On Breaking Up with Mindless Consumerism

The last few years have been the first time in my life where I’ve had anything resembling disposable income. Before that, I was utterly drowning in student loans that I ultimately defaulted on and had to rehab. Before that, I was a college student, every bit as poor as every stereotype of college students would describe. And before that, I was being raised by a single mother, who worked her butt off, but whose labor was never properly compensated.

It was exciting and overwhelming and intoxicating to finally be able to have things that I fancied. It was also a new coping mechanism, to a certain degree. There was a lot changing in my life, and there still is, and acquiring stuff is soothing, in its way. I guess it made me feel like, if I went tumbling back into severe economic insecurity, at least I could hold onto some of the things I now had, like security blankets to remind me of when things were less difficult. I still feel like this stability is not permanent, which puts me into a mindset of “use it or lose it”, which is the root of bad decisions when it comes to money.

But after a while, this has itself become unhealthy, and it feels grotesque in it’s way. That’s the thing about retail therapy – it’s not having things that does the trick, it’s just acquiring them, so it’s not like it’s a lasting feeling. And at some level, when you start to pull back from it, and see all of the methods brands use to convince you to part with your money, you feel used and manipulated and brain washed. Or at least, that’s where I’m at.

This last week, we also had a coffee maker succumb to a premature, unceremonial death.  We’ve had this thing less than a year. It would cost more to fix it than to replace it. And something about that really, really bothers me. This is not unusual at all, of course – everything is built with an expiration date in mind now, so that you have to go back and buy another thing. Nothing is made to be fixed anymore. But it seriously fucking offends me that that coffee maker is now going to go sit in some landfill because planned obsolescence is a reliable business strategy, whereas longevity and serviceability are not. We’re creating glorified garbage.

And this whole cycle is just diseased as hell, through every step of the game. We underpay people in the lower rungs of the income ladder, so their purchasing power is amazingly diminished. And when they can’t afford to buy quality goods that last? We make those goods cheaper by outsourcing the labor to people we can exploit even harder. And when those jobs are sent overseas, we’re not paying people here even a sub-standard living wage to make them, so the income problem gets worse and worse as we rely more and more on what amounts largely to slave labor elsewhere.

And those cheap goods have even less value than people are paying for them, both because the cost of labor and materials have been scaled back, but also because it’s not enough to get people to part with their money once, for a good product that will last. We have to have their repeat business, so that product has to fail at a reliable rate.

I don’t know where to upend this whole machine, but I’m trying to think about how I buy things, and how I can reduce my support for all of it. I tried to convince Russ to get a non-mechanical coffee brewing option that would have less opportunity to fail, but he doesn’t want to have to invest the time in making the coffee every morning. So we bought a more expensive coffee maker, this one with a three year warrantee. And I’m looking around and trying to think about where I can refuse my support to rampant consumerism. What else can I make that I would then not need to buy? And when I do have to buy, is there a more responsible option? Are things being produced in a country with at least somewhat better labor regulations? Can I buy it from a local company that isn’t screwing over its workers to eke out a little more profit?

In a more immediate sense, I’m learning to take a breath and put some time between the impulse and the purchase. If I can get myself to stop and think for a minute, I can usually  allow the part of my brain that says “you don’t need this” to kick in and win the day. It’s not easy during moments when I’m really tired or stressed or emotional, and I have failed on a number of occasions, but I think I’ll get stronger the more I practice it. I’m finding it also helps to have a plan for a thing I want to save for, or for a donation I can make if I don’t blow that money on stupid things I don’t need.

I got the remaining stuff for my enormous carpet bag just before I had to leave for a business trip. Since I got back, I haven’t had much energy to work on it, but I’m super excited about how the hardware matches up with the fabrics in the bag.

I also got some iron-on laminate for fabrics. I was looking at buying pre-laminated fabric, but a) it’s rather pricey, especially since I already have a ton of fabric, and I’m only really ready to experiment right now, and b) the selection is not very wide, whereas I can laminate a wide variety of fabrics, at least in theory.

I haven’t tried it yet, and I won’t until the carpet bag is done, but a friend said she’s used this before to good effect. I want to make a makeup bag that will be easy to clean, so hopefully this will do the trick.