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

My mug shot

This is every mug I own. How many did I buy? Zero. They seem to just appear. I don't even drink tea or coffee. In winter I have might have a hot chocolate or cocoa. So 9 mugs seems like a lot. How does this happen? I reckon most mugs are gifts. There are two reasons for this. 1. It's a safe bet. People need to drink. It's kind of like buying your dad socks for father's day. But the difference is that socks wear out and need replacing. Cups don't. One of these mugs i received as a kid in the 90s. It still works fine. Now it has 8 friends. 2. It's often for what's on the mug. It might be a greeting card-style message, or a sports team logo, or something humorous. It's a good thing that something functional can also provide an inspiring message or pleasant memory as you use it. But the problem comes when we have too much. If I use the cup my sister gave me at Christmas, then I'm not using the 'awesome brother' one she already gave m...

Adam ruins work

The TV show Adam Ruins Everything took a look at the workplace - and the 40 hour work week. It confirms my thoughts that the 40-hour work week (or at least it's relevance today) is a figment of our imagination. Very enlightening. Watch it now . The first 7 minutes are the most relevant. There were some astonishing stats coming out of it. For example, we spend only 45% of the work week doing our actual job (not including meetings etc). That's about 18 hours per week. Interestingly, that's what experts predicted. With rises in productivity, the 1950s brought talk of a 4-day work week. By 2030 they reckoned we might work just 15 hours per week. But instead we work longer hours. That results in more mistakes and safety mishaps. It also reduces brain function. We might think that it's being productive but Adam points to countries that have as much prosperity as America while working much shorter hours. A classic case of 'less is more'. PS. for the basis of ...

What to do with 128 pens?

I never need buy a pen again. Ever. The pen round-up. I searched the house for pens and gathered them up. We had 128. Woah - that's more than I expected. Then it was test-time. (You can get a lot done watching summer sport ;). Good ones went on the table. Broken ones in the box. Pen operations I saved a few 'broken' pens, by taking working insides and matching them with functional outsides. Particularly much-loved pens, for sentimental reasons, were given a life-extending 'ink transplant'. Final Tally We ended up with 67 broken pens and 61 good ones. And about 10 pencils. What to do with 67 broken pens? In my city Biome recycles pens . It's as easy as taking them into the store and dropping them into the giant collection box. Decluttering and recycling together - I love it. A lifetime of pens An average pen writes 45,000 words. So that dedicated shopping list pen on the fridge could write a 20-word shopping list for 43 years. Our 61 pens repre...

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