Breaking stagnant habits

Extending my clothes no-buy to a household low-buy, and resetting my consumer brain.

As I wrote this, I realised how much I refer to things, to consumerism, to stuff. And to how much I love my stuff. But I do want to stress that while I am attached to all my bits and pieces, I know perfectly well they aren’t what matters to me. I am endlessly, profoundly grateful for the people I love, for community, for being a part of something where what you have is less important than what you are given.

Something I've been trying to focus on is the challenge of resisting the societal pressure¹ to treat and reward and comfort ourselves with things that ultimately damage us and profit someone else: sugar, alcohol, over-consumption, all those things sold to us with the "you deserve it" tag. The things that are fun in moderation, and hard to moderate. The things that are “treats” that we then expect to give ourselves all the time, totally ignoring the concept of a treat being something occasional and special.

Quite a long time ago (12 years ago?) I gave up smoking. I loved smoking - I was not one of those people who were constantly giving up and starting again, so I knew when I stopped it was for good. There were a couple of things that made me want to stop, one of which was that I was planning a trip to the US, and was booking my flights based around which airports had smoking lounges, and feeling annoyed that the hotel I was staying in didn’t have any smoking rooms. The other was that I didn’t want to be a 50 year old smoker, and I was almost there. One day I was lighting a cigarette on my way home when I realised that everyone in my family was away for a couple of weeks, and I could be as crabby and horrible as I wanted while I got over the bad bit. So I threw away my cigs, stocked up on raw fruit and veg to eat for two weeks, downloaded a couch to 5K app on my phone, bought some running shoes, and gave up smoking. I did press-ups when I wanted to smoke, and mainlined packets of almonds. I temporarily gave up cappucino and big mugs of Earl Grey (sitting down for a drink was when I would light up), alcohol (in case I thought just one cigarette would be a good idea after a glass of wine) and avoided places and situations where I would traditionally smoke.

It was hell, of course, and still I was able to recognise how lucky I was that it was the summer holiday and I could fill up the fridge with delicious fresh fruit for snacking, and take myself off to the woods to walk-run myself into exhaustion. I had thought the worst bit would be getting the nicotine out of my body, but by far the hardest was resisting the voice in my head yelling “Have a cigarette! You know you want one!” incessantly. Until something in my brain flipped, and I knew the voice in my head wasn’t my voice, and so I just hugely resented it. I saw the compulsion to smoke as something being imposed on me, and from then on, I could fight it.

I know I can’t ever go through that again, so I’ve never been tempted to smoke again. I stopped thinking of myself as a smoker.

As it happened, that summer my flights to the US (complete with stopover in nicotine-friendly airport) were cancelled. I ended up queuing for hours, running for the next flight they got me on, which had a crazy running flight change in the middle of a storm and finally got to Chicago 24 hours after I had left the house, during which time there was absolutely no opportunity to have had a cigarette even had I still been smoking.

One side effect of the healthy non-smoking diet was that I gave myself a lactose intolerance, so turned into a black coffee and herbal tea drinker - I never thought I would enjoy anything the way I loved a cappucino or a nice cuppa tea, but now I curate my tea-drawer obsessively and savour my black coffee. This is a fundamental change in habits of consumption that I cling to as a reminder that I can embrace new habits if I persist.

I also never started drinking again. Pausing made me realise a few things about my drinking habits (I was only a social drinker, but I relied on it socially, and the less I went out, the more it affected me when I did drink), so I decided to not start again. And that’s when I realised how relentless people are when they see your sobriety as a reflection on them (strangely, the same thing happened when I stopped dying my grey hair). Oh, you’re no fun! Just one drink won’t hurt! Stop being such a party-pooper! Go on, have a drink! Keep me company, have a drink! I noticed how often people referred to alcohol as a reward and solace - we’ve been working so hard, we all deserve a drink! etc.

I’m not a conspiracy theorist. I don’t believe “they” are all in cahoots and out to get us. But I’d be a fool not to recognise how marketing relentlessly targets our soft spots, and where I am susceptible to that.

It would be great to be able to recognise that I have enough - as I do: I have enough, and I recognise it - and move on, perfectly able to effortlessly change my shopping/consuming habits forever. I can’t even say that I am subjected to relentless pressure - nobody I am close to in real life is a committed shopper… that person would be me, in their lives. It’s that little voice in my brain, telling me it’s nice for me to have lovely things (it is! I just don’t need more of them!). It tells me I’m smart to know what I like and shop the sales, it praises me for my good taste and beautiful belongings. It tells me it’s sensible to stockpile things I know I use and some I might use. “It” keeps telling me that I need more, and finally I’m beginning to realise that “it” and me are not compatible any more. We’ve grown apart, I’m moving on.

I don’t think it’s useful for me,+ personally to think of this no/low buy thing as a challenge, right now. There are times when I thrive on new challenges, but this is not one of those times, so there’s no point on trying to persuade myself it would be a fun one. This is all about semantics, really. I think it will better serve me to view it as changing my habits around consumption. One of the things that worked for me with the clothes was focusing on actively enjoying what I have, and I am looking forward to doing that with everything else.

I’m not someone who is naturally tidy, but one of the things that always sticks in my head is my mother saying to me, when I was younger, “What’s the point in having lovely things if you can’t see them?” So I’m going back to that as a mantra, to help me focus on seeing what I have without my eyes sliding over things wondering if I need another of it, or a different one. And I’m talking about everything from the sublime to the ridiculous here - I don’t, at present, have any need at all for more/different dining chairs, spray bottles of glass cleaner, or packets of sugar.

Small wins:

• I unsubscribed from mailing lists that will tempt me, and deleted some shopping baskets.

• I was kind to - that language again! I was generous with/I indulged - myself before Christmas to the point where the continuing sales now aren’t tempting me.

• I am able to catch myself thinking it would be sensible to stock up on something I may not need for months because I previously stocked up.

The other day I went through my food drawers, and threw out anything out of date, which was a sobering experience, and a good reminder of how much so many things you think will be useful really aren’t, especially when they have a date stamp. A lot of this was down to ambitious baking aspirations, but I can accept that I’m never going to be a consistent baker and move on.

Although “decluttering” is a vague, permanent item on my to-do list, I’m not bad at doing it, and putting away things I don’t need now but may want in future. I am interested to see if using up what I already have makes this feel clearer. Something about the “may come in useful” trope potentially allows for more things that may come (not) in useful, whereas I hope that having to ask, is this useful? all the time will help me figure out that I don’t need more.

When I stopped buying clothes, it closed a door in my head that was always ajar, and when it was closed, I could properly focus on what I had. I’m hoping that by focussing on only buying what I really need, right now, I will be able to do the same with everything else.

Right now, I’m feeling good about resetting the buying stuff habits, even as in the past week circumstances have meant that more major household purchases are on the horizon. But at this moment I’m happy to hunker down and use what I have, and love it.

1. A societal pressure which I reference often, but which, in actual real life, does not exist for me. Nobody around me is putting these pressures on me, and I’m quite immune to social media telling me what’s what. At some point in my youth I became aware of societal pressures and have been using them as an excuse to myself ever since.