Fewer, Better Things: The Importance of Handmade Goods

What are the odds that, in this very moment, there's an Amazon package waiting for you on your doorstep? Too good. Although, many could argue with great ease how not good this reality is. Relentless consumerism, wherein access sacrifices handmade quality and convenience begets senseless waste, has overridden our culture to an unfathomable degree, especially since the pandemic. 

People don't as often go to the grocery stores or support local farmers, rather they order online from Whole Foods (Amazon). They stress-buy things they don't need late at night when they should be asleep. Instead of supporting small and local, they strengthen the big and ubiquitous corporations.

Why? Because it's easier, but easier rarely means better when it comes to the buying of goods in a hasty fashion. Rather, let's consider a healthy, impactful alternative: fewer, better things.

Now is the time to tip the scale back in favor of fewer, better things: handmade and homemade goods that put sustainability, social impact and support for artisans at their core.

Fewer, Better Things

The art of making life simple and beautiful, as opposed to cluttered and compulsive, takes practice. Fewer, better things is a regular practice of restraint that begins with the understanding that we already have most of what we need and that we are enough without every worldly possession.

To have every latest gadget or the most expensive of fashion trends drives a lot less toward status than you may hope, but making it count with the few things we do invest in shows a delicate curation in the daily expression of one's life. It's how we move through the world, through our day, and it's an energy that follows us as we greet people along the way.

To invest in things that truly make you happy, handmade items someone put their time, energy and love into carries with it a tangible expression of artistry in the creation of one's aesthetic, one that pleases the senses but is not dependent on them for happiness. We can be detached from the things we love because we are who we are without them. Everything after is the cherry on top.

Uniquely Authentic

In a city best known for its salesmanship, posturing and the art of seduction, where each work of art comes is printed in stacks and every person is waiting for their moment in the sun, look a little deeper for that which is truly authentic -- the one of one.

At Late Sunday Afternoon, each piece carries with it an air of originality, probably because each piece is uniquely authentic. Its lengths varying, even if by the tiniest bit, its edges sewn on and its blessings -- to love, happiness, adventure and mystery -- knotted within its home shop by its team. These are wearable reminders that you, too, are uniquely authentic and is meant to continue reminding you as you wear it around your neck.

Artisan Support

Never has there been a better time to support your local artists. No matter the skill, no matter the trade, every artist has been affected by the pandemic, the oversaturation of the Internet, the proliferation of AI, the expediency of Amazon and the endless access to capacity for creating, curating and self-promotion that encompasses us. 

Without our artists, we all look alike and feel a little less unique. Without our artists, we lose that touch of community and that push for positive social change. Without our artists, life looks a little more colorless and a lot more like a mass-produced picture you in the home decor aisle of Target, right next to the towels and toilet cleaners.

The Ethos Is in the Arena

Simply put, you can buy stuff that looks cool online, but it's in the small business shops that you meet the people who toil over ideas, work so hard to bring them to life and then construct a space that welcomes a community of people to step into their world. 

We're not insisting you throw out your computer and go completely Amish in your consumerism ways. By all means, shop online -- it is 2024 -- but do so in a sustainable fashion and try not for the Internet to be your only means, but more so the window shopping that gets you into the store the next morning when they open. It's a lost art, like eye contact or produce swapping with people in your orbit.

Sustainability and Social Impact

For all the waste we create, all the jires in our oceans, let's make an attempt to undo our contributions to the downfall of our beautiful planet and instead treat every day like it's Earth Day. Start giving back rather than taking away, give up what we don't need to make space for few, better things. Leave the rest for people who really do need it.

A small shift for one person may not seem like a lot, but if we all shift together, the world moves in an entirely new direction.

Big love.