Enjoy Your Stuff

I am a chronic shopper, I'll admit it. I like to buy things! But sometimes that's not always a good thing, or more importantly, it's not always a necessary thing. A lot of the time it's simply about the act of shopping for something new (see the entry about the Thrill of Shopping). The end result though is I often have a lot of unused stuff--or just plain junk! Unless you are an extremely diligent person, don't fall into the trap of "Oh I'll just buy it now and return it later if I don't want to keep it." Often times one of several things might happen:

a) You could lose the receipt
b) The 30, 60, 90 day return policy could come very quickly
c) You forget about the item until above mentioned return policy date has already passed.

Not to mention, you now have just STUFF sitting around your house. Your dad and I just spent a whole day cleaning out our "office," which was known previously as a junk storage area. It feels so good to throw out junk we don't need and now have a clean, USABLE space! But it made me realize that I just really want to enjoy my stuff. The stuff I have NOW, not the stuff I still need to (or want to) buy.

So for the month of March (which has just started) I will try not to buy anything unnecessary. Meaning, no new clothes (I have so many and some that I haven't even worn yet), no trinkets for the house (because we still have new, unused, really nice decor we have yet to display), no impulse food buys that will just go bad in the cupboards or fridge. If all goes well, I'll try and extend it into April and see if it becomes a more regular thing.

Part of this is for financial reasons of course. Hopefully your Dad and I can save up more money for big purchases we need, like a new sofa (our futon is not as comfy as it once was), a new mattress (the one we bought a few years ago is not so good anymore for my back) and nightstands (we don't have any). Eventually we want to be able to buy a new car too. But all the junk we buy has made money disappear more quickly than we'd like it to so this will hopefully change our (more like MY) mentality about spending on unnecessary things.

More than that though, buying a bunch of things just means more stuff will end up being thrown away or discarded somehow and clutter/pollute the planet overall. It just isn't good stewardship. Something that really helps me gauge whether or not to buy something is the fact that your Grandma is cleaning her house out right now and she has SO MUCH STUFF, some of it older than I am! So before I get something now I try to think, do I really want this around in 20+ years? Do I like it that much? And often times, the answer will be no. I have everything I need.

Besides...my birthday's coming up, so that means presents! =)