30 Days of Less - Campaign Number Two

This past month, our family participated in the 30 days of nothing campaign. I originally heard about this campaign a year ago. Many people have asked us what "30 days of nothing" is. It really comes down to your own interpretation and what works for your family. The following is taken from the 30 days blogspot "Today, across the world, 1.3 billion people live on less than one dollar a day, 3 billion live on under two dollars a day, 1.3 billion have no access to clean water, 3 billion have no access to sanitation, 2 billion have no access to electricity, Americans spend $110 billion a year on fast food, 39 billion on their pets and carry 2 trillion dollars in credit card and auto debt, the disparity haunts me. How does a Christ-follower reconcile the needs of the world with the realities of every day life in an affluent nation. " 30 days of nothing is a fast from consumerism. Your sacrifice can be a little, or a lot, depending upon the willingness to participate and other family member. The originator of the campaign included no new clothes, books, movies, no trips to the ice cream parlor, no news paper, pictures, magazines, fancy hair gel or take and bake pizza. Basically nothing except what it takes to live. You can read more at 30daysofnothing.blogspot.com. We had a slightly different approach. Some of our sacrifices were just sacrifices such as no tv or movies, while others, such as limiting grocery spending to $20 per week and minimal use of vehicles were specifically selected to raise funds for Team World Vision. In our campaign, money that wasn't spent towards consumerism was added to an IOU jar. For example, we usually eat out on Fridays. If we chose to eat in, we would add an IOU to the jar for a typical meal cost. The same is true for the gas that was saved by biking instead of driving, and the cut in grocery bills. At the end of the month, we will total up the IOU's and add that to the contributions. Surprisingly, it was all going quite well until this past weekend with the no tv, biking to work, etc, but we were zapped by a cold/flu bug that really took the wind out of my sails. Little guy was so unhappy, we had to call on Bob (Veggietales) as he spent a lot of the weekend on the couch miserable, so the tv was back on after telling him it was broken for the past three weeks. We will have to total up our savings and see where we are at. Maybe next year we will actually make it the full 30 days!