The no-buy year experiment

Lately I’ve been having a debate with myself. In a lot of cases, I feel that I am pretty intentional with the things that I have in my life. In areas like friendships, work or family, I just have what I need. However, and because I have taken up a few hobbies and I had a bigger budget, I have been buying more material stuff. I do not like this, and I would like to change that aspect of my life, or at least improve it. There are multiple books about minimalism, and I have read quite a few of them:

• Monk’s Guide to a Clean House and Mind
• The Buy Nothing, Get Everything Plan: Discover the Joy of Spending Less, Sharing More, and Living Generously
• Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World

However, I feel that I could be doing more, and that I am still buying a lot of things. So I want to start my year of no buying things or, at least, “non-essential” things. This list of necessary things might change, but this is how I am going to start approaching this new idea. Thins that I can buy:

• Food, cleaning supplies, everything of daily use.
• Eating at restaurants.
• Gifts for people.
• If I am travelling, I can buy something that would remind me to that place.
• If something is really stopping me for doing things that I want, I can replace that.

I do not want to buy things that:

• I already have something that does the job.
• I do not want to upgrade the things that I have unless they are beyond repair.
• Bargains just because it is a good opportunity to buy them.

This will be my conditions to buy or not buy things. They are pretty vague, but that is how I feel now. Let’s see how it goes.