Quote of the Week: Be Lazy!
He may be a little on the intellectual side, but oh how we love Milan Kundera around here. If you’ve never read any of his work, we highly recommend “The Book of Laughter and Forgetting.” This week’s quote of the week is a unique perspective taken by Kundera, one of our favorite authors ever! “Ambition is a poor excuse for not having enough sense to be lazy.” We certainly don’t mean to [...]
Reducing Stuff for Back-to-School Time
Back-to-school time is a watershed time of year for many of us. It’s when the lazy days of summer come to a close and it’s time to get organized for the school year. If you’re a student, that means reorganizing closets, lockers and even your bedroom. If you’re a parent, it can mean getting the house in shape for the suddenly very busy schedule that’s about to begin. Either way, it’s a [...]
Back-to-School Tip: Set a Family Dinner Day
The goal of Postconsumers is basically two-fold. The first goal is obviously to help you reduce your dependency on “stuff” and the stressful hold of a media-driven consumer society on you. But the real goal, the one that is important to the Postconsumers staff, is to help you find the satisfaction of enough. We think that reducing the pull of consumerism on you is an important part of that, but finding the [...]
Quote of the Week: Mark Twain on Back to School
American author Mark Twain is known for having some unconventional views on education. In fact, we’re not so sure his views were unconventional so much as they were, at the time, views that weren’t common to express in public. In honor of the fact that, across the nation, school is about to start again for millions of children, teenagers and young adults (as well as some older adults!), we thought we’d celebrate [...]
The Back-to-School Budget: Setting It and Keeping It
One of the biggest challenges to postconsumers is the challenge of learning to budget. After all, many of us are coming down this road because we fell into the trap of thinking that we always had to have “more” in order to be happy, and that meant spending as though we always were going to need “more.” Many Americans struggle with keeping a budget, and back-to-school time can be one of the [...]
Back to School Shopping: Teaching Your Child About Consumption
It’s that time of year again. The time of year when summer is sadly winding down and soon our kids will be headed back to school. Schedules will get busier. It’s also the time when we’ll soon be bombarded by messages about getting our “back to school” shopping done and when, of course, our kids will tell us about all of the latest fashions that they “must have” before school starts. Back [...]
Quote of the Week: Julia Roberts on Love
With the film version of the popular book “Eat, Pray, Love” hitting theaters and starring American sweetheart Julia Roberts, we thought we’d devote the Friday “Quote of the Week” space to her and one of the many sweet (and also sometimes funny) quotes she’s given in interviews during her long film career. So, today, Julia Roberts on expressing love: “If you love someone, you say it, right then, out loud. Otherwise, the [...]
How Much Time Do You Spend on Facebook?
Did you know that the average American spends over thirty minutes a day on Facebook? We think that’s not too bad if what you’re doing is checking to see any updates on the Postconsumers Facebook page! In truth, we also don’t think that it’s so bad if you’re spending your time interacting with friends and family. But because tons of us spend so much time on Facebook these days, we should be [...]
The 24 Hour News Cycle Addiction
Last week, we found ourselves wondering if the President of the United States didn’t have better things to do with his time than have a press conference regarding Shirley Sherrod. Sherrod, in case you somehow missed it, is a U.S. Department of Agriculture employee who was fired after a tape was leaked of her supposedly admitting to racist behavior against a white farmer (Sherrod is African-American). But the story didn’t stop there. [...]
Quote of the Week: Live Now!
This week’s quote of the week comes from an unlikely source, Captain Jean Luc Picard of the Starship Enterprise. If you’ve ever watched any of the Star Trek: The Next Generation series, then you know that the iconic character, portrayed on TV by actor Patrick Stewart, is known for providing great quotes of wisdom. This one, in fact, resonates with us completely! “Live now. Make now always the most precious time. Now [...]
