Friday, June 12, 2009

My craft supplies, my consumerism and my own self-disgust

Anybody ever get tired of stuff? I mean really tired of stuff?

Dictionary.com has three definitions for consumerism:
1. a modern movement for the protection of the consumer against useless, inferior, or dangerous products, misleading advertising, unfair pricing, etc.
2. the concept that an ever-expanding consumption of goods is advantageous to the economy.
3. the fact or practice of an increasing consumption of goods.

One is a good thing. People need protection of some sort.
Two is a economic theory. Fairly neutral in and of itself.
Three is the one I'm having issues with.

It's not even that my own consumption of goods is out of control. We don't have any credit card debt or car payments. We are not running out of money before we run out of month, although some months it can be close. We manage to put a little into savings for a rainy day. We are not in any kind of financial trouble currently.

It's just a whole list of little things that are bothering me. Like how fast the trashcan fills up with stuff that I know if just going to a landfill. How often I trip over things in our apartment because I didn't put them away becasue they don't really have a proper spot to put them. I could say that our apartment was just too small but stuff always seems to expand to fill the available space. It's how many projects I could make with my available supplies and how often I buy new supplies anyway. It's just all this...stuff.

I think that's the main reason I've been trying to destash. I'm just tired of stuff. I'm tired of how much room it takes and how much mental energy I put into it. I'm tired of buying something, getting it home and really having nothing to do with it or having it sit for months before I even look at it again. I'm tired of little purchases eating up my discretionary funds. I'm just tired. But then I hit the store to get something I need and something shiny grabs my attention and I find myself with another new thing at home that I could just have easily done without.

I need to stop. And I need to stop now before my own habits get away from me.

1 comment:

Deborah said...

I love this! I felt like that while clearing out my childhood home after my sister died. Good grief! I'm not as de-cluttered as I'd like to be, but I'm working on it!