It’s no secret that we’re constantly bombarded with messages telling us that we should buy more things. That all that stands between our current self and the self we want to be is this ~new thing we don’t have~. And there’s no end to the new things, and the things don’t actually give us what we want, because what we want usually requires taking an action aside from clicking “add to cart.” Purchasing, for example, a new pair of running shoes is an easier way to make ourselves feel like we might become a person who runs than actually getting up and going for a run.
(And personally, I think if there’s a huge gap between what we think we should do and what we actually want to do, we should reassess the things we think we should do. It took me years to accept that I just don’t like to run, but feeling like I should be going for runs kept me from simply going for walks, which I love to do.)
So in that vein, this is a post I’ve been interested in doing for a while, and hope to do regularly: the items I thought I absolutely had to have, but that I resisted buying. Not only do I think it’s valuable to be transparent about how difficult it can be to say no to buying, because I think a lot of us are struggling, but it could be useful to be able to look back and realize “hey, I almost bought that, and I’m glad I didn’t because I found that I really didn’t need it.” And maybe there will be things I wind up buying down the road, which means I’ve really given it some thought and decided it will enhance my life, and I’m okay with that.
And for the record, I do absolutely think things can enhance our lives. But too much energy (and money!) spent on our things, and on thinking about all the things we don’t have but feel like we should have, keeps us from actually living our lives. In so many ways. And anyway, just think about the shitty billionaires losing sleep trying to come up with new ways to manipulate us into spending (at best) our hard-earned money, or (at worst) money we don’t even have yet, on things we don’t need, that won’t make us happy, but always more more more, regardless of the environmental degradation, labor exploitation, and an absolute lack of concern for what happens at the product’s end of life (re: it probably can’t be repaired and its carcass probably exists forever). They need us to keep buying at this pace so they can keep getting richer and richer. What if we just stopped? Or at least really, really slowed down?
Speaking of billionaires, the cover photo of this post is a screenshot of something I was happy to see recently – I opened Amazon to look up the details of something I’d purchased in the past, and my order history showed no purchases in the past three months.
So, as promised, here are the items I really wanted to buy this week:
A second Kindle (from FB Marketplace)
Yes, a second Kindle, and here’s why: I almost exclusively read library books on my Kindle, which is great because they’re free and they don’t result in physical objects cluttering my house (though I do make room for books I really do want to own). A lot of people who use Libby for library ebooks are aware of the hack, which Amazon is supposedly trying to come up with a way to stop, where if you check out a book, download it to your Kindle and then put your Kindle in airplane mode the book can’t be removed from the device when it’s due. This gives more time to read the book. As far as the library is concerned, the book has been returned and your copy can be checked out by the next person, so it doesn’t prevent other people from accessing the book. If I’ve got my Kindle in airplane mode when another of my holds becomes available, though, I can’t download it without exiting airplane mode and thus losing my overdue book. So that’s the reason for the second Kindle – one to keep in airplane mode, and one for loading with newly-available books. I like to skip around between several collections of short stories at once rather than reading all of one author’s stories back-to-back, and particularly when reading anthologies I might read a story I like and decide to look for that author’s story collection. I’m not just hoarding a bunch of novels I’m not reading. Additionally, there’s some appeal in the upstairs Kindle/downstairs Kindle model, as a toddler mom who never has long stretches of reading time but gets a few minutes here-and-there throughout the day whenever my kid gets absorbed in some absurd task (a big part of why I’m in my short story era!) and I have still not managed to get into the habit of carrying my Kindle all over the house with me.
I’m also easily persuaded when I find something secondhand, because buying secondhand is giving another life to something – exactly what we should be doing, as much as possible! And Amazon doesn’t make any money when somebody buys an old Kindle on eBay or Marketplace, which is appealing too (and which is one reason these companies often design their products to be irreparable). But the world is full of secondhand items I don’t actually need to own, and a second Kindle is almost definitely one of them.
A coat I really like, in a different color
I’m of the belief that a good coat is a longterm purchase, and if one coat lasts, for example, ten years then two coats should last twenty because you’re wearing each one half as often as you would have. I recently parted ways with a coat I wore exclusively for fifteen years. It was not a good coat in very wet conditions, and it was not a good coat when it was below freezing, and it was not a good coat for above 45-degree temps, but it was a great coat when it was 42 degrees and misty, which it is for much of the year in Seattle. In other words, it was a great everyday coat but there were frequently conditions it wasn’t appropriate for. I replaced that coat with a few coats (some secondhand) that serve different purposes, with one being a really great everyday coat like my old one. It’s on a big holiday sale, and I’ve spent the last week talking myself out of buying it in black too (Mine is brown). I can’t think of a single thing I wear that the brown coat would clash with, and while it’s true that two of the coats would probably last me twice as long as just the one, and being able to choose between the two colors might be nice, it is not a need. It’s an attempt to be prepared for circumstances I haven’t even encountered, which advertisers really want us doing.
The Holdovers DVD
My husband and I have both agreed this relatively-new movie is, in our house, a new Christmas-season must-watch. It’s not available to stream anywhere, so my first instinct was to buy it. After all, we plan to watch it every year and it’s only like $12 at Target. But guess what – the library has it! I placed a hold and it’s available to pick up today. $12 may be cheap, but free is cheaper. Will we buy it someday? Maybe. Do we need to buy it anytime in the next year? No.
Silpats that fit my baking sheets
I don’t bake much, but I’ve made cookies a few times this holiday season and I’ve rediscovered that I really love baking cookies. They’re relatively quick and easy, my kid finds them really exciting, and you can bake just a few while freezing the rest of the dough for later, which means you won’t have a whole batch of cookies sitting around, somehow finding their way into your mouth one after another until they’re all gone. I bake cookies on the Silpats I’ve had for over a decade, which still work just fine. However, they’re smaller than our baking sheets, which means I can’t bake as many cookies at once as my baking sheets would otherwise allow. I was pretty set on requesting new Silpats for Christmas. But how often am I actually trying to bake 20 cookies on one sheet? Hardly ever. Turns out, I don’t actually need to maximize my cookie-baking real estate when half the reason I’m making them is I can bake just a few at a time. And on the rare occasion that I need to bake a lot of cookies, I can bake them in batches. Maybe if my old Silpats give up the ghost I’ll replace them with a different size.
Societally, we’ve developed the mindset that if we have isn’t exactly right, we should just replace it. I’m hoping to leave that mindset behind.
Denise Resting 
Leave a comment