Oh wow, here we are! My very first post on the new conifer pine! I thought it would only make sense to start this new endeavor talking about a topic that is part of my everyday life, shopping small. If we go all the way back to the beginning of my "shop small transition" as I like to call it, we would land about four years ago. I had just moved from Dallas to Denver and back into the safe haven of my parents' home, like many people my age also saw themselves doing around the same time. I enrolled in a school close to my apartment in Denver and decided to major in business. Even though I still have yet to complete any degree (that is another story for a different day), the courses I took there changed my perspective about the industry I work in! I have always had a very strong interest in environmental science since high school. I just never pursued it because frankly, the upper level science courses made me nervous! So, I'm in school for business and I needed to take a general science course. I chose environmental science again mainly because I knew it would be a piece of cake for me. At the same time, I was also taking Business Ethics. That combo was a serious wake up call! I had seen first hand the pitfalls of operating a huge retail company and the toll it takes on the environment. One thing I'll mention that still makes my stomach churn, is the amount of unnecessary waste! Literally thousands of plastic sleeves, one for each piece of clothing in a single shipment, would just get thrown away. I remember stuffing huge bags full of this plastic every single week during shipments and thinking, wait why?? Take this example and multiply it by every single clothing company in a mall and multiply that by all the malls in America and that’s just the tip of the iceberg! For an emotional, feel-everything-so-deeply person like me, this is why I don’t sleep well. And don't even get me started on the cardboard and perfectly brand new boxes that are only used once!Anyway, my mind was full of thoughts about the cycle of fast fashion and it made me frustrated. Not only the negative impact this has on the planet, but I also realized that we were all literally buying into this game. I was sick of keeping up this façade of persuading people to buy buy buy all this new made in China stuff that didn’t fit well, fell apart after one wash, ripped after only 6 months of wear (Madewell jeans anyone?!), or wasn’t in style after one season! We can do better than that!And so began my “shop small transition”. But don’t think for a second that I’ve got it all figured out and that I don’t make mistakes, I’m still in the middle of this exploration! Yes, I buy my face wash at Walgreens and I love it, but I haven’t been to an actual traditional shopping mall in ages and let me tell you…I still don’t think about going back!Just like the title of this post, start small. Think vintage before the mall, try that local pet shop before ordering on Amazon. I hope over the next few months, you’ll see how shopping local and small is so much more meaningful and rewarding!more to come, and thanks for joining!location: MEEK Vintage

casual at heart

starting small

monthly

postcard