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.