Buy Nothing 2018 Experiment – May Update

I am 5/12^th of the way through my buy nothing experiment I started at the beginning of the year. In short, I have decided to be more deliberate about my consumption and buy things only when they meet certain criteria as I described in this blog post.

As I progress I am starting to look at my possessions a little differently though, and not in an entirely healthy way. Although I don’t really need anything right now, I’m starting to look ahead. When I pick an item up to use it, sometimes I wonder how much life it has left. It creates a little anxiety at times, and I feel a bit constricted.

After I did my rounds of decluttering years ago, I could look in my closet and genuinely feel joy for the items before me. I know this seems a bit silly, getting joy out of a bunch of clothes, but it was there. At present I can’t really say the same. Perhaps I have just hedonically adapted to them all, but maybe I just secretly wish I could replace some of them with something newer and more joy inspiring.

Mrs. Happy Philosopher and family are able to buy stuff, and a think a part of me feels like I am missing out. First world problems. I will have to monitor this situation and observe my reactions. I feel like a few months from now things may get a bit more interesting.

Anyways, we had another pretty low consumption month. As with last month’s update, I have decided to include a new category of joint purchases. These are items that are hard to pin on Mrs. Happy philosopher alone, and I want to try and be as transparent as possible.

Purchases

Happy Philosopher:

• Basketball ($13) – This was for my son. After years of playing soccer, all of a sudden he has decided he wants to be a professional basketball player when he grows up. The regulation size basketball that we had is apparently not really an outdoor friendly ball, and after a couple months of concrete the thing was trashed and basically unusable. I picked up an outdoor ball, and may get another one for two handed drills.

Joint purchases:

• New litter box ($32) – This seems like a lot to spend on a litter box to me, but this one has a fancy lid on it, which has probably saved me an hour of vacuuming up cat litter since we got it. I don’t know how I ever lived without this.
• Bedsheets ($30) – Old ones were wearing out and getting holes in them
• Curtains ($45) – We have bought more curtains in the past 2 months that the last 10 years. These were purchased to contain the rage of my daughter who was tired of the little kid butterfly curtains hanging over her windows.
• Shoes (1 pair basketball and 1 pair casual) ($115) – My son destroys and outgrows his shoes at an alarming rate. I’m confident these will last at least a month.
• Sleeping bag ($25) – Our old kids’ sleeping bags we have are just too small. I can’t believe how much they grow. We actually need another one, but I wanted to check this one out and test it before getting another.
• Dress pants ($30) – The boy needed something nice to wear.

Mrs. Happy Philosopher:

• Sunhat ($13) – Cheap protection against skin cancer.
• Mother’s Day Cards ($??) – Don’t even get me started. I may have to change my projected sustainable withdraw rate to count for greeting card inflation.
• Shoes ($55) – I was told these shoes fill a critical void in Mrs. Happy Philosophers closet…and soul.
• Flower pot ($10) – Quite delightful if I may say.
• Shirts (4) ($70) – Although 4 shirts came in, I’m told 5 shirts left us, so this is actually a negative net shirt month for us.

As you can see, most of the things we buy are replacements of things that wear out or are outgrown. You may ask why I put the basketball as my purchase instead of a joint purchase. I don’t have a good reason, but here is my thought process. I ordered it without any input from Mrs. Happy Philosopher in the same way she did not ask which kind of flower pot I wanted. It wasn’t for me, but I was the purchaser. This fits into the category of sports equipment, which I have a very low threshold for buying. I guess I could have borrowed a basketball from someone to stick with the spirit of the experiment, but it is a little rude to borrow something for 8 months, completely wear it out and give it back. The basketball gets daily use and was a ‘necessary’ purchase.

Environmentalism

Even as I consume less, it seems our garbage can is always full at the end of the week. Unless you have been living under a rock and don’t consume much news like me, you have probably heard that China stopped importing our trash valuable recyclables. Many municipal waste services have responded by reducing the scope of their recycling programs, thus shifting more recyclables to the trash can.

Recycling has always been a pet peeve of mine. I often refer to it as ‘faux environmentalism’, because it really doesn’t do much for the environment. It makes us feel all warm and happy on the inside, but in reality most of it is an energy intensive process that just allows us to feel good about consuming too much stuff anyways and ignoring the real environmentalism of using less and reusing what we already have. Recycling is in large part an illusion that justifies our wasteful inefficiency.

Now don’t get me wrong. I still recycle stuff. I just don’t think it should be at the cornerstone of our environmentalism. Buying a bunch of single serving containers of juice, soda or organic kombucha and recycling the containers is orders of magnitude worse for the environment than just drinking municipal tap water in a reusable container.

Most of our trash is food and household item packaging waste. It is something our family is probably slightly better than average at not creating as a lot of our food is produce and bulk items, but there is still a lot of it. Here are a few simple things you can do to have a positive impact.

1. Use reusable grocery bags. Some municipalities are banning disposable grocery bags, or charging for them. I think this is awesome. Once you get in the habit, it becomes automatic. I actually feel a little queasy now when I go to a grocery store and they use about 50 plastic bags to contain the 53 items I bought.
2. Don’t put your produce in bags if not needed. If you buy 2 apples, they don’t need their own little plastic bag. If you buy 2 pounds of brussel sprouts bag them (preferably in a reusable bag you brought). In fact Mrs. Happy Philosopher just came home from the grocery store a few minutes ago with about 15 pounds of produce and not a single disposable bag. Be awesome like her.
3. Buy in the largest quantity that is practical. Buying in bulk usually saves packaging waste, but is senseless if the food goes to waste before you eat it.
4. Stop using straws. You are no longer in elementary school. Drink like an adult. Straws are ridiculous.
5. Save clear plastic disposable containers for bulk items in the grocery store.
6. Use cloth napkins and rags instead of paper towers.
7. Make your own household cleaners (infused vinegar, concentrated soap and water), or use super concentrated stuff you mix in a spray bottle to reuse. Millions of recipes on the interwebs.
8. If you do use plastic bags for produce, don’t use those little plastic clips or twist ties. Just tie the bag at the top or spin it around. Unless you are travelling through a combat zone to get home everything will be just fine.
9. Stop buying bottled water. Seriously. If you don’t like how your water tastes just filter it. This rule can be ignored if you live in Flint, Michigan.

There are billions of articles on the internet about zero waste shopping, and if you want to go hardcore be my guest. You can take a whole shopping cart full of reusable containers into the store and fill them if you want. Start with the big stuff though, like bringing your own grocery bags and create the habit.

Oh, and here are a few blogs also doing some kind of buy nothing challenge. Check them out. If you have a blog and are doing this throw a comment down below.

https://lifezemplified.com/less-waste-challenge/

https://www.dadsdollarsdebts.com/2018/04/07/buy-nothing-new-update-month-3/

https://buynothing2018.wordpress.com/

http://www.countdowntotranquility.com/2018/01/buy-nothing-2018-challenge/

http://thesmartfi.com/april-wrap-up/

https://www.drmcfrugal.com/buy-nothing-update-april/

Due to popular demand here is a link to a similar litter box we purchased, haha!