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.

Comments

  1. Nice to see you blogging again. So many people are having No Spend January's. The interesting thing is that many people find it quite easy, so why do we all spend so much on things we don't really need? I sometimes think I could live a minimalist life, then I see something in a shop which I just couldn't live without.

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  2. Hello there. I felt like I couldn't leave the house without spending heaps of money in December. There were SO MANY receipts! I haven't spent much so far this month, apart from the chiropractor and I'm hoping if I get fitter then I won't need to keep going back to her either!
    Hope the work situation picks up for you soon and enjoy your reading.
    Lisa x

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