Divorce a narcissist and go into hiding: great start! You’ll get nothing from their $100,000 income. Start over at 60. Lose 1/3 of stuff, especially art materials.
Get physically disabled by city negligence (can’t sue) and end a low-pay but essential career; hospice care. Try to live on lowest rung SS. 88% goes to skyrocketing rent.
Get displaced anyway by wealthy tech bros mobbing the city. Go from a house to an apartment to a crappy room @~$1000/mo: lose 75% of everything you treasured: kitchen kit/food pantry/library/art/family artifacts/vintage clothing. Try to shove everything you could salvage into one tiny bedroom and a public room where some cat pisses on it. What can’t fit in gets ruined in the rain (200 gorgeous books, pioneer furniture).
Spend hours going through fiercely saved family photos (sole survivor), feeling an obligation to 4th cousins to pass along unique family history. They ask for salable items not offered.
Go into a deep winter depression reliving an abusive childhood via those jumbled photos; works very well to keep one out of stores! There is literally not one cubic foot of space left for any new things anyway.
All the things you waited for and lovingly husband now can be ripped from you by developers’ demolition, fire or theft, despite how carefully you curated their acquisition. They’re unique and wonderful and meaningful and why wouldn’t you get attached? But a personal hurricane can arrive with little warning to anyone.
There are millions of American refugees all around us, many of us invisible because of age and/or gender, torn from a simple life of ‘enough’ to price-gouging precariousness in our senior years. Not to get too far off topic, but an old woman is treated like nothing but a resource by 99.9% of men. “Move yer shit”
Sometimes I wonder if I shouldn’t just throw a match at what’s left of it all. That’s the PTSD…
I’m so grateful I can still get my dopamine squirts from giving real compliments and writing thank you letters, instead of the triumphant thrifting treasure hunts of my travels. It’s FUN isn’t it? But then it follows us home and we keep it, internalize it until it’s part of our identity. Well, until it’s ripped away back into the rivers of stuff.
I’m amazed at how easily buying becomes a habit - and how hard it is to break? At a few points in my life (planning a wedding, having a baby), there’s a lot of purchasing going on. But then it’s hard to change that “habit” once the milestone has passed, in large part because of that “feel good boost” you get from thinking this “thing” is going to make it all better (or whatever). I find that I need those hard breaks to re-set (no-spend November, Frugal February, Miserly May, etc.).
Nic and I talked about this a little in regards to her six-week ban — that there could be two weeks banned every month, or alternate months, or any kind of boundary around purchasing like put the item on a list and if you still need it four months later, get it. (Especially b/c then it might be on sale.) But it's difficult in a culture that's convinced us things themselves will improve things in general.
My biggest change has been purging.... systematically going through each room and donating stuff (or throwing it out) with things I don't really use. Part of it is my age - almost 70 - and don't want to leave a mound of work for people after I die.... and part of it is creating space. Simplifying my home to what gives me joy. I love the art in my house - each piece bought intentionally on international trips... but I only allow myself to buy ONE piece of art wherever I travel. I also bring back one rock - only one. So I have to choose which rock means the most to me. I put the rocks in a silver porridge bowl (from some relative in the past) - but I can identify each rock and where it came from. Sometimes I sift the rocks in my hand - it's comforting. I do need to stop buying... am encouraged by your year of no buying (except essentials), so I have started to question "Is this a need?" or is it a "nice to have". I've stopped pushing the button for "nice to have". I'm okay with buying a new bird feeder when mine cracked, or a new bathing suit (because the ones I have are 20 years old and too small), or the international charger I need for my trip to South Africa because none of the international chargers I own will work there (their charger is different from everywhere else in the world).... I like the concious thinking about each purchase. It is mindful. And I think - could I make it myself? Could I do without? Do I really need one more pair of stylish boots (I love my boots) - but seriously, how often do I wear the boots I have? I live in the country... I do yard work. I don't go out that much.... so wear what you already have! Thanks for getting me to think about all of this! And love the beads, and your colorful stairs....
I've loved trying to incorporate "could I make it myself" because it's often so difficult! But I did have one success: for the beads, we needed a way to draw them back, and I had these old wooden beads laying around. So I fastened some eyehooks to either side of the doorway, weaved two pieces of old linen ribbon through ten wood beads each, tied bows on either end, and now they served as curtain draws. And they look like they're from Anthropologie. Of course it required having the eyehooks, the beads, and the linen, but I did. And why not use them.
First of all, the trash issue. I'm not quite sure why this is, but I feel like the amount of trash my husband and I produce over the course of one week is insane. We find ourselves asking each other how the trash is full already. How is it full already?? I don't know.
I would love to spend less money than I do. At the beginning of 2023, I made a list of the things to buy for our house that we have not yet managed to find since moving in 2.5 years ago. In a way, that helps me focus when I get distracted by lower-priority items, but there are so many small things that I end up buying because they're useful in some way—like the set of chicken wire garden cloches I bought this weekend to prevent the rabbits from eating my newly planted native geraniums and false indigo. It killed me to spend over $100 on something fashioned from chicken wire! Shouldn't that cost, like, $50 at most?
Then there's the clothing issue. It's so easy for my spending to get out of hand on clothes because anything of remotely good quality is expensive, and somehow I'm still complaining that I have nothing to wear.
I love the idea you mentioned below of taking two weeks every month (or every other month) to ban spending. I think I'm going to figure out how to make that work for me. I like the thinking that if I wait to buy it and then revisit it in a few weeks or months and still think I need it, buy it then.
It's the delaying that works best for me. By the time I look at the item again, I'm like, "this? I don't want this." Once the initial surge of want has passed, it's usually not something I need. But regarding the chicken wire, I feel you deeply.
The subject of what is enough is one that is near and dear to my heart, too, and I've written about 'want vs need' on my newsletter. Except for food, which is a big priority in my budget, I rarely buy much of anything and when I do buy it's from estate and yards sales or the thrift store. I do some bartering as well including pie workshops for legal services and tax prep. I get together with girlfriends for clothing swaps, too. Plus there is so much good stuff out there that is free. I can't tell you how many times the right thing shows up at just the right time of someone who is giving something away. On a road trip right now, I'm coming home with a tiny bathroom vanity with sink and fixtures and LED ceiling lights both of which will be used in a project later this year... all for FREE and in GREAT shape! I do "window shop," both in new and used stores, just because I enjoy looking...same as I do in art galleries and museums.
Food is such an important part of our budget, too. We're here to eat! And agreed - so much good stuff for free, it just requires the time to look for it. I mean, our hot tub was free. I'm in thousands of dollars of debt to the universe for that one. 😂
I ended up deleting my Instagram account in part because of the decision fatigue from constantly seeing things I ‘wanted’. It’s made a noticeable difference for me
So I’ve been in one of those buying stages for the past 2 years. Wedding planning, wedding, pregnant, new house, now a new baby.
And needing clothes for my new body shape and size, as nothing fits and I go back to work in a business formal environment soon.
I’m trying to build a capsule wardrobe for the next three months. Figure then I’ll see what my shape and size is, and go from there. Don’t want to spend a ton on clothing I’ll barely wear, but also need something that fits, which helps me feel confident back at work.
Having a baby - so much stuff. It’s insane. I returned so much stuff we were given, or donated it if it was duplicates. But it just keeps coming. My daughter is 9 weeks old, and for the first 7 weeks literally daily there was a surprise package from someone (random ones too. Our friends parents we’ve met twice. A high school friend. A family friend I haven’t seen in 10 years. So many religious books from my aunt, which all seem geared toward postpartum depression, which thankfully I don’t have). Incredibly generous but has made conscious consumption nearly impossible.
Have had to come to terms with it’s just a lot of stuff for this season, and to try and minimize it where I can.
We're trying to get pregnant, and already people have been like "here, take all this stuff, please, take it." It sounds like your reality is also our suspicion, which is that a lot of that stuff you don't even need. Has that been true?
Yes and no. Some has been really helpful, but the timing is off. At first I said yes to everything (even an ugly crib, cause hey free crib!). We wound up with three hand me down cribs, I kept the one we liked best, gave away the rest. Same thing happened with stroller, pack n play, and playmat. So I’d wait until you are closer to needing the stuff. People are eager to give it away, and that won’t change, it will happen closer to when you need it.
I also think we got a ton of stuff, and then figured out what the baby liked/what worked for us and it was a smaller amount of stuff. Not sure how to go through that process without all the stuff, since babies are different (tried 4 swaddles to find the one we love, same with bottles and pacifiers).
Hold off on any of the gadgets, most we’ve used only once.
Two exceptions for us- diapers and books. You can never have too many of those.
I am all on board with mindfulness around consumption. For several years now, I have kept a list of all my new purchases and acquisitions (not including food, toiletries, and items like that which are consumed quickly--I'm listing anything that comes into the house and stays a while). Just the practice of listing things made me more aware of what I accumulate, and I bring less stuff into the house each year. I've also been decluttering and clearing out, but there is just so. much. Because from the ages of 20 to 40, I kept everything that came my way!
This was such a propulsive, honest read—and listen! And I cheered, exclaimed, and bowed to so many moments of dualism, reckoning, and revelation. Interest rates alongside 'asking' prices! gofundmes awaiting us all, and my own personal memory of KW remarking that the place where I lay my head was, at the time, "the most empty Airbnb she'd ever slept in" https://open.substack.com/pub/shangrilogs/p/what-counts-as-enough-85?r=bbb&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
outside of underwear, socks (generally most under things), and some shoes, i try to buy my clothing secondhand almost all of the time. i love something a little worn in, and the piece staying out of a landfill. sometimes it requires patience if i’m looking for a certain item, but then finding it is so satisfying.
Thought about this a lot when packing for my move. You don’t realize how much stuff you accumulate until you have to box it up.
I also realized how particular people are about getting new stuff. When I tried to donate some furniture before my move, thrift stores straight up rejected it and said it wasn’t good enough. As you mentioned, I think a lot of people would rather just buy the exact item they want from Amazon. “Discovering” a cool item for your home seems to have fallen out of style.
I think at least for Gen Z, it's gaining new mass appeal in a way it never did for the broader American culture before, and it's obviously inspired by climate fear (rightfully so.) Facebook Marketplace and even the curb itself seem to have great influence. But we're also up against a whole generation of worn out Ikea. So many problems. So much stuff.
Also true for me when I left a 3,000 sq ft home for a 1,500 sq ft home 16 months ago. I had sooo much stuff (although in my defense I also had had a returned home adult daughter and granddaughter in the house for six years). And the irony that the smaller home I bought was filled with inappropriate (for me) furniture left behind by the prior owner who passed away meant that I purged two houses. At least on an island someone will always take and reuse pretty much anything donated. But I still relish the remembered joy of starting with less than what filled the new home and finding perfect pieces, slowly. I am still wanting to edit more and see whether blank spaces even need to be filled...
I now save links to “nice to have” things I’m looking at in a bookmarks list on Safari. I have gone back to buy a few, but I like the delay. Do I want this or do I like looking at it right now? I live in a third floor walk up, and I’m starting to get better at a “something in, something out” method. It’s not exact and certainly not all the time, but small steps are worth something.
How to buy less? Hmmm… Here ya go:
Divorce a narcissist and go into hiding: great start! You’ll get nothing from their $100,000 income. Start over at 60. Lose 1/3 of stuff, especially art materials.
Get physically disabled by city negligence (can’t sue) and end a low-pay but essential career; hospice care. Try to live on lowest rung SS. 88% goes to skyrocketing rent.
Get displaced anyway by wealthy tech bros mobbing the city. Go from a house to an apartment to a crappy room @~$1000/mo: lose 75% of everything you treasured: kitchen kit/food pantry/library/art/family artifacts/vintage clothing. Try to shove everything you could salvage into one tiny bedroom and a public room where some cat pisses on it. What can’t fit in gets ruined in the rain (200 gorgeous books, pioneer furniture).
Spend hours going through fiercely saved family photos (sole survivor), feeling an obligation to 4th cousins to pass along unique family history. They ask for salable items not offered.
Go into a deep winter depression reliving an abusive childhood via those jumbled photos; works very well to keep one out of stores! There is literally not one cubic foot of space left for any new things anyway.
All the things you waited for and lovingly husband now can be ripped from you by developers’ demolition, fire or theft, despite how carefully you curated their acquisition. They’re unique and wonderful and meaningful and why wouldn’t you get attached? But a personal hurricane can arrive with little warning to anyone.
There are millions of American refugees all around us, many of us invisible because of age and/or gender, torn from a simple life of ‘enough’ to price-gouging precariousness in our senior years. Not to get too far off topic, but an old woman is treated like nothing but a resource by 99.9% of men. “Move yer shit”
Sometimes I wonder if I shouldn’t just throw a match at what’s left of it all. That’s the PTSD…
I’m so grateful I can still get my dopamine squirts from giving real compliments and writing thank you letters, instead of the triumphant thrifting treasure hunts of my travels. It’s FUN isn’t it? But then it follows us home and we keep it, internalize it until it’s part of our identity. Well, until it’s ripped away back into the rivers of stuff.
Maybe I should cash it in for my first tattoo?
Honestly, a tattoo is probably exactly what I’d get.
I’m amazed at how easily buying becomes a habit - and how hard it is to break? At a few points in my life (planning a wedding, having a baby), there’s a lot of purchasing going on. But then it’s hard to change that “habit” once the milestone has passed, in large part because of that “feel good boost” you get from thinking this “thing” is going to make it all better (or whatever). I find that I need those hard breaks to re-set (no-spend November, Frugal February, Miserly May, etc.).
Nic and I talked about this a little in regards to her six-week ban — that there could be two weeks banned every month, or alternate months, or any kind of boundary around purchasing like put the item on a list and if you still need it four months later, get it. (Especially b/c then it might be on sale.) But it's difficult in a culture that's convinced us things themselves will improve things in general.
My biggest change has been purging.... systematically going through each room and donating stuff (or throwing it out) with things I don't really use. Part of it is my age - almost 70 - and don't want to leave a mound of work for people after I die.... and part of it is creating space. Simplifying my home to what gives me joy. I love the art in my house - each piece bought intentionally on international trips... but I only allow myself to buy ONE piece of art wherever I travel. I also bring back one rock - only one. So I have to choose which rock means the most to me. I put the rocks in a silver porridge bowl (from some relative in the past) - but I can identify each rock and where it came from. Sometimes I sift the rocks in my hand - it's comforting. I do need to stop buying... am encouraged by your year of no buying (except essentials), so I have started to question "Is this a need?" or is it a "nice to have". I've stopped pushing the button for "nice to have". I'm okay with buying a new bird feeder when mine cracked, or a new bathing suit (because the ones I have are 20 years old and too small), or the international charger I need for my trip to South Africa because none of the international chargers I own will work there (their charger is different from everywhere else in the world).... I like the concious thinking about each purchase. It is mindful. And I think - could I make it myself? Could I do without? Do I really need one more pair of stylish boots (I love my boots) - but seriously, how often do I wear the boots I have? I live in the country... I do yard work. I don't go out that much.... so wear what you already have! Thanks for getting me to think about all of this! And love the beads, and your colorful stairs....
I've loved trying to incorporate "could I make it myself" because it's often so difficult! But I did have one success: for the beads, we needed a way to draw them back, and I had these old wooden beads laying around. So I fastened some eyehooks to either side of the doorway, weaved two pieces of old linen ribbon through ten wood beads each, tied bows on either end, and now they served as curtain draws. And they look like they're from Anthropologie. Of course it required having the eyehooks, the beads, and the linen, but I did. And why not use them.
First of all, the trash issue. I'm not quite sure why this is, but I feel like the amount of trash my husband and I produce over the course of one week is insane. We find ourselves asking each other how the trash is full already. How is it full already?? I don't know.
I would love to spend less money than I do. At the beginning of 2023, I made a list of the things to buy for our house that we have not yet managed to find since moving in 2.5 years ago. In a way, that helps me focus when I get distracted by lower-priority items, but there are so many small things that I end up buying because they're useful in some way—like the set of chicken wire garden cloches I bought this weekend to prevent the rabbits from eating my newly planted native geraniums and false indigo. It killed me to spend over $100 on something fashioned from chicken wire! Shouldn't that cost, like, $50 at most?
Then there's the clothing issue. It's so easy for my spending to get out of hand on clothes because anything of remotely good quality is expensive, and somehow I'm still complaining that I have nothing to wear.
I love the idea you mentioned below of taking two weeks every month (or every other month) to ban spending. I think I'm going to figure out how to make that work for me. I like the thinking that if I wait to buy it and then revisit it in a few weeks or months and still think I need it, buy it then.
It's the delaying that works best for me. By the time I look at the item again, I'm like, "this? I don't want this." Once the initial surge of want has passed, it's usually not something I need. But regarding the chicken wire, I feel you deeply.
“I don’t like it, but I like you.” 💞💞💞
The subject of what is enough is one that is near and dear to my heart, too, and I've written about 'want vs need' on my newsletter. Except for food, which is a big priority in my budget, I rarely buy much of anything and when I do buy it's from estate and yards sales or the thrift store. I do some bartering as well including pie workshops for legal services and tax prep. I get together with girlfriends for clothing swaps, too. Plus there is so much good stuff out there that is free. I can't tell you how many times the right thing shows up at just the right time of someone who is giving something away. On a road trip right now, I'm coming home with a tiny bathroom vanity with sink and fixtures and LED ceiling lights both of which will be used in a project later this year... all for FREE and in GREAT shape! I do "window shop," both in new and used stores, just because I enjoy looking...same as I do in art galleries and museums.
Food is such an important part of our budget, too. We're here to eat! And agreed - so much good stuff for free, it just requires the time to look for it. I mean, our hot tub was free. I'm in thousands of dollars of debt to the universe for that one. 😂
You and me both!
I ended up deleting my Instagram account in part because of the decision fatigue from constantly seeing things I ‘wanted’. It’s made a noticeable difference for me
Makes sense!
So I’ve been in one of those buying stages for the past 2 years. Wedding planning, wedding, pregnant, new house, now a new baby.
And needing clothes for my new body shape and size, as nothing fits and I go back to work in a business formal environment soon.
I’m trying to build a capsule wardrobe for the next three months. Figure then I’ll see what my shape and size is, and go from there. Don’t want to spend a ton on clothing I’ll barely wear, but also need something that fits, which helps me feel confident back at work.
Having a baby - so much stuff. It’s insane. I returned so much stuff we were given, or donated it if it was duplicates. But it just keeps coming. My daughter is 9 weeks old, and for the first 7 weeks literally daily there was a surprise package from someone (random ones too. Our friends parents we’ve met twice. A high school friend. A family friend I haven’t seen in 10 years. So many religious books from my aunt, which all seem geared toward postpartum depression, which thankfully I don’t have). Incredibly generous but has made conscious consumption nearly impossible.
Have had to come to terms with it’s just a lot of stuff for this season, and to try and minimize it where I can.
We're trying to get pregnant, and already people have been like "here, take all this stuff, please, take it." It sounds like your reality is also our suspicion, which is that a lot of that stuff you don't even need. Has that been true?
Yes and no. Some has been really helpful, but the timing is off. At first I said yes to everything (even an ugly crib, cause hey free crib!). We wound up with three hand me down cribs, I kept the one we liked best, gave away the rest. Same thing happened with stroller, pack n play, and playmat. So I’d wait until you are closer to needing the stuff. People are eager to give it away, and that won’t change, it will happen closer to when you need it.
I also think we got a ton of stuff, and then figured out what the baby liked/what worked for us and it was a smaller amount of stuff. Not sure how to go through that process without all the stuff, since babies are different (tried 4 swaddles to find the one we love, same with bottles and pacifiers).
Hold off on any of the gadgets, most we’ve used only once.
Two exceptions for us- diapers and books. You can never have too many of those.
Good luck!! An exciting time
Those beads look perfect.
I am all on board with mindfulness around consumption. For several years now, I have kept a list of all my new purchases and acquisitions (not including food, toiletries, and items like that which are consumed quickly--I'm listing anything that comes into the house and stays a while). Just the practice of listing things made me more aware of what I accumulate, and I bring less stuff into the house each year. I've also been decluttering and clearing out, but there is just so. much. Because from the ages of 20 to 40, I kept everything that came my way!
Whoa I love that idea of listing the new acquisitions — I might try that!
This was such a propulsive, honest read—and listen! And I cheered, exclaimed, and bowed to so many moments of dualism, reckoning, and revelation. Interest rates alongside 'asking' prices! gofundmes awaiting us all, and my own personal memory of KW remarking that the place where I lay my head was, at the time, "the most empty Airbnb she'd ever slept in" https://open.substack.com/pub/shangrilogs/p/what-counts-as-enough-85?r=bbb&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
I can clearly see you were saving yourself for Jackrabbit. Big hugs and love.
outside of underwear, socks (generally most under things), and some shoes, i try to buy my clothing secondhand almost all of the time. i love something a little worn in, and the piece staying out of a landfill. sometimes it requires patience if i’m looking for a certain item, but then finding it is so satisfying.
i use mercari most of the time, and ebay as well. you have to know your measurements, too
Never heard of mercari!
it’s like poshmark, but no weird social aspect to it. when you’re buying things again, the amount of farm rio on there is insane.
oh no lol
So excited to have something to listen to while I sit on the couch playing video games whilst wallowing in menstrual pain haha
Lol, I love this plan.
Thought about this a lot when packing for my move. You don’t realize how much stuff you accumulate until you have to box it up.
I also realized how particular people are about getting new stuff. When I tried to donate some furniture before my move, thrift stores straight up rejected it and said it wasn’t good enough. As you mentioned, I think a lot of people would rather just buy the exact item they want from Amazon. “Discovering” a cool item for your home seems to have fallen out of style.
I think at least for Gen Z, it's gaining new mass appeal in a way it never did for the broader American culture before, and it's obviously inspired by climate fear (rightfully so.) Facebook Marketplace and even the curb itself seem to have great influence. But we're also up against a whole generation of worn out Ikea. So many problems. So much stuff.
Also true for me when I left a 3,000 sq ft home for a 1,500 sq ft home 16 months ago. I had sooo much stuff (although in my defense I also had had a returned home adult daughter and granddaughter in the house for six years). And the irony that the smaller home I bought was filled with inappropriate (for me) furniture left behind by the prior owner who passed away meant that I purged two houses. At least on an island someone will always take and reuse pretty much anything donated. But I still relish the remembered joy of starting with less than what filled the new home and finding perfect pieces, slowly. I am still wanting to edit more and see whether blank spaces even need to be filled...
Two homes at once! That's a lot just to go through, let alone the weight of the decisions.
I now save links to “nice to have” things I’m looking at in a bookmarks list on Safari. I have gone back to buy a few, but I like the delay. Do I want this or do I like looking at it right now? I live in a third floor walk up, and I’m starting to get better at a “something in, something out” method. It’s not exact and certainly not all the time, but small steps are worth something.
That's my favorite way to do it. Add it to the list. Look at it later. Realize I don't need it or even really want it.