Maybe you’re feeling smug about keeping your New Year’s resolution for 22 days. Then again, maybe not. Either way, you have to be cowed by the group of San Francisco friends who made a pledge to buy nothing new in 2006–and kept it.
Except for food, health and safety items, the group got through an entire year by reusing, repairing, regifting or doing without. Long after the rest of us had given up our vows to spend more time on the treadmill and less time in Dunkin’ Donuts, these folks were debating whether, say, buying a new toilet brush was a necessary health expense and therefore within the spirit of their pact. (And no, it turns out, it wasn’t.)
Haircuts, movies and meals out were OK; buying a new iPod instead of fixing the old one was not. One member cheated and bought a new drill bit. Another tried for weeks to find a free or used replacement for her commuter coffee cup before surrendering and buying a new one. Boy, did she feel guilty, though.
If you’re grateful you don’t have to live that way, you should know that neither did they. This isn’t about saving money; it’s about saving the planet. The group’s members are middle-class professionals who worry that unchecked consumerism is drawing down our natural resources while filling our basements with junk we don’t use.
God bless them for it, and God bless their extremist cousins, the freegans, who eat out of Dumpsters rather than participate in the unholy act of consumerism. While we’re at it, here’s to the composters and the people whose cars run on recycled vegetable oil discarded by fast-food joints. But let’s hope we don’t have to be that good to get into heaven. Few among us can pass up the shoe sale at Nordstrom just because we have three or four perfectly serviceable pairs of black pumps already. Most of us want to be free to buy a new toilet brush whenever we damn well please. If we can’t buy anything new, what in the world are we going to do with all these gift cards? What happened to the post-9/11 notion that shopping was our patriotic duty?
In fact, the San Francisco group has been accused of trying to sabotage the economy by encouraging Americans to curb their spending. Other critics say they are elitist greenies making a big deal out of doing what poor people have done all along.
All of this seems a little overwrought. There’s something to be said for living below your means, a point that was made a few years back in a book about “The Millionaire Next Door” and his 10-year-old Toyota Corolla. These days you can spend yourself into bankruptcy even if you’re under house arrest, thanks to eBay, and come to think of it, most of those purchases qualify as “used.”
Maybe you don’t lie awake at night worrying about how much you’re contributing to landfill overflow. Maybe you’re busy worrying about the credit card debt you ran up over the holidays. Either way, if you have a nagging sense that you’re acquiring too much stuff, then you probably are. Give it a break. You could use the extra money–and the closet space.
