Can I TRULY Go About My Week Without Buying A THING?

Not even a cup of coffee at my favorite shop? do I do with my young kids who expect me to buy certain treats when we’re out or when they deserve a special treat?

First, the clarity: In the last blog, I mentioned that since I began my boycotting journey, I have discovered that my spending has gone down quite a bit. I want to continue to share the upsides to RESISTING the urge to spend, especially “spending-on-the-whim.”

Of course the most obvious upside to kicking the spending habit is having more money at the end of each week or month. Wouldn’t everyone want to have more money in their own pockets at the end of the pay period than in someone else’s?

Yet another upside is discovering new things about yourself. In the past, I tended to spend all too hastily. You know, as in “Wow, this sure would look nice on me, I think I’ll buy it,” or “I’ve got enough money on me, so I think I’ll pick up this treat for myself and my little ones.”

With my evolving “boycott mind,” I now pause before spending,

Literally pause. Here’s an example: I carry only one handbag at a time rather than swap out a few or several. When my handbag starts to fall apart, I buy another one. I have a high tolerance for carrying around raggedy handbags, so it’s often on a whim that I’ll buy a new one, reasoning to myself that I NEED a new bag so I might as well buy this one. So last week when my sister was in town, we went on a shopping trip because she wanted to buy a new bag to add to her vast collection. It was not my intention to buy a purse that day, but I looked around, saw one that I liked, and then stopped cold: “I’ll sleep on it.”

This is my new phrase with virtually any major buy (which is anything over $50). So I took an extra day to think about this potential purchase. I ended up deciding not to buy it because I remembered that the

last handbag I occurred, which I liked a great deal, was still in my closet and in need of repair.

I just dodged an unnecessary purchase.

I’ll admit that this practice of pausing and waiting doesn’t happen every single time, but I like that I’m becoming better at it.

And here’s a third upside to spending less. Spending less on “stuff” often means less clutter. Clutter is the stuff we don’t need or that could easily be given away, and that fills out drawers, closets, homes, and cars. Stuff leaves us with a feeling of “fullness” as though having it affirms our existence on the planet. In all fairness, the cluttering of our spaces also occurs when we merely tolerate the excesses because our lives become busy. We may all know people whose clutter is so overwhelming that they have little space even to walk around their living quarters.

Not long after my father’s death, my mother moved from the house where my siblings and I grew up in Silver Spring, Maryland to a smaller home in Florida. She found herself having to face a crawlspace filled to the gills with clothes, sports uniforms, pom poms, old school notebooks and projects, toys --- you name it. This was the stuff that had been gathered from a family of 8 living in one home for over 30 years. Much of it had sentimental value, but most did not. Believe it or not, my parents made regularly donations to charity throughout these 30+ years.

With help, my mother not only gleefully (and laboriously) chucked away several tons of junk from our beloved home. She also immediately began setting up her new home with very, very few items. She saved “enough” clothes to get by from week to week and held onto the barest minimum of furniture. The photos stayed, along with a few sentimental items, but not much more. She became a confirmed minimalist.

I’m striving to get this place of being a minimalist, to some extent, and only recently have gotten better at filling up my space with the things I deem necessary. But here’s the biggest lesson this month on my boycotting journey. Whenever it’s time to buy anything, the act of spending money now feels like a special one. It’s become less of a mindless act because I am finding, increasingly, that I feel content when I spend money from the vendors whose policies are in line with my values and not from the ones whose leaders oppose them.

Thanks for reading this post and allowing me to share my experiences with you.