January brings the blues....

And a buy nothing month. After the excesses of Christmas (my shopping spread so carefully out that I can barely see it) I sat and did my accounts and figured out that the best way to balance my books is to go Cold Turkey.... Nothing for a month. Nada. Rien. As a woman dedicated to spending a little here and a little there this was a massive challenge, but one I had to do. Last term's supply was abysmal and I worry that may be the pattern for the rest of the year. So I set off to think it through...


And here I am, 19 days later still cowardly trying to work out what a buy nothing month should look like. Does food count? Can I get away with a newspaper or a magazine? If I go on a radical diet and slim a dress size does that make new clothes a necessity? (laughter echoes around my house; I don't need to worry about dropping a dress size for a while. With skinny minxes a 1/2 stone would be a big difference, but once you get past size 18 you are talking massive stone weight losses even to register a belt tightening. I suppose it all goes on percentage of weight and waist, but it does seem unfair)

I have cut back; I haven't bought anything really treatish for me, no dvds, no music. I did invest in a few Kindle books, but they were bought with gift certificates. And I did slip in one magazine, Woman and Home with Ruth Jones looking sumptuous on the cover.
And definitely no clothes. And I feel ok about it. I don't feel deprived. I have found other things to do than shop. (not work either; 1.5 days so far) but I have a tidier house. I have the backlog of books on my Kindle that I work my way through, and I have my puter that I have de fragged and hopefully made run faster. I don't feel the need to stop being careful.
I went shopping this week and got bewildered by all the shops and the stuff... my goodness! The stuff. Do I need all that?
Some of my reading over the past few weeks has been about minimalism and simplification. I keep feeling the pull. Please don't tell my husband, he laughs every time I say I want to go minimalist, but I do, truly. I want to live a quiet and simple life where my stuff is all beautiful and all useful. I want to live experiences, not live with a pile that gets between me and my friends. I want to be freed from the label of consumer and able to be... to just be.