Stop being a "consumer"

I was talking to a good friend about this yesterday. She thinks that i’m really good at this. When I was talking about saving/spending she thinks I do really well, I don’t go shopping and blow all my money. I got thinking, I kind of am good at this aren’t I? A balance between saving/spending is important, but for me every time I spend I feel guilty almost. Maybe my standards are too high? So i’m going to loosen up a little. There are a few things I have my eye on, like some new skirts for summer (i’ve grown out of mine). Maybe I will treat myself to some clothes. It’s been a long time since i’ve gone clothes shopping, ii’m kind of looking forward to doing so again. :)

My favourite shoe shop is having a buy one pair, get the second pair half price sale. The shoes are good quality, they last, are reasonably priced, and are gorgeous but I already have something like 10 pairs of shoes! So I threw away the shoe catalogue and resisted the consumer urge.

I feel like I spend a lot of time thinking about what I ‘want’. Pink shoes. A new bra. A new skirt. And I know I spend a lot of time resisting this urge. Because I believe saving is important, more important than material posessions.

But stil, those shoes are looking mighty confortabe…

Well, I was rather forced into this goal, being that I have been out of a job since the fall, and refused to take money out of the bank. Thus, my lunch money is my only income and learning how to use that efficiently cuts out any superfluous spending. It is incredibly rewarding though to not be, as Kerouac said, “working for the sake of consuming things we dont really want anyway”. I dont need stuff. If I want a book, Ill go to the library. If I want clothes, Ill go to Salvation Army. Food and entertainment takes up most of my expenses but I have learned to cut back on that. In the end, though, spending money on a concert or bowling or booze is far better spent than money on useless shit.

I am going to get organized and take inventory of the things I own and evaluate their practical worth; if I don’t use something very often (or at all), and it doesn’t otherwise bring me some kind of joy, then I’m going to get rid of it.

Subscribing to the DIY ethos is far more rewarding than consumerism; not only does one learn more if they do so, but it’s often less expensive to make/fix things yourself rather than buy products or employ the services of others. Time-consumption is an issue of course, but I don’t mind investing my time in DIY projects. Also, when I need to be a consumer, in whatever ways, I’m going to be much more informed about it… it’s important to know who and what your dollars are supporting. Is it going to local businesses? Is it going to multi-million or -billion dollar corporations that outsource cheap labor? Do these companies pay their workers a living wage? Where are your products really coming from? Who’s making them? Are these companies caring and preserving the environment, or destroying it?