The Year of Less: How I Stopped Shopping, Gave Away My Belongings, and Discovered Life Is Worth More Than Anything You Can Buy in a Store

by Cait Flanders

I couldn’t drown it away anymore. I had to feel the discomfort, crave the drink, then push past it and find a new way to handle the situation.

Being newly sober, it was funny seeing the words that I tell myself in my head.

Each time I craved it, I had to stand in the moment, pay attention to what had triggered the craving, and change my reaction.

The toughest part of not being allowed to buy anything new wasn’t that I couldn’t buy anything new—it was having to physically confront my triggers and change my reaction to them.

In the past, whenever I wanted something, I bought it—no questions asked, budget and savings goals be damned.

Confronting a spending addiction 😶‍🌫️

The real thing to celebrate was that I had felt things and I kept living.

How I would describe sobriety

You didn’t need it yesterday, so you don’t need it today.”

When people announce your sobriety, it can feel like they have taken the card you hold closest to your chest and revealed your darkest secret to the world, which is that you are weak.

For some reason, many people are as comfortable announcing your sobriety as they are announcing what they had for lunch. What they might not realize is that one is a choice and the other is a survival tactic.

of. I had to let go of the stuff I wanted the ideal version of myself to use, and accept myself for who I really was.

Most of the addicts I’ve met are sensitive to pain, which is why we try to hide from it.

It wasn’t until I was sober and had to feel my way through every minute of discomfort that I realized why I had been shoving these things down my throat for all those years.

But something I had learned time and time again was that every small change you make pays compound interest. It helps you make another change, another mind-set shift, another decision to live a new way.

One of the greatest lessons I learned during these years is that whenever you’re thinking of binging, it’s usually because some part of you or your life feels like it’s lacking—and nothing you drink, eat, or buy can fix it. I know, because I’ve tried it all and none of it worked. Instead, you have to simplify, strip things away, and figure out what’s really going on. Falling into the cycle of wanting more, consuming more, and needing even more won’t help. More was never the answer. The answer, it turned out, was always less.