Back in 2020, we sold our house and moved to Washington State temporarily. We got rid of a lot of things in that move, including all of our debt. We bought a van and traveled around the west coast. We went to Europe for long adventures including walking the Camino de Santiago. And doing all that had a big impact on how I see life. It impacted my thoughts on work and relationships. But it also impacted how I view the buying of stuff.

I have always been a thrifty person, wanting to find deals and spend less to get whatever it is I want. This is the result of growing up poor. Another result of growing up poor was that I often thought I’d be happier once I got XYZ thing. The house, the car, the income, the thing that would finally make everything better. I’m not saying I was miserable, in fact I did have a happier adult life than my childhood. But when we got rid of the things and the debt, I realized it wasn’t the stuff that made my life happier. It was the people.

In this current version of my life, I still have stuff. We had things in storage while we travelled and we have them all back. But I don’t feel as attached to a lot of it. I’ve been buying my clothes from thrift stores. Getting things free so times from Buy nothing groups. But I’m still find myself wanting. Specifically wanting to have a house with a backyard. Wanting to grow things. Make things. A lot less of wanting to buy things (although, I’ll admit making things takes some buying).

I don’t shop on Amazon anymore and I have been to Target in months. And now with everything happening around us, I find myself less and less enamored with things and more critical of the idea of being a consumer. I find myself annoyed by advertising and irritated about being seen as someone to buy things. And things aren’t even good quality often. They break quickly and then you need more things. There have been times our government has told us to “go shopping” for the economy. But is there something different we could be doing for each other? What does an economy look like that doesn’t rely on us shopping all of the time?

Anyways, I spend my time often dreaming about a house with rain catchment and solar and a garden with gray water use and chickens and all kinds of ways to reuse resources. I think Will views it as an impossible feat to have a home like that. But to me it seems more and more like a necessity.