MORE THAN ENOUGH/ A YEAR OF NO SHOPPING (May 15, 2019-May 15, 2020) started yesterday for me.

Clif's notes version of the next 364 days for our family:

If this seems like a "no duh" thing for you, then you probably don't need a challenge or understand why I would need a challenge like this!  The only asterisk on this for me (as it was with the girl who I got the idea from) is that if one of my kids outgrows a pair of shoes and they have no more to use, we will buy one of the same, but if it is clothes, they just need to use what they have unless they have no clothes, which I doubt will happen unless they get some sort of monster growth spurt! 

Drew and the kids are on board, the kids can still earn money from chores and buy stuff on their own, and it is totally fine if they get gifts from other family members or friends for birthdays or something, but from us they will only get a homemade gift or experience and if they go to someone's birthday party, then Drew (not me) can take them to get something reasonable, since this experience is to help me most of all. I probably won't be stepping foot in a Target till spring of 2020.

IF you want to know the nitty gritty details about how I arrived here, read on....

_________________________________________________________________

On my 10-hour drive there and back to visit my mom for a belated mother's day gift, I had an epiphany. This one had been brewing for awhile, but started to spark after reading this book I stumbled upon at the library:

The most interesting thing that stuck out to me while reading (a really easy read, by the way) was that while recycling and reusing are both "so hot right now", reducing (and therefore going counter to consumerism culture of BUY MORE EVERY DAY) is not.

Let me back up a bit. Ever since I was little, I remember wanting to be a hippie flower child. I was in environmental groups at home and that was something I was SO passionate about for a long time. I lost that passion somewhere in the teenage years and it only started truly re-emerging in the last few months, as we moved to Indiana and starting noticing garbage in the streams or how embedded into nature our new home was. A couple documentaries later (and after finishing the above book) I really dug deep into reducing our waste. I have never been one for keeping clutter ( I have a hard time watching shows like Hoarders or Marie Kondo because watching all the clutter makes me a little paranoid about how much stuff we have and makes me feel like we need to get rid of MORE stuff), but I started to recognize how we could recycle as much as possible, and add a minimal amount of trash. We currently have about 2-3 garbage bags a week in our and I am hoping to reduce that next year to one, as we recycle more, use less, and start composting.

Watching the Minimalists (Netflix) with Drew was eye opening. Obviously it is very different/easy to be minimalist when you don't have kids, but I felt like while we were doing good, we could do better. I remember Drew making a comment (not quoteable but similar to) about how while I am very good about not keeping stuff around we do not need or use, I bring in about as much with my shopping. I was highly offended at the comment because HOW DARE HE but like everything he says, I knew he was right. It just took a few months for me to realize it.

My whole adult life I have struggled with shopping. I made hundreds of dollars babysitting from ages 12-18 and I spent every bit of it. I got a credit card at 18, and despite my dad's accountant-style attempts to teach me to stay within a budget, all that went out the window when I realized I could buy now, pay later. I always paid off my credit card, though it came at a cost... I was lucky enough that my parents were helping me pay for rent and tuition, so when I went to BYU I only had to work a part time job to pay for groceries, and even then I finished my first year of college in desperate need to make money. So the summer after my freshman year of college, I got THREE jobs, because I needed to keep up with my spending habits... I worked as a full time nanny of 3 kids, and then when I wasn't doing that, I was working at a tanning salon or at a mexican restaurant. It was a busy summer but worth it to be able to keep up with my current spending as well as pay off my debt from Freshman year.

So when I met Drew that fall, I continued to go in a similar cycle, spending as quickly as I was earning. Drew was an incredible force for good in my life (and much needed!) because his extremely frugal habits either rubbed off on me or shamed me enough to curb my spending habits. I didn't want my horrible spending compulsions to be the reason he couldn't marry me.

I think I had $22 in my bank account when we got married (after paying for his ring and my last credit card statement as a single lady), but to be honest I was just thrilled I had entered marriage without the embarrassment of debt. I wish I could say that marrying him cured my shopping issues but unfortunately if anything it made money the most difficult issue in our marriage.

We got married over 12 years ago and this is still a subject that is hard for me to talk about, even with him. I always knew I was the "spender" in our relationship and I couldn't stop. I curbed it, certainly, because I loved him so much and wanted him to not be greatly dissapointed in me, but it never lasted long because at my core, I just didn't care. You read that right. I just didn't care about money. I am aware at what a privilege that is. That while we were more careful in our earlier years and had the cheapest rentals money could buy, we were able to get help from our parents and the government in those early years of marriage and we have never been in any serious debt that was not due to car or house payments. I am forever grateful for Drew for that, since it is his guidance that led us to that frugality and did not come without some serious kicking and screaming on my part.

Then I read this book back in March when I went to Seattle for a conference:

2018 and 2019 have both felt funk-like for me, and this helped bring me out of that funk. I started planning for the future, making goals for the next 10 years. And while my goals and dreams have shifted slightly, one stayed consistent:

I am financially independent.

It started out as a number. I thought, if I am making "x" amount of money a year, I should still be able to provide for our family if something happens to Drew's job. But then I went and looked at art teacher salaries and that number was completely out of my range. Which is not to say that I don't still want to make that much money on my own, but then I listened to this podcast from a girl named Miranda that I only started listening to because I wanted help getting out of my creative funk.

In that podcast she talks about how there are only two ways to have more money: make more or spend less. SERIOUS LIGHTBULB MOMENT FOR ME. She spoke about a YEAR of NO SHOPPING and I felt this tug, this "hey, this is for YOU." I read more about it when I got home and told Drew. He was a bit unimpressed (I am the one with the BIG IDEAS for how to make budgeting work "better" and I always seem to fail at them and then give up because that has been my cycle) but as always, supportive. The irony of this is that this is the way HE usually lives his life, so instead of calling this a "year of no shopping", I should probably call it "Trying to be more like Drew"!

Anyways, these are the rules I decided on for myself for the next 364 days. I already made it one day (yay! little victories!) and really wanted to embrace this idea for myself and my kids of what Miranda calls:

"using a concrete idea to help develop the more abstract principles of patience, gratitude, abundance, and simplicity"

the link to her post talking about her year of not shopping here.

I love that idea. MORE THAN ENOUGH STUFF. Because it is so true!

Of course as soon as I made this decision (on Monday), I realized that one major purchase had to be made and no longer procrastinated before I began... so my "final shopping" experience was a mattress and minimal frame for my daughter's room, to replace the inflatable mattress, which I honestly would have let her sleep on longer if it wasn't for my grandfather coming to visit with my parents at the end of this month and needing a place to sleep. So we got both ordered Tuesday and yesterday was actually really hard! I do a lot of "retail therapy" where my brain will make excuses to buy something.

Case in Point: I got an email first thing yesterday about this event for BYU that would be in Nashville and they would be selling (BYU) Y'ALL shirts and my first thought was WE NEED THOSE. After calming down my brain I reminded myself that half of Drew's wardrobe is BYU gear, all our kids have some size or another in BYU stuff and that was not something we would be buying because it would be shopping. It is flattering to me that people are shocked I need to go to such an extreme to stop shopping but I guess that also exposes me to what I have been since I was a little girl spending all my hard earned babysitting money on Bear Hugs (a candy and toy shop within walking distance to my childhood home) and then later Limited Too and Claire's:

I am a shopaholic.

I love to shop but I do not love the way it makes me feel afterwards, similar to a few other vices like chocolate or ice cream, haha! I would like to feel in control, and this is the best experiment I could think of, PLUS an added bonus is that it will help me with my creativity! I'm excited to turn some of A's shirts into tanks and broken leggings into shorts instead of having to go buy her new ones this summer.

One last quote from Miranda that sums up what I hope to achieve this year:

"Sometimes it feels like everywhere you look the message is that you don’t have enough. You need more, better, newer, faster, and shinier things to be happy. Well, we’ve proved that message wrong for our own little family. We spent the year viewing what we had as more than enough, and  seeking creative ways to use and love it. We also learned a lot about what we need, like, and care most about. When you step off of the cycle of consumption it becomes really clear where the things you normally buy serve your life, and where they don’t."

I am also planning on a monthly "experience" for myself as a sort of treat for continuing on this path and to act as something to look forward to (patience!). First up will be a proper haircut sometime before the next month...