, Michael. He kept his matchbook collection in it. He passed it on with instructions to fill it to the brim with my glass bits, and to not even think of giving up this life until I had a complete layer of blue. Sea glass comes in various hues, from the commonest brown, green, and clear (think beer bottles), to the much rarer indigo and aquamarine. Shards of red, "black," and orange are hardly found at all. I have a mere handful of those colours and will bequeath the completion of that layer as a quest for my grandchildren.
It was Easter Monday of my YBN when I had my best sea-glass day ever. The laundry on the line reminded me of the weekend's feasts. My great-aunt's pink linen tablecloth and a tea towel, stained yellow with the turmeric my daughter and I had used to dye Easter eggs, flapped on the line. I hung these early so we could head for the beach with the dogs before that extraordinarily low tide came sweeping back to mask the sands again. The yield of smoothly sand-polished glass is best then, revealing nuggets of crystalline colour that would otherwise remain forever hidden.
That day, the unthinkable happened and my husband, our grandson, and I found three blue bits. As with all collections, identifying provenance is the charm. This particular shade of blue was reminiscent of bottles of German white wine and, also, the jars of the eucalyptus-scented face cream my mother used.
That same singular English summer, when I first heard the story of the mermaid's tears, my grandfather took me around his tiny garden and tutored my nose. Do you know every rose varietal has a different scent? This lesson, love of train travel, some faded photos, and the mermaid's tale are all that remain to me of these two wonderful people. But those memories fostered a lifetime of pleasure for me and mine.
How blessed I am that it was something of themselves they proffered and not merely something they purchased. I have taken this lesson to heart. Whatever time God gives me with our grandchildren I spend reading, cooking, painting, picnicking, swimming, hiking and talking. I want to bequeath to them only the best of what I have learned. It is my soul's delight that our beautiful daughter and her wonderful husband allow their children to attend the church where I preach. I am saddened when I hear young couples say they intend for their children to decide for themselves about church and then use that to justify never bringing them inside the door of a synagogue, mosque or chapel, as if a deep ignorance and mistrust could ever inform choice!
If I could give those little ones faith, I would, for I truly believe it is the greatest gift of all, nourishing as it does a sense of wonder, gratitude, and hope. Without that hope and the sense of optimism it fuels, I know I would not have the courage to fight against the relentless materialism of this society. For me, both hope and optimism are fed by my faith in this world and its inhabitants, as manifestations of the Divine. That is what makes any amount of effort to cleanse this world and ensure quality of life for all generations worthwhile.
Published by Wood Lake, October 1, 2015
6 x 9 inches, Paperback, 216 pages
ISBN 978-1-77064-801-2, Price $22.95
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