No more things - #71

And how I'll make it happen.

One of my favorite things to do in the final week of the year is absolutely smash my brain in with books. I read a friend’s first draft of her novel; both Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin and Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt are waiting for me at the library; I read In the Company of Killers by Bryan Christy; I finished Fair Play by Eve Rodsky; and I started Root Nurture Grow by Caro Langton and Rose Ray, The Language of Plants by Gagliano et al., The Book of Delights by Ross Gay, and a book I knew I’d love, Ann Patchett’s These Precious Days. 

Patchett’s These Precious Days is an essay collection, and in one of the essays she talks about her favorite all time resolution: to give up shopping.

I had deemed 2022 early on our Year of Spending. It didn’t mean we could just buy whatever we wanted — that’s not the kind of income stream we have in this house — but it did mean if we needed something to make life better, we should get it. We needed snow tires! We needed skis! We needed a new fireplace screen! We needed a rug under our bed because my icicle feet couldn’t take it anymore! And so we bought what we needed. You need a base layer? Get it. You need slippers? Buy ‘em. You need a chef’s knife? You’re the one making dinner, babe. 

I kept a close eye on our finances, working hard and taking jobs to ensure we stayed above board, and so within reason, we bought stuff. Ben also reinforced this because, prior to 2022, my ethos around things was, “I can’t afford it.” This drove Ben insane because the reality is I could afford to buy myself a $300 dress once a year. It just felt like I couldn’t. It felt like money was always being siphoned away by healthcare and car problems and food. So in 2022, I made it my mission to buy what we needed in an elaborate lead up to my dream for 2023: buy no things.

Patchett’s essay “My Year of No Shopping” isn’t particularly enlightening. She doesn’t go into great detail about how she gave up our national pastime, just saying it felt freeing. That when you want for less, you can see what others have more clearly, or really, what they don’t have. She says the things we pile up are “like a thick coat of Vaseline” obscuring our ability to see the details of life — the realities of it. A good portion of my spending was on other people anyway. That’s the biggest joy of making money: giving it away. I am a sucker for a GoFundMe. I have sponsored marathons for people I don’t even know. There is not a useful charity that does not know my PO Box. But if we’re going to (ugh) make a child, we’re going to need some money. Or, perhaps more realistically, a lot of it. So the donations will keep their place on the mantle of good feelings, but the needs that are really just wants shall be prosecuted as such.

Like most humans who participate in resolutions, I’ve had a few successes but mostly forgotten ideas. Of the three most prominent sudden habits I’ve stuck to, none of them occurred around the New Year. Daily French was a pandemic hobby that I picked up in March 2020. Giving up nail biting happened in the middle of a summer around 2017 after I had to have an infected cuticle lacerated. I still don’t bite my nails. And eating vegetables five times a week was something I added for Lent in 2010, which is neither the premise of Lent, nor is Lent part of my religion, which I don’t have. But the vegetables stuck, all these years later. So what makes my britches so big about this particular “resolution” as to shout it to you via letter? 

To start, it is easy to not buy extraneous things here. There’s literally nothing to buy in this town. There are no stores, no kitschy coffee shops selling records — in fact the only thing you can buy is overpriced lemonade in the summer and I consider that more of an HOA fee than anything else. If you’re not placating the feral children, you are provoking them. 

However, around the mountains and into the big city of 2500, there are plenty of things to buy, every one of them more expensive than the last. It’s a resort town and all of that oil money seeps out of the massive Hollywood Rigs with Texas plates like exhaust. When I buy something in town, it’s usually coffee or flowers, groceries or gas. But town was never the problem. The real problem is the internet. The real problem is me. And the way I know I am a problem is that the idea of not buying a dress in March and a vase in April and cat toys all year makes me physically uncomfortable. Hard to ignore a sign so loud as your own bristling.

The problem with things is that we already have so many of them, and often, if we put in a little effort, what we have works just fine. Would a different size pot work perfectly for that one sauce? Sure, but can I just use the other pot? Probably. And when we make the things we have work, we can delight ourselves. Take it from Patchett:

“My first few months of no-shopping were full of gleeful discoveries. I ran out of lip balm early on and before making a decision as to whether lip balm constituted a need, I looked in my desk drawers and coat pockets. I found five lip balms. Once I started digging under the bathroom sink I realized I could probably run this experiment another three years before using up all the lotion, soap and dental floss.”

And many of the things you don’t have, you can borrow. Need a lightweight puffy for that hut-to-hut trip? Ten people in town have one. Actually do need that special sized pot? Text the neighbors that cook. Somehow have a life where you’re appearing on multiple talk shows? Raid your friends’ closets. One of the common themes of this newsletter, of why I moved to a town of 200 some people, is that I wanted to feel more connected, but in order to feel more connected, one has to connect more. It’s easy to forget how good it feels for other people to be needed, to be helpful. If someone asked me to borrow a dress, do you know how fast I would say “come over”? We forget that’s not just how we feel, but how most people feel. 

Much of what we’re buying, what I want to buy, isn’t even my own want. They are wants constructed by companies selling you a different life — but it’s a life they’re selling everyone. Take it from the late, great Dame Vivienne Westwood:

BRI @BriMalandro

Vivienne Westwood predicting the future of fashion about 25 years ago

I don’t think anyone would argue with this project, nor based on my previous writings would you find it all that surprising, but that doesn’t mean it will be easy. The dopamine swirl of newness is addictive, and I’ll be piling it on top of giving up marijuana as we approach babydom. So how can I do it? 

First, unsubscribe and unfollow. 

How can I know I want that beautiful vase if Home Beautiful can’t send it to me? I’ll never know Quaker Marine is having a 50% off sale if they’re not in my inbox. And I won’t know to immediately lust after the latest designs from Farm Rio if they don’t appear on my feed. 

Marketing teams love to send emails during the liminal dead week, so I’ve been opening my inbox every day to click that delicious unsubscribe button. 

Other marketing teams love to send emails in January. New year, new opportunity to convince you that they have the solutions to all your problems. Unsubscribe, mark as spam, delete. 

Also, mute the girl sponsored by Arc’Teryx. You don’t need another jacket. 

Fight the feeling. 

Buying something new is fun! Surge of dopamine! Prettier house! Prettier life! Prettier you! But dopamine is not a rare gem, it can be found elsewhere. I feel a surge of dopamine when I finish cleaning the house, or when I complete an athletic challenge, or when I do something good for someone else. So the next time the urge to scroll the internet for things hits, I am going to browse something else: my house and my closet for things I’m not using that can find a better home somewhere else. And into the Free Bin it will go. 

Employ some tricks.

1. The ole backward hanger trick. As I sit here, I know there are three pairs of jeans I almost never wear anymore hiding in a drawer. They’re all so tight, because that was the style. I have other jeans I do wear – they’re worn in and comfortable. It’s time to rehome the ones that aren’t.

2. Add it to a list. If there’s something I am dying to own, I’ll add it to my “Wish List” which lives at the bottom of my To-Do List. The Wish List includes all kinds of wishes from makeup to recipes to workshops. Adding things to the list does two things: it makes me feel one step closer to that thing, but it also helps me see how many things I no longer want later on. (Not useful to this experiment, but adding things to the list also helps you see how many things end up on sale.) 

3. Clean and rearrange. Any room, any corner. Do a deep clean and a little rearranging of existing tchotchke. What feels new is new. 

4. Create accountability. Desire creeps in, and you need a friend with a broom to thwack it away. And I have just the friend.

Grant passes:

The key to a new habit is flexibility. Rigidity only makes things breakable. Malleability is how trees make their way, and so I shall follow suit. Here are my exceptions:

• Tattoos. They’re not things, they’re experiences and memories. 

• A knickknack or two on our honeymoon, because we are finally, finally going

• God I guess baby stuff? Assuming we actually go through with this decision to unequivocally make our lives insufferable sleepless nightmares, we’ll need some stuff. (That said, we’ve already been given some of the things we need as hand-me-downs, and so we shall hand-them-down when the time comes for us, too.)

• Renovation materials. There are a handful of projects we have to complete in 2023, and while we do all the work ourselves, the work requires materials.

• Dinners, events, experiences. I want my life to be full, just not with stuff.

• Books. I get most of my books from the library anyway, but preorders matter.

• Items of actual necessity. If we run out of dish soap, I am going to buy dish soap. (This is not a free pass to keep trying shampoos though. I need to run out of shampoo before I can buy another one. We are listing exceptions, not loopholes.) 

Earlier this week, out my kitchen window, I saw some of the town kids getting pulled up the hill by a makeshift rope-tow out the back of someone’s truck. 

keltonwrites

A post shared by Kelton Wright (@keltonwrites)

They didn’t need ski passes. They weren’t all decked out in the latest gear. It wasn’t a rope tow bought off the internet. It was just a rope someone tied, some snow, and a fun idea. When we’re looking for ways to scratch itches, we welcome creativity in; we give it a box to work within. My big thing this year isn’t browsing or shopping, it’s writing. My words for the year are Tenacity and Joy. My birthday passed yesterday and reflecting upon the year, I didn’t think “so glad I got those pillows” or “wearing that dress was really the moment.” I thought about who I met in that dress. I thought about who subscribed to and shared this newsletter. I thought about Finn and Cooper and Snoots and all the time we spent together in the yard.

In 2023, the ugliest sounding year to date, I don’t want to be opening emails from Bloomscape and Alex Mill, even though I love their products. I want to be propagating, producing, and peeling back the layers of stuff to see where the good is hiding. 

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I feel like it should go without saying this disclaimer, but that’s not the internet we’re in: I’m very grateful for what I have, and I know that working toward not buying things is a far flung universe from not being able to buy things. If this newsletter is one of those things you can’t afford to buy or support, let me know and I can give you a paid subscription, no questions asked. 

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If this essay resonated with you, this one probably will too.

Do I need that? - #32

Happiest of New Years to you. I am another year older as of yesterday, and another day more hopeful that if you like Shangrilogs, you’ll share it. It’s the greatest “thing” you can give this writer.