Status Update – Sam’s Club and Stuff

All the stuff!
Rusty Clark ~ 100K Photos, courtesy of Flickr

My friend and assistant, Julie, and I have this periodic discussion about stuff. People have a lot of stuff. We have a lot of stuff, but we’ve each, at various times and in our own ways, been trying to get rid of stuff. Julie turned me on to this documentary about minimalism, and I’ve been trying to implement some of those strategies in my life. Because I don’t really need all that much stuff.

But sometimes I really, really want the stuff!

The other thing Julie and I have discussed is how it doesn’t matter how much you have, somehow there’s always something else you want. I think it actually has a specific psychological term. It’s human nature. We think that if we get Widget A, our life will be complete and we’ll never want anything else again. So we get Widget A…and instantly we want Widget B. It’s just how things are. And I’ve done that over and over and over again.

Although I’ve gotten much better recently. I have a wonderful apartment, I have nice furniture, a Kitchen-Aid mixer, nice pots and pans that match, and a super cool, very sharp knife set. (You can see which room my priorities lie in). I’m not really a clothes or shoes or handbags kind of gal. Books, yes, but books are special. No, what I really want to spend my money on is travel. Which is probably why I’m going to Europe twice this year.

Sam’s Club by Mike Mozart of JeepersMedia and TheToyChannel on YouTube, courtesy of Flickr

Anyhow, lately, I’ve had an itch. It’s not for stuff per se, it’s for access to stuff. I keep thinking that I really need to get a membership to Sam’s Club. Now, I don’t have a huge family. I’m not running an organization. I’m just a single woman with two cats. But I did buy one of those vacuum seal food storage systems recently, and I feel like I should buy in bulk and then vacuum seal all the stuff! But do I really need to?

So here’s my question for you all. Should I bother getting a membership to Sam’s? Is it really a good deal to buy things like granola bars in bulk? Or would I actually end up buying foods that I could then suck and freeze so that I only have to go grocery shopping once a month? Would this make me spend less overall or more? Inquiring minds want to know!