Skip to main content

Shop less. Live more.

October is Buy Nothing New Month, and that's their slogan: Shop Less. Live More.

This quote about consumption is doubly true.


There's the hours we spend to earn the money to spend. Then there's the hours bustling around shopping centres and malls searching out the thing we want (or that advertising has told us we want).

Of course there's also the issue of where we put all this stuff we buy.

Do we just buy a bigger house (with a bigger mortgage) or do we put it in storage?

"The Japanese may have tidiness but in America we have storage lockers - our only growth industry." - Marge Simpson.

I found these stats about the US storage industry.


I find it such a waste that after spending so much to buy all this stuff we then spend another $22 billion to store it. Shocking.

Clearly we need to be less addicted to purchasing. Buy Nothing New Month is a great way to start. Are you with me?

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Don't dump on charities

Netflix causes mass dumping. Here's an alternative. January is usually a big month for physical donations to charity. In 2019 it's been over-the-top (literally) as charity donation bins have been overflowing with items. The Netflix series "Tidying Up" by famous declutterer Marie Kondo (see her book ) has inspired many to declutter their homes. But in the process they've cluttered the streets. What's so bad about donating? When the bins overflow the extra items are thrown away. Having been in the weather, the rain and on the ground, they are classified as contaminated and cannot be sold. To make it worse, much of what fills the bins is not good enough to sell, and is also dumped. Bad donations hurt charities 13 million dollars. That's how much it costs charities to deal with all the junk we dump on them - 60,000 tonnes a year. Lifeline says half its stores have stopped accepting donations. We might think we're helping, but that's a lot ...

This could all be yours

This cartoon kind of happened to me on the weekend. Joking about death My dad has his own unique sense of humour. Flippantly he joked that when he passes away, the first thing I'll need to do is get a rubbish skip (maybe two) and jam it full with all the junk from the garage. I was reminded of Marie Kondo, who says in her book that we have to deal with items either now or later; so it might as well be now. For people who have retired, I guess there's a third option: Ignore it for a few more decades and let descendants deal with it. Don't get me wrong - my dad has plenty of years left yet. But from his joke I'm guessing he's reasonably happy to let it all sit there while he enjoys retired life. Why not deal with it? I can kind of understand. It's an overwhelming task (even to look at). There's also the "I might need that" factor. Which is fair enough, but even if an item is needed, is it findable in amongst everything else? About half the ...

Are cooktops a waste of space?

Who has ever had four saucepans cooking at once? So why do we have four hotplates on cooktops? Back in the day of all-in-one units, four hotplates were a nice fit on the top of the oven. These days the cooktop and ovens are usually separate but we've stuck with four hotplates. In many homes and apartments it's worth re-thinking. Is this is a wise use of bench space? Two-saucepan cooktops are making an appearance and freeing up some bench space in smaller kitchens. Aldi are taking it a step further with the Induction Cooking Plate . It's a stand-alone single-hotplate device that can be packed away when not in use. Aldi says it has 8 temperature settings, 5 preset cooking functions, a timer, touch controls and overheat protection. Could this be the future of smaller kitchens? Cost-savings in building. More bench space. Less energy consumption with the efficiency of induction cooking. Another great example of less is more. I don't mean this to be an ad, but...