2019 was the year of “No.” Back in November 2018 I planned out the challenge that would come to be known as the Yearlong Shopping Ban. For the entirety of 2019, I was not to buy anything new (with a few exceptions). The idea being that everything I own is completely sufficient to continue a happy and comfortable life, and that no amount of new things are going to increase my happiness. It was marketed as a challenge, and as such I understood that it was going to be challenging, but I didn’t expect it to test my willpower as much as it did. This is the story of my Yearlong Shopping Ban, inspired by Cait Flanders.
Rules
I had a few self imposed rules and allowances meant to impose additional restrictions and to allow me a handful of planned purchases throughout the year. These almost worked out, though it got a little fuzzy as the year was approaching an end.
Coffee purchases are allowed, but only black. No lattes.
I thought I would have a hard time giving up sugary espresso-based drinks, and rather hilariously this became one of the parts of this challenge I’m most thankful for. The first handful of months were extremely challenging. I missed lattes in the winter and I missed frappes in the summer. But as the year went on, I began to miss these things less and less. It helped too that I could have a black coffee for less than $2 at any coffee shop, and for free at every hotel. I don’t see myself going back to buying fancy, sugar-filled drinks anytime soon, though I may still splurge on a pumpkin spice latte in the fall and/or a peppermint latte in the winter.
Fast food is allowed outside of my hometown simply to make travel easier.
This one was surprisingly easy to cut out. Even on the busiest days I found a few minutes to throw something together at home. Another one I won’t be going back on.
No soft drinks.
This one caught me a few times throughout the year, mainly at places where a drink purchase was a habitual addition. I always got an IZZE at Chipotle, for example, since it’s one of the few places I can buy an IZZE. I’ve really come to appreciate water though, which sounds weird to say. But it’s always freely and infinitely available at every restaurant, and goes with every dish.
Toward the end of the year I forgot this was a blanket ban and started purchasing sodas when I was out at bars with friends to avoid buying alcohol (more on this later). I guess I hoped those I went to the bar with would care less that I wasn’t drinking with them if I at least had a non-clear drink in my hand.
No drive-throughs.
Easy, plus it plays well with avoiding fast food altogether.
No alcohol.
Attempt to repair before replacing.
Thankfully I didn’t have anything that needed repairing nor replacing throughout the year.
Attempt to buy at a thrift store first.
I didn’t utilize this one as much as I had hoped, mainly because I strayed away from buying anything throughout the year. I did make one Goodwill run that was very successful though. My girlfriend moved to a new apartment and needed a cable modem for her internet, I snagged one at a Goodwill down the street for four dollars.
Pick the vegan menu items whenever they are available.
This is a work in progress still. I started strong up until The Meal—and I remember the exact meal (dinner with coworkers at The Village Idiot in Lexington, KY). The menu placed the vegan quinoa bowl right above my favorite dish of all time: BBQ Pulled Pork Mac & Cheese.
This was the first time in 2019 I chose a non-vegan menu item when a vegan alternative was on the menu, and it opened the floodgates for even more plant-based avoidance going forward.
I learned this year how unfortunate it is that so few places cater to vegans (or even vegetarians for that matter) at all. I travel all around the US and visit a variety of restaurant types, and many include meat in—literally—every single menu item.
I was able to have a lot of conversation about veganism and our collective meat-obsession this year, more on that later.
No new subscriptions.
If it smells like something’s burning, that’s my attempt at achieving this goal. Let’s see... I got a Quip as a gift, so a toothbrush head subscription went along with that. This one I actually don’t mind because it saves me from buying new toothbrushes every few months. I started a Squarespace site of my own, with it came an annual subscription. My favorite weather app, Weather Line, released a radical new update and with it pivoted to a subscription model. I started using Backblaze as an off-site cloud backup service since I’m increasingly using my computer to do real work and would hate to start from scratch if anything happened to it. Finally, most recently, I subscribed to Heated, a daily newsletter for people who are mad about the climate crisis.
All in all, I’m not upset with myself for starting these subscriptions... just disappointed.
No paid software.
So after everything you just read about my weakness for subscriptions, not buying was actually really easy. Somehow, when things have a single price tag paid up front, I have no problem saying no. Yet when they are subscription based, I’m compelled to give them my money.
I’ll be a lot less strict about buying software in the future though. I’m a huge advocate of buying software, and I really have no issue paying for a tool and supporting the developers even if it’s not the perfect tool for me.
Year in Review
This year required inordinate amounts of discipline and self-control for me, far more than I expected going into it. After all, how hard could it be to simply avoid buying new things? Incredibly so, it turns out. The big things were easier. The things that were obviously a strain on my budget I had no issue denying. Smaller things—apps, drinks, socks, etc.—while all silly to believe were the things that caused me to second guess my challenge, turned out to be so insignificant that it became dangerously easy for my mind to justify looking the other way and making the purchase. Thankfully, this (mostly) didn’t happen.
At various different points throughout the year, I’d get emails advertising sales and special offers that were unfortunate to have to turn down. One example was the Allen Edmonds boot sale. I had had my eye on a pair of winter Chelsea boots for about a month when the Allen Edmonds boot sale began. The offer: $100 off every style of boots. Turning away from this sale was extremely difficult, but I’m glad I did as I later decided I didn’t need another pair of winter boots.
Black Friday and holiday sale season was also difficult to endure, though thankfully by that point in the year I wasn’t so much tempted by the sales as I was depressed by having to miss them. Countless opportunities to save money on things I’m planning to buy in 2020 passed by, but being on the other side of it I’m glad I outlasted. My budget is relatively tight, yet I still managed to spend less than I made in 10 of the past 12 months, and those 2 months were as a result of surgery that put me off work for about 6 weeks.
If fighting against my own willpower wasn’t hard enough, justifying my decisions to others was extremely challenging. At the start of the year, frugality at the expense of experiences was difficult to justify. The most common place I experienced this was at bars with my coworkers. I struggled to find the right words to justify my decision not to drink at first, trying to avoid diving into the whole concept of this shopping ban. Eventually, however, I found the confidence in my decision making necessary to simply say, “I don’t buy alcohol because it’s expensive and unnecessary.”
As the year went on, I found far more support from others, both strangers and friends, than I could have ever expected.
I’ve had countless conversations in the past 365 days about issues surrounding this shopping ban, but I want to focus on three in case these strike a chord with anyone. You can title this section, “Conversations,” or perhaps, “Ways in which in hindsight it would have been easier to simply explain this whole notion of a shopping ban and all of its additional restrictions to my friends, coworkers, and total strangers from the get-go.”
1. Veganism
People are really wary of the word “vegan.” I didn’t know this going into the year, and would frequently voice concern if there was nothing remotely vegan or vegan-able (my word for vegan with modifications) on a menu. The response was usually, “Oh, you’re vegan?” To which I would politely respond, “Not at all, but I am trying to cut back on my meat consumption whenever I can reasonably do so. After all, there’s no reason I should have meat with every meal or even every day.” This is usually when the conversation shifted from gentle inquiries to bold defenses, “Well I like meat,” “There’s nothing wrong with meat,” “I’m perfectly fine being a carnivore,” etc.
Somehow meat (at least in America) has become an unbreakable covenant held by those who all-too-proudly defend their desire to eat animals (hopefully in addition to plenty of plants). Surprisingly often, my remark about how I’m trying to cut back was received as a subtle insult on the diet of the person I was dining with. As if my ordering a salad was my passive-aggressive way of saying “Your burger is bad and you should feel bad!” Obviously this couldn’t have been further from the truth, and I often tried to continue by saying, “Really, I like meat! I’m just trying not to have it all the time.” But whether or not I could save the conversation was hit-or-miss. I’m happy to report that some of my table-mates were interested in hearing more, and even felt the same way about their own rate of meat consumption. Those conversations were the best ones.
Ultimately, going forward, I’m going to continue seeking out animal-free meals at every mealtime. Until I live and work in a nation that is wholly supportive of plant-based meals (I’m excited about the number of plant-based meat alternatives popping up!), it’s going to be difficult for me to cut animal products out of my diet entirely. But in the meantime, and I can’t stress this enough to anyone who’s on the fence about cutting back, every time you say no to animal products is a win. In no way does it have to be all-or-nothing.
2. Alcohol
As I mentioned earlier, I didn’t know how to approach my aversion to purchasing alcohol earlier in the year. I usually found it easiest to just say, “I don’t drink.” Humorously, when I would tell people I didn’t drink they would assume I was either (1) a recovering alcoholic or (2) highly religious. I also learned that nearly universally people that are planning on getting drunk do not like it when you say you are not drinking. There is either a shame or a distrust connected to being drunk in front of a sober person. I still try, and I think succeed, at being good company. And if that’s not enough, I can usually win everyone over by offering rides home at the end of the night.
As I mentioned earlier: I came to own the fact that I thought alcohol was expensive and unnecessary, and as I did people seemed to accept that stance more. It wasn’t about them, it wasn’t my beliefs, it was simply about my frugality. Which brings us to...
3. Frugality
Usually, the conversation would come around to the fact that my convention-challenging behaviors were all a part of a yearlong frugality exercise that also encompassed various lifestyle modifications. This has resonated with everyone I’ve shared it with. No matter how much people make or how much they spend, how much they like meat or alcohol, everyone could understand wanting to better oneself and spending a year focusing on honing in on that which matters most.
The List
Without further ado, here’s the list of every non-food item I purchased in 2020.
Automotive
1 Bottle of cleaning solution
1 Ice scraper
1 Microfiber cloth
1 Paint repair kit
3 Spray bottles
Clothing
1 Pair of dress pants
1 Pair of dress shoes
1 Pair of shoe laces
2 Pairs of shorts
2 Short sleeve wool linen shirts
1 Suit jacket
Entertainment
2 Books
Home Goods
7 Bars of body soap
1 Bar of conditioner
3 Bars of shampoo
1 Bottle of laundry detergent
1 Bottle of rubbing alcohol
1 Bottle of shower spray refill
1 Electric toothbrush
3 Pens
3 Pods of razor cleaning fluid
1 Small box of Kleenex tissues
2 Sticks of deodorant
3 Sticks of sun screen
2 Tubs of hair cream
1 Tub of hair fibre cream
1 Tube of toothpaste
3 Tupperware containers
The Future
Going forward, I will certainly not be renewing this challenge for another year. I really have to hand it to Cait Flanders that after a year of this she was ready to do it all over again. That said, the effects this challenge have had on me and my habits are immense. I expected to learn more about what I really need and ended up learning a whole lot more about what I don’t need, which is to say much of anything at all. I certainly never need anything immediately.
Bearing this in mind, I created a spreadsheet in Notion of things I would like to purchase in the future. On each line I’ve listed the item, a link to buy it, its price, the date I must wait until I may buy it, a general category, whether the decision to buy it is based on (1) Utility or (2) Status, and finally any miscellaneous notes related to the purchase (i.e. “Only if I move”).
Paradoxically, more items are deleted off the list than are added to it. When I think something would be cool to have, I add it to the list and set a date, the longer I’m willing to wait the better. Then I review the list regularly. Sometimes as early as the next day and other times after months, I decide I really don’t need to spend money on whatever I once thought was so important.
As I mentioned earlier, a few of the restrictions from this year’s challenge will live on indefinitely. For example, I really don’t miss buying fancy coffee drinks. Little by little I don’t even desire regular black coffee anymore. I might end up taking another cue from Cait Flanders’ challenge and make coffee exclusively a dine-in experience going forward. Additionally, I don’t see myself buying fast food in my hometown ever again, and I would like to use my 2020 spending powers to purchase snack containers with the intention of packing my own snacks when I travel, perhaps with the intention of cutting fast food (and possibly even meat) out for good. Finally, alcohol. I decided I’m done with it. I didn’t miss buying it at any point this year.
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I want to leave you with this, since to me minimalism has always followed the same pattern of consuming less, then consuming better. Along this vein, in the Only What Matters community I’ve talked about my experiments with intermittent fasting with the intention of eating less, then eating better. This less/better dynamic is the consistent thread throughout my minimalism journey and my primary intention going forward is to use the lessons I learned about myself and society in 2019 to make a solid effort to consume less, and convince others to do the same. Then, to simply focus on consuming better.
If you aren’t already a member of the Only What Matters community, I highly encourage you to check it out. I documented my shopping ban progress monthly and received great feedback every month from other members of the community, some of whom tried this challenge for themselves.