Being truthful

 About the amount of times I have considered buying something today.

** disclaimer, I was being talked at non-stop while I was writing this entry so it is unlikely to make much sense. 

I was in town this morning picking up a couple of bits of food, some fabric for the school disco, a halloween costume for my oldest (second hand) and a birthday present for my stepdad. I have already resolved this month not to buy anything I don't need because we have been so short on money. Despite that, in town today I briefly considered buying:

-A coffee

-An orange scarf in m&s which I stopped and stroked for about a minute, almost checked the price label.

-Socks - walking past primark I wondered if I should stock up on sports socks, despite having a drawer full of socks

-General charity shop tat - almost browsed all of the lovely autumn shoes and bags they had out when I was in there to buy a halloween costume

-An orange polo neck jumper in another charity shop - did check the price: £3.50

I didn't buy any of the above, and only bought what I was actually in town for, with the exception of nutritional yeast and sundried tomatoes in the grape tree, which I hadn't planned to buy, but which we had run out of and will use. 

It all gets me to thinking that we are conditioned literally from birth to want and crave Things, and to be shopping addicts. I see it now that I have my own girls, especially when they have their own money to spend, they are struck by a sort of mania and want to just spend their money and get more things, and what they actually buy is only a detail. 

We are sold again and again the idea that the things we buy and own will somehow improve our character, and the way people perceive us. Although the latter might be true, it isn't terribly important, and the former is an outright lie. 

I have been wondering about doing some kind of 'no buy' challenge. I have tried to do no spend or low spend in the past but the motivation behind that is saving money. I would like to save money, however I think that is not as real to me, and perhaps therefore less incentivising, than the desire to escape this mass over-consumerism that has not only shaped (deformed?) my life but which is also of course destroying the planet and bringing misery to all. 

It seems like a good time to think about it now as we are coming up to the end of the year. Perhaps it time to start decided what I would like to be doing with my money time and energy in the year to come.