Posted by Canadian Dream on January 4, 2012
I’m at the bloody finish line of this challenge and guess what…I tripped. *%^#$ (insert swear of choice here), I messed up on a $1.94 item: LED outdoor lights which were 75% off on Dec 30. I got too damn comfortable shopping at the grocery store that I forgot to pay attention to that one item.
Other than that I did managed to keep to my rules for the entire three months. So as much as I did fail in the end, I did still change my buying habits which was the main goal.
For example, after being completely unable to buy stuff for the last three months you might expect me to be itching to go buy a few things. While this is true, the list is actually really short: hooks to hang bikes in the garage and a plant stand. Yep, that’s my list as it stands right now.
I found the absence of buying stuff strangely liberating. My life got a lot simpler for the last three months as I had to focus on everything else in my life which was great. I finally have a plan on what I want to get done in 2012 and how I will get there.
I also got rid of a pile of crap out of my house. My basement is actually almost clean for the first time in the five years I’ve been living at my house. I even found some things I forgot I had. For example, when I finally purged my half of our bedroom closet. I found a pair of black dress pants that were tossed into the corner. Brand new and never been worn since I still needed to get them hemmed. But given I had recently lost a pair of pants to a broken zipper this was a perfect solution for new pants for a $10 hem job.
I also realized ‘stuff’ is a damn poor word for what I was getting rid of or not buying. Instead I will borrow a word from another language: chindogu from Japanese which means all that useless crap we buy or have. It’s all those late night kitchen gadgets that really don’t do anything more than you already have. For example, a slapchop, which basically does the same thing as a knife. I like my useful stuff, I detest my chindogu.
Most of all I’ve managed to deconstruct an important thought in my head: I am not my stuff. I like some of my stuff, but I’m not defined by it or limited by it. Also when I no longer need that stuff I feel no guilt about selling or giving away things I never use. For example, we gave away two beautiful serving trays we no longer us, even if they were wedding gifts. Instead I’m now using ones I inherited from my grandparents, which mean more to me and are better size.
To help you with your war on chindogu, might I suggest the following:
- Do Not Buy Storage. You don’t need more shelves or containers, you likely need to get rid of things first then buy storage after the purge.
- Start with Garbage. Empty boxes, recycling cans, empty paint cans all need to get out of your house. Your first job is to get rid of that crap so you can see what is left.
- Create a Rule of Thumb. Mine was if I haven’t used this in 12 months why do I have it? Most items that failed that test and were tossed. If you really want to downsize drop down to six months.
- Get Over Getting Rid of Good Things. I tried to give away some things that were in perfect shape and sell some things like DVD’s. You might be able to also donate it, but if all of those methods fail in a week: trash the item. It’s ok to toss new things you don’t need, I even did that with some Christmas gifts I got that I can’t return and I won’t use.
- Keep up with New Stuff. As we unloaded all the new stuff into our house from Christmas my wife and I went around with garbage bags and tossed an equal volume of stuff.
Good luck on your war. Any questions on how my war went?
Posted by Canadian Dream on November 25, 2011
I’m standing in what other would perhaps consider a palace. There is so much marble its almost ridiculous, indoor swimming park, ice rink, mini golf course and more shops that you can easily keep track of…aka West Edmonton Mall. Ironically I don’t consider the mall a palace, but rather a temple to the only god we all seem to worship some days: consumerism or perhaps the god of wants? I’m not sure which is a better name.
So according to typical beliefs I should be seriously enjoying myself, but in fact I’m not having much fun at all. Since I’m still on my challenge of not buying stuff, I can’t actually buy the vast majority of the stuff for sale in the mall (at least for myself). For a while I’m almost depressed by the idea, but then I recall I can still get some Christmas shopping done while I’m here and I can buy consumables. So I buy a coffee. Yet that was it for an entire day. I couldn’t find anything that I really wanted to give someone else.
Perhaps because of my recent luck of buying my wife’s birthday gift which was some classes and hand soap. I’m looking beyond the world of stuff for gifts, while I won’t always work out I’m at least trying and did manage to get another gift as a consumable for a friend (a very nice bottle of rum).
Then while I’m in my class for the day, my wife took the boys and did experiences for most of the day. They played mini-golf and hit up the asumement park. They were excited by their day of experience and if I would have to guess they enjoyed that much more than getting stuff the day before that. So perhaps my depression about not getting stuff was like many people on diets. I was focusing on what I couldn’t do, instead of what I could do.
Later this week I went back to the mall and trying it again with different eyes. I don’t need to get stuff for myself to be happy. I can get something for others and I’m trying to realize that there is life beyond stuff. Frankly as my kids already know…experience much better than stuff anyways. (By the way, I did finally buy something for myself before leaving the mall…a box of sample teas, but that was it.)
Posted by Canadian Dream on October 27, 2011
When I started this project of not buying stuff I knew that I was forgetting something, so I left myself with a ‘get out of jail free card’ on one item of stuff. Apparently my subconscious is better at keeping track of things than I am because as I started to pull out my winter gear and realized I had a serious problem. I had no winter boots, just running shoes. How? My old boots were used until they basically fell apart so I threw them out last spring and I now NEEDED some replacements.
When I say NEED I mean it. I live in Regina, SK which can see several feet of snow and daily forecast highs below -30C for a week or more during the worst of it. So you might think I would actually enjoy shopping for my one exception of stuff…nope, I hated it.
You see I have wide feet, so by that fact 80% of a stores inventory won’t fit me. Toss in a few basic preferences like black or brown boots and I end usually end up with one or two options. This time I only had one pair to choose from and I still had to order those in to get my size. So I spent $144 for one pair of winter boots, ironically they went on sale the week afterwards, but I managed to talk the clerk into giving me the sale price after the fact so my price dropped down to $122. Apparently if I’m going to use an exception, I’m going to not worry about how much it was.
What this experience has taught me so far is that when you can’t buy stuff, you have to find alternative solutions. For example, a zipper broke on a pair of dress pants and since I can’t buy a replacement pair I am forced to either make due without them or try and get them fixed. Not that this is a bad thing, but it does make you think about more about stuff you do use daily and making sure you buy things that will last (and hence the investment in some good boots).
On the purge side of my challenge I’m pleased to report I sold every single DVD that I pulled out of my collection. Total profit $60. Ya! On the book side of the purge I manged to get my wife and kids involved as well.
To give you scope of the problem we have about 613 books in the house. This doesn’t include the daycare books ~100 or ebooks for another ~150 above that 613 total. We managed to talk about our reading habits and agreed to only keep books we are likely to read again or use as a reference. So in the end the purge pile is 127 books which is just over 20% of the collection. Overall not a bad job given we are all book addicts who will often take out a book or two per week each from the library. Yep that includes the kids so that is about 4 to 8 books every week.
Also given the lack of a volume of an ebook we will try in the future to buy more of those for novels in order to keep our collection on the smaller size. Yet I have to admit I’m wondering if buying ebooks is just transferring the problem from pile of books to piles of files. So what do you think about using ebooks? Is it an area for just keeping more stuff that you don’t need or a useful means to keep what you really love?
