On Friday the first month of my low buy year ended and it’s time to look back at these 31 days of NOT shopping. How was my Low Buy January? How does it feel? How am I? Could you do it too?
It was great. It feels great. I’m doing great. Yes, you can (if you want to)!
Spending time not shopping
As those of you who did a low-buy or no-buy challenge know, the moment you ditch your compulsive shopping habits is usually also the moment you suddenly have A LOT more spare time on your hand. Surprisingly though, at least for the first 31 days, I had no trouble at all filling newfound time slots with projects and things to do.
For one, I read much more. I started my first-ever reading challenge on Goodreads and I’m already three books ahead! Right now I’m reading four books — John Naish’s Enough, Patrick Porter’s Military Orientalism, ‘Jessica Fletcher’s’ Maine Mutiny, and Leo Babauta’s The Power of Less — which is less than ideal in general and for someone like me in particular, but it’s ok because I feel like a kid on summer break — the world is my oyster and so are my bookshelves! 🙂
Having so much more time also enabled me to FINALLY get back into a proper research mode, usually spending my afternoons writing or reading some papers and actively working on my dissertation again. It’s still not ideal but far better than it has been just two months ago, so I’m heading in the right direction. Besides, one thing I’ve learned over the years working as a (freelance) writer and copywriter is that it often comes in waves — one day two, three, or five pages are no problem at all, other days it seems like every line you write is just one huge disaster in the making. So ‘ideal’ is whatever works best on any given day, as long as I just keep working.
I also got crafty again, embroidering my Kanken and already planning various designs for my other backpacks. I created some rather fancy bullet journal spreads, doodling my way through February and some collections and lists I started. So overall, this first Low Buy January was a great start into a year in which I plan to explore and establish new paths, ideas, and ways to handle my stuff.
Spending time shopping
Apart from being the ‘newly reformed’ compulsive shopper that I am, I still spent more than enough time ‘shopping’ things I needed in this Low Buy January. First to mention are groceries, of course. Thanks to meal planning I only have to get groceries about twice a week, but that’s still more than enough. Then there are those everyday items you never realized how regularly you need them. How often do you buy laundry detergent, toothpaste, or soap? We swapped a lot of our cosmetics and household product to sustainable and/or low-waste options, but even those do not grow on trees and you have to get them at the store. Surprisingly often, as I’ve found out recently.
Additionally, apart from buying only what I needed, I also shopped locally most of the time. Instead of ordering an item online, I went to the shops and actively searched for what I needed. So when my gran asked me to get her a sustainable alternative for her plastic straws, I did not order them online but first went to the local zero waste store to see if I could get stainless steel straws there — of course, they had several different versions!
When needing yarn for my embroidery project I also went to three different shops until I finally found what I had been looking for. This took some time, but also gave me a new understanding of how to act more sustainably and buy more consciously, using the resources I had right where I live — sometimes just five minutes away. After all, this is how most of us shopped just about ten, maybe fifteen years ago. Ordering online was an option, but just one of several. It was not the main option and the first choice — one could say I’m on my way back to the future that looks surprisingly similar to a not-so-long-ago past.
Admittedly, I also spend half of my Low Buy book budget for January on Amazon, so those tiny steps toward shopping locally amortized themselves with this act. Since I would have had to order these books anyway, I decided to do it on my own without the hassle of interpersonal interaction at a bookstore (after all it’s called The Merry Loner for a reason).
Room for improvement
January was an overtly social month. We went out for dinner with friends three times and I had three lunch dates, which is definitely more than I (and we) usually dine out in a month (we are literal homebodies). This is something that did not go according to my plan and rules and I want to change that in February. As I don’t want to rebuff my loved ones when they ask me out, this may become a true challenge over the months.
However, sometimes it’s also a question of timing: I hadn’t had a single dinner date (meaning going out for dinner and paying for it myself) in December, only to have surprise visits from friends and family on different weekends in January. Something like this can come up and it’s usually just called ‘life’ and you roll with it. This is also why low buy rules may sometimes be prone to bending at the edges according to what is within limits. Of course, I could’ve cooked for them, but these are people I love, so why should I endanger them with my lack of culinary skills? Yes, I overspent on eating out BUT at the same time, I didn’t use all of my book budget for January. Not a win-win, but also not a total failure 🙂
Besides, I completely forgot about my tuition fees which were due in January (as they are every year, but bless this mess that is my ADHD brain…) which messed up my savings plan, BUT it could have been much worse. I plan to do my best to undo some of the ‘losses’ in February by taking a close look at upcoming financial obligations before they take me by complete surprise. This should make it easier to plan accordingly so as to not end up frustrated at the end of the month.
February low buy — what lies ahead?
According to what I wrote earlier, I will do my best to calculate upcoming expenses. February 5th is my mom’s birthday and I will spend some money to get her a gift. We have a sort of town festival coming up which may add some additional costs, but not that much. I have to pay my train tickets for an upcoming holiday and the annual fee for an app I decided to keep. Apart from that, I hope for some smooth sailing and fancy saving my book budget for the month because this idea of ‘rediscovering my bookshelves’ works surprisingly well, so I may stick to it for now without adding anything to my collection.
I have a hard time planning long-term and I also don’t like to do it — as I discussed in my review of Ryder Carroll’s The Bullet Journal Method — but I’m doing my best to keep an eye on upcoming expenses BEFORE they take me by total surprise. In the end, it’s about finding out what works for me, which may be different from how others handle their life (and low buy). And that’s okay. We are here to share, support, and inspire each other — let’s do exactly that! 🙂