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How to De-Leverage Your Life and Live More Local
The globalized supply chain is a mess. There are ways you can rely on it a little less.
Take a glance at the headlines in recent weeks and one thing has been very clear: The supply chain is in crisis.
Returning your pants is difficult. Shipping containers are stuck. Prices for auto parts and home renovation materials are soaring and take months to arrive. The convenience economy is decidedly not that convenient anymore.
Most of the articles detailing the dizzying complexities of our current supply chain mess place the focus on how to get it back in order ASAP. Obviously, the smart people explain, the natural world order is to have Teslas and ceiling fans and single-use coffee pod machines the very moment we need them — or at least within a 24 hour delivery window.
Curiously, few make the suggestion that perhaps we should take this disruption as a sign that this is a bad way to live? Maybe we should begin to think of ways to reduce our dependency on this just-in-time, instant gratification global supply chain that is, by the way, wrecking the planet? Most importantly, maybe we should start to do that even if we can’t give it up completely.
I’m the first to admit that life is difficult and exhausting even with the help of the modern conveniences capitalism affords. No one, least of all me, is expecting you to become a homesteader. However, once you start paying attention and finding small ways to live a little more locally-based, more and more seem to crop up. And indeed, finding more ways to meet your immediate needs using local resources can and will make your life better, slower, richer — and save you money too.
Note that very few of the suggestions on the list below are the kinds of VC-funded apps with slick, millennial branding you find on Instagram promising to delivering you perfectly vegan meal kits, or eco-cleaning products, or organic supplements/tampons/smoothies/fill in the blank. In other words, things that seem more sustainable or local, but actually involve a whole lot of supply chain complexity, money, marketing, and packaging to keep afloat.
