On Saturdays [especially when it is not gardening season] I sleep in and read long-form journalism. This Saturday it was the Atlantic. Among the political stuff [which I am giving myself permission to skim or skip right now] I encountered this article from the Atlantic on the new Amazon Haul which I found perversely fascinating.
My shopping habits are already pretty atypical. So even though my disdain for Jeff Bezos and Amazon generally would prevent me from engaging in this new offering, I also have no window into this Shein and Temu shopping experience described by the author Ian Bogost. I read this article like an ethnography of the metamodern consumer, though I don’t know that it truly is. People will actually have to tell me. I have never even been to these websites.
How I spend money and amass physical items has been shaped by a number of factors, some of which are pretty interesting [at least to me], but suffice it to say: I just do not buy very much stuff, I loathe parting with money, I detest the experience of most synthetic materials, I value durability and history in objects, I live in a place that is already a bit of desert for consumer goods of any quality, every time I interact with something I remember how I came to possess it and if I purchased it what it cost, and I am disgusted by conspicuous consumption and packing materials.
Even before embarking on my year of not buying stuff in 2019 [that ended with buying the ultimate thing: a house] I was never a retail therapy sort of a person. Buying things, and even having too many things, doesn’t make me feel better and usually makes me feel worse. In reading the article I was reminded, anew, that this is not a common experience for most people. In fact, our economy more and more depends on this widening swathe of consumer activity that is not only buying stuff, but buying low quality things for a dopamine hit and glorifying the experience of it.
Because I spend a fair amount of time on the internet [though I am not on TikTok or a subscriber to any platform that generates influencer-style videos like YouTuve] I know about unboxing videos, I have seen sponsored influencer content on social media, I encounter ads leveraging my browsing data attempting to predict what will cause me to click and purchase, but I mostly experience these things as not for or about me. Sure, I sometimes see things on the internet that I think would be nice to have [currently, instagram is showing me these nice pie-related, all stainless gadgets for holiday entertaining that tick many of the boxes] but I rarely buy anything. This is because I have a lot of rules for what I will allow myself to buy that slow down purchases of every kind.
I suspect that the phrase “a lot of rules for what I will allow myself to buy” sounds, on the face of it, restrictive. But I don’t experience it that way. In fact I almost never have buyer’s remorse and feel insanely good about nearly everything I do purchase. The rules allow me to always have a pleasurable and guilt-free experience buying things. The rules are also baked into the ways that I shop for things, so I am not having to think about them very much while shopping, and they are based on ensuring that as I use the things I buy over their lifetimes I have pleasurable experiences with them, they don’t harm others as much as possible, and after I am gone they can still be useful. Even if a mug feels very nice in my hands, if when I hold it I remember that I got it from a box store or e-retail giant I will start to feel guilty about labor conditions or shipping and my love of the object will be diminished. I also don’t want to have a lovely fair-trade, organic sweater but know that it traveled thousands of miles to get to me in a plastic bag surrounded by air-puffed plastic balloons or styrofoam packing peanuts [shudder].
Still, I love things and I love beautiful things. I also sometimes need things.
Decision tree for acquiring things:
- Is the item replacing an another item that has worn-out past the point of repair or is on the pre-vetted acquisitions list [which is to say you really need it]?
- Can you make it? This is many things, but it is not all things.
- Can the item be bought locally? Or if not purchased from a retailer that is as close as possible, preferably a small business owned by a woman or minority that pays a living wage.
- Is the item made of fully recyclable, or biodegradable materials [steel/aluminum, wood, wool/cotton/linen/silk, glass]. Bonus points for certifications for those materials like FSC, GOTS, and California or EU standards.
- If new, is the item made in the US or overseas under fair labor certified conditions? Bonus points for women or minority owned manufacturing and B Corps.
- Can the item be purchased with a zero packaging option or if it must be shipped, without plastic packaging?
My rules are also flexible. Sometimes I run out of options for something that I still need. The immediate example that comes to mind is toothpaste. In the US it is very hard to get toothpaste in actually recyclable packaging that has fluoride. I have terrible teeth, I need my toothpaste fluoridated. So I have to compromise on this. But periodically, I go out in search of alternatives again, in the vain hope that capitalism really can deliver what I demand. The EU has more options, but it seems very wasteful to order toothpaste from Germany because of the carbon emissions. Also, I have come to terms with the fact that in the modern world we have to buy things that contain some plastic [appliances, electronics] but I want to minimize plastic as much as possible, buy items with known quality standards and clean energy ratings, and choose items that can be repaired. I also let stuff wear the hell out. Our single car is 10 years old [and well maintained], my laptop is 11 years old [I have to replace it this year because it can’t update anymore], my smartphone is 3 years old. I have clothes that are old enough to vote and even some old enough to run for president.
I also have items that have been on the list acquisitions list for years. One that comes to mind is a white silk shell for layering. I have a professional capsule wardrobe and I would very much like to have a summer alternative to my winter silk blouse, but I have been unable to find one in my thrift shopping since about 2021. No matter, I am currently making do and have faith that I will find one. About 15 years ago I bought an off-brand food processor from the local charity shop for $8. It has a plastic nubbin that sits over the center blade assembly that falls out unless you hold your finger over it. This has been a problem for about 6 years, but the appliance still works so I haven’t replaced it, even though I have the exact replacement picked out and the credit card points to get it for free.
This brings me to how I spend money. I put nearly all purchases on my one credit card [because like it or not the economy runs on credit] but I never buy anything I can’t purchase outright with cash on the spot. Because I pay my credit card off every single month, I have never paid any interest on any of my purchases except for a new mattress that I had to buy after my divorce. The only purchases that can be financed and accrue interest are those over $20,000. So that is pretty much houses and automobiles [mine is paid off]. That means every vacation, every investment in the farm [chicken coop, deer fence, orchard], every update to the house [new boiler, washer and dryer, recent re-venting of the boiler, attic fans, garage door, electrical panel] I could have paid for in cash when I purchased it.
I am paid well, but not extravagantly. My partner and I are both public employees who have no generational wealth. My ex-husband doesn’t pay me child support and when we divorced I left with none of our shared assets [other than the car and its lease] and only two pay checks in the bank. If I got paid minimum wage this wouldn’t be possible. If our household didn’t have a dual income or employer-provided health insurance or if I had not been poor enough to have almost no college loan debt or if the kids were in childcare or if we lived in a very expensive metro-area I’d be telling a different story. But as it stands, in just short of 9 years, my modest salary, extreme thrift and our luck at buying our house before the pandemic, have made it possible to live a very, very good life.
Why do you care?
Aside from what I feel like is actually a rather impressive rags to stability [as opposed to “riches”] story, I think my approach is one that a lot of people might want to institute between now and January 20th simply because things are about to get a lot more expensive. Between the promised tariffs and the mass deportations, we are looking at some serious price increases. So the timing might be “good” try to to buy less stuff.
I don’t like that this is true. I also don’t think it is really the responsibility of individuals to make up for systemic problems like an economy that is about to shit the bed. This is not me saying what I have heard boomers and rich people on the internet saying for several years which is that we should buy fewer iPhones and avocado toast and we could afford college and housing. However, we are walking into an environment where it would be wise to consider the changes that we can make personally to improve our overall quality of life. Because if you think stuff is expensive now, boy howdy, hold on to your butts.
Being poor is very expensive and there is no amount of saving that most poor folks can do. This is not advice for them, unfortunately. But for those of us in the middle looking for a way to be more helpful, the amount of money we could save not buying shit on the internet could help our overall quality of life while giving us slightly more disposable income to donate to food pantries or to buy coats for school children or to get supplies for low income families in our communities. I do not like that we are about to get severely pinched, but I have a lot of practical experience of making austerity feel like prosperity. I have taught myself to experience less as more.
Personally, I think I am about to adjust my shopping rules so that some of the nice things I have get donated locally in our community before they wear out. I am going to up my own donations. But I am still going to continue with consumption practices that contribute to the world that I want to live in, because overall I do believe that how we spend our money matters massively, globally. I’d like to see us change the economy and change our relationship with consumption. So here is some unsolicited advice about how to break with conspicuous consumption before the inauguration and into the next year.
- Use the rest of the year to inventory the things you have in your house. Get rid of things that you don’t use and donate them so others can buy them second-hand for holiday gifts now. Figure out those big-ticket things you need to replace in the next year or two [for me its a computer and probably our fridge] and either buy those things now or start saving for them.
- For your own holiday shopping, institute some of my rules. You will buy fewer things but they will be of better quality and they will feel morally better to you. I get my kids a book that appeals to a special interest [always from a local book store], a comfy pajama or expensive clothing item they need [my son needs a new winter coat this year], and one other thoroughly fantastic item to bring them joy. My partner and I usually get each other socks and a household item from the list [probably that new food processor] and a small sentimental nice thing [often made by a local artist]. I don’t buy things for other people. If you feel obligated to buy things for other people, practice telling them that you are trying a conscious consumption cleanse this year and instead you want to take them out for a meal or donate to a food bank in their community or other meaningful donation that aligns with their values [like an animal shelter or church]. Keep traditions: bake cookies, send cards, don’t make it awful for yourself.
- Make your own purchasing rules. Mine are about labor and materials and carbon footprint, but yours should be about what is meaningful to you. Not everyone is good at mending and repair or likes to make things, and that is ok. Maybe you want to have fewer things overall and need a rule that requires you to get rid of something in order to get something else. Pick rules that embody your values so it is easier to adhere to them.
- Use January as a month to not buy any consumer goods. Watch what impulses you have to buy things and mindfully choose not to make purchases. When I did this in 2019 I allowed myself to buy replacement things if they broke but to purchase only based on the rules I had, and I didn’t choose to make the experience feel like deprivation. We still went out to eat, we still bought the coffee we liked [in bulk], we still engaged in experiences that were valuable.
- In February, with the list of things you might have bought but didn’t from January, determine if there are any of those things that you still want. Allow yourself to purchase something for fun so long as it meets your rules. Consider how you feel about it after its purchase, and then a month after its purchase, and 6 months after. How does owning it make you feel and do you still wish you had bought it? If so consider what qualities about it made it a good purchase and if not, why not.
- In March, give yourself a pass for a no-rules event. Maybe that is a vacation you planned for spring break or your daughter’s quinceanera in July. Mine was Halloween. Allow yourself to relax for that event and not consider your purchases. When you’ve splurged did you feel freer or did you feel guilty? Explore what those feelings mean to you and recalibrate your rules and goals if you think you need to. Conscious consumption should be sustainable and pleasurable [it can be both].
- In April, cultivate a relationship with a local small business owner. For me this was with our local bookstore owner, but it could be the owner of your preferred consignment shop, or craft store, or specialty food store. Find out how they spend the money your neighbors pay them for goods and services in your community. Maybe they sponsor a little league baseball team or give free coffee to veterans. Contemplate how their modest profits enrich the lives of others and how giving them your money contributes to your community.
- In May, if you find that you still are missing the dopamine hit of buying things, find a type of good that you know reliably meets your rules and allow it to be your feel-good purchase. For me this was yarn produced in Montana from a local yarn shop [local here being now over an hour’s drive]. I knew that making this purchase was supporting our local economy and that it was coming on a mail truck that was already driving here every day. Plus I got socks. For my partner it has been buying vinyl from the local spot and adding it to our collection [also landscaping plants from the local nursery for our food forest and pollinator garden].
- In June do some math. Compare the last six months of spending habits to the same 6 months the year before. Did you save money? How much? Take that extra money and pay down some debt with it, or move it to savings, or donate it to cause that is meaningful to you. Consider how much money you could save by the end of the year, two years, five years. What sorts of things can you do with that money? Set some goals for it that support your values.
- In July, start talking to people about your experiment. Tell them you’ve saved money, or that you feel better about how you’re selecting what you spend your money on. Encourage them to try it too. Offer them tips. Pass it on.
- In August, consider what you are replacing buying things with. Is it a habit you like or one [doom scrolling] that you dislike? Before the fall, consider replacement activities that make you feel better but don’t require you to buy stuff. Experiment. Having good, healthy replacement activities will make it possible for you to sustain your conscious consumption journey.
- With everything you have learned, use the end of 2025 to refine your goals going forward for 2026.
This is not really a method. I am not Marie Kondo and I am not explaining to you how to be a minimalist or save to buy a house or practice Swedish Death Cleaning. However, trends like KonMari gain traction because people recognize that our relationship with stuff and shopping is not good. We just don’t have other ways to get our dopamine, which is a thing that we need. We do deserve to treat ourselves and to feel pleasure, there are just lots of other, better ways to do that besides putting cheap plastic crap in landfills. I promise that decoupling pleasure from consumption is very powerful and makes you more free.
One last word, which is about kids. I have kids and they know that I’m pretty against buying things generally, but I have worked hard to not make them feel like my rules need to be their rules for everything. I think a lot of austerity for adults can feel like deprivation for kids, especially teenagers. You don’t want this exercise for you to feel like a punishment for other people in your house, so have good boundaries. I started this when my kids were in grade school and they had much less awareness of what their peers around them were doing, they didn’t ask me to buy them trendy things because they didn’t really know what they were. The plastic rule was a suggestion of my son’s in 5th grade, so he was on board, but at that same time my daughter sometimes didn’t get it.
I had never had a practice of buying my kids stuff that they wanted in stores. If we were in Target and they wanted a squish mallow or whatever I would just say, “it’s not on the list,” and even if they didn’t like that they couldn’t have it, I was very consistent about the list rule. I have also had a strict, “no gifts please” blanket rule for all birthday parties since the beginning. When my kids realized that other kids got things for their birthday and they did not, this seemed unjust to them. My response was that I didn’t want any friend to feel like they couldn’t come to a party because they had to buy something first. What if their family was poor? Helping my kids recognize that buying a gift could be a financial burden on their friends whom they did not wish to exclude made this easier as they got older.
My son is not a stuff person, buying things for him is actually very hard [he’s worse than I am], but my daughter likes things and she likes to fit in. Now that she is a teen I have to be more thoughtful about how I express rules to her so that I’m not creating a dynamic where to assert her individuality I am forcing her to rebel against me. So I let her spend her own money how she likes but only at places she can walk to [these are all local businesses], and I only spend mine on things that she needs [that she gets to select] and meet the rules. And we do A LOT of thrift shopping, mending, altering and purging clothes to consign or donate. There is plastic in those clothes. I am not able to spend thousands of dollars on an all biodegradable wardrobe that my kid is going to grow out of, but maybe you can.
I’m helping her understand what it means to have a mindful relationship with accumulating things so that she can make her own rules for herself. That is what parenting is all about. For my son I will have to make rules like, “when a sock is this hole-y you need to replace it. Have a type of sock that you like and can be ok with buying.” Chances are good that will be the exact black sock that I current buy him, which already is pretty good.
The Oracle of Z 