My brother has a great strategy for cutting down on "stuff:" he avoids all advertising like the dreaded lurgy. He uses his TiVo to filter out all commercials, he doesn't look at catalogs, and he recycles the advertising section in the newspaper before even looking at it. Wherever it is possible to avoid or ignore advertising, he is on the case (sometimes maybe a little fanatically).
Sure, he may miss out on a sale or some product that he might have been interested in, but in the long run, he saves a ton of money AND manages to cut down on clutter because he simply doesn't WANT as much stuff as everyone else. If he is happy with the shoes he has right now, there is no need for him to know that there is some new brand of shoes with a fancy support system and extra-light soles. He stays happy with what he has, while others who saw the shoe ad might end up dissatisfied with their current shoes but unable to pay the hefty price for the new ones. In either case you end up with the shoes you have always had, but wouldn't you rather be happy and not know what you were missing?
Plus, I think that if some product really is amazing then you will find out about it eventually. I never saw an ad for OxyClean, but a friend recommended it and now I am a loyal consumer (it is the best for baby poop and food spills, FYI).
So if you don't know you want those new shoes, then you won't be making an extra trip to the mall, and you won't be making any impulse buys, which means you will have less "stuff" in your house to deal with. And, you get to be happy to boot. How satisfying.
OxyClean--the ONLY thing that will remove ketchup, when you reach that stage! And believe me, it will get places you never dreamed!
what is the dreaded lurgy?
Posted by: Leslie | January 30, 2008 at 10:47 PM
It does wonders on soy sauce too :)
The dreaded lurgy is like cooties: not real, but you run like mad anyway!
Posted by: Lauren | January 31, 2008 at 11:55 PM