TLDR: Taking less, making more! Convenience is the enemy of creativity.

“Where did all this crap come from?”

Lately I’ve asked myself this question on a near-daily basis, each time I open a drawer or closet or another yet-unpacked moving box (it’s been 18 months, I think I can start being hard on myself now).

I’m not sure how it happened. I was once fully ensconced in the circa-2015 online minimalism movement. As an adolescent I spent hours “playing” on the IKEA and Apple websites, dreaming about my Spartan future studio apartment and white plastic Macbook and just admiring the clean lines and airiness of it all.

I was raised in a necessarily frugal home, and I earned the federal minimum wage (or less) at my first five or six jobs, so it was really nice that minimalism was considered aspirational and aesthetically ideal when I was coming of age (and broke). Then, when I first started making Real Money, my existing barebones existence made it pretty easy to avoid lifestyle inflation and focus on paying back my student loans. For a while.

But my first job also came with frequent travel and what felt like an extravagant Per Diem, my daily food budget covered by my employer. This led to two key changes:

1. I developed a taste for conveniences and finery like business-class hotels and nightly food delivery because I was traveling alone all the time and these things were “free” to me through work; and
2. I saw the 2008 masterpiece Mamma Mia! for the first time on hotel cable on a business trip and it permanently changed my brain chemistry. I began to ask myself whether I was making the kind of exciting memories I would want to look back on in 30 years when I found myself running a decrepit inn on a remote Greek island.

Suddenly, my still-new income was a vehicle for Buying Whatever I Want Because I Deserve It And I Can, the same way I think it ends up being for a lot of people who find themselves with disposable income for the first time.

Thus began my multi-year foray into gloss and glitter, fine foods, fancy cocktails, constantly overthinking how much “fun” I was or was not having every night (spoiler alert: very little, unless I was actively listening to ABBA¹), and doing things just to do them, because I could, even though it was often a waste of my time and money and a detriment to my physical and mental health.

I did not have any close friends in that city when I started working, or else I might have actually figured out wholesome ways to enjoy myself in the comfort of my own home. But I was 22, lonely, and pretty desperate to be doing anything besides sitting around with my own thoughts after work.

In the 2-ish years that followed, I hosted some great parties and made a handful of really kind and clever friends. But I also spent a lot of time doing things that, in retrospect, I just didn’t want to be doing. I had no good routines and it felt like I was almost never home. And I managed to just keep buying stuff to try to get closer to that Donna and the Dynamos vision I had for myself.

And then the pandemic started and I was surprisingly pretty happy for a few months doing glitter makeup at home and hanging out with my luckily awesome roommates. And then I decided to chase an old dream and pack up and move to Colorado and finally try out that outdoorsy life. And then I moved again, this time to L.A., so again, new “needs” and no friends and a desperate desire to be doing something. And then, and then, and then. And it all came with a surprising amount of stuff.

What I’ve learned is that there’s always going to be another and then. Also, I really do enjoy staying busy. But I feel that I’ve grown wayyy too comfortable with just buying stuff and consuming things as a proxy for actually getting things done. It is way easier to buy a cheap label maker on Amazon than it is to sit down and sort through all my screws and drill bits and sort them into the right bins so I can actually label them.

All that is to say, I’m tired of the mindless over-consumption. It has rarely actually improved my life or increased the amount of fun I’ve had.

Yes, there have been some delightful escapades, a couple of killer outfits, and I’ve earned a few good belly laughs at one-time gags. I’m grateful that I get to have these memories. But a girl can only use so much Cool Weird Junk in one lifetime, and for now, at least, I am confident that I have enough.

Blah blah blah what am I getting at?

This year I’m pursuing a no-buy experiment to see if avoiding buying stuff can change my habits and mindset for the better.

The rules are loosely:

• No new or thrifted “stuff” unless it’s repair/mending supplies for an existing thing
• No new hobby supplies (no art supplies, no gardening supplies, no craft supplies, no fitness accessories)
• No new home improvement supplies (unless something actually breaks)
• No new or used books – library books only!
• No new clothes, no online thrifting
• No new cosmetics or bath products unless I’ve truly run out of something

I’m hoping that these rules will help me better appreciate and tend to the things I already have. My goals are basically:

• Build a healthier mindset that is more creative and more resistant to the urge to consume
• Complete more creative projects instead of starting and not finishing most of them
• Start knocking out my home improvement to-do list with the supplies I have already accumulated
• Reduce clutter
• Spend my time and money on things that make me happier and healthier.

I’ve been following the Raptitude blog for over a decade now and my favorite part of his archives is the Experiments. I’ve always been way more open to “experimenting” with my lifestyle rather than a challenge or a resolution or a rigid goal.

So it’s an experiment! We’ll see how it goes. I’m using the free, open source Loop app for Android to track my streaks. I’m paying close attention to recurring expenses to see where I can cut back there, too. I’m not trying to reduce my ‘activities’ spending, for now, since I do love getting out into the world.

1. Thank you to my roommates for indulging in a few at-home ABBA dance parties with me back then. ↩︎