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

committing to getting (and staying) out of debt, taking control of my health, and quitting drinking.

(caitflanders.com, formerly known as “Blonde on a Budget”),

The seed was planted once a month, at the end of every month, for 12 months in a row. Every time I had to write an update and justify why I was barely able to save any money, I told myself I could do better.

“I save 20 percent of my income, so I can spend the rest of my money on whatever I want.”

All I knew was that I seemingly had everything I wanted in my home, in my career, and in my life, and it never felt like enough. I was never satisfied. I always wanted more. But since more of anything wasn’t filling me up, maybe it was time to challenge myself to go after less.

I wanted to start using what was already in my possession. I wanted to feel like everything had a purpose,

However, you can only spend so much time working from home before you eventually notice what else is in your surroundings: your stuff. And even though mine was neatly organized, there was still too much of it, and too much that did nothing but collect dust.

had spent good money on this stuff.

It was all wasted. Wasted money, wasted dreams, wasted opportunities. It was almost enough to stop me from giving it away. But staring at the wasted money, dreams, and opportunities day in and day out hurt more. All items had to go.

At the same time I had kept track of how many items I was getting rid of, I thought about writing down what I had kept. Sorting through and physically touching every single item I owned showed me how much I already had, which gave me a visual to remember anytime I felt like giving up on the shopping ban.

There was more room to live in and more room to breathe in.

hated the pit in my stomach that warned me I might have done or said something stupid, and potentially altered one of my relationships. I hated not knowing.

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

he had learned vows were just words; actions were what made them commitments.

I didn’t know you could feel alone while you were in bed with someone, until that moment.

tumultuous,

I did some decluttering, getting rid of more toiletries I never used and a few items of clothing I hadn’t worn since my first purge. I got more comfortable in my space, and moved things around my apartment to make it more functional. I went hiking with friends on the weekends. I kept living. I felt things and I kept living. I didn’t numb myself with food or alcohol. And I didn’t shop. It wasn’t going to help.

But it did make me wonder, Why do we encourage each other to spend money, when we should all be saving more?

One lesson I’ve learned countless times over the years is that whenever you let go of something negative in your life, you make room for something positive.

Just TCB!” (This was our code for: take care of business.)

She was my cheerleader and my champion for success.

In her second TED Talk, “Listening to Shame,” Brené Brown says the difference is that guilt equals I did something bad, and shame equals I am bad.

The only way to stop it would be to remove the thing shame feeds on: secrecy.

When I was working for the government, I had struggled with the slow pace, and also with the understanding that I might never know who actually cared about the work I had done.

People wanted bigger homes, better cars, the latest trends, and more of everything. Even Madonna sang about how we lived in a material world. So it doesn’t surprise me that this is what our Christmases turned into, nor do I think my parents meant to teach us that this was the meaning of the holidays. Instead, I feel bad that they got sucked into it.

We only asked for a few things we needed and wanted, and the day became less about the gifts and more about the time we spent together.

In the end, we compromised. Rather than all of us spending our usual hundreds and even thousands of dollars on gifts, we pooled $700 to be spent on seven of us (the five of us plus my aunt and grandma). The rules for what we could spend the money on were simple: We could only ask for things we truly needed and each person could have no more than $100 spent on them.

Every other year, we had rushed into the living room to open presents and then gone about the rest of our day. On this morning, we made and ate breakfast as a family first, then spent a few minutes opening our gifts, and giving bigger hugs and more meaningful thank-yous than ever before.

When we were done, we packed up our two Yorkshire terriers, Molly and Lexie, and drove down to Willows Beach.

Then Alli set up her camera and tripod, and we took family photos for the very first time.

Even considered learning a skill that might actually help me? What had I done instead?

Up until this point, the only two questions I’d been asking myself when I decluttered my belongings were Have I used this recently? and Do I plan to use this soon?

Who are you buying this for: the person you are, or the person you want to be?

“You’ll feel better if you eat better,

Every time I ate too much white sugar or white flour, I crashed—hard.

In noticing this pattern, I started taking notes about how I felt after eating certain foods and slowly decreased my intake of all the ones that made me feel sick.

The process of tracking what I was eating and eliminating what didn’t make me feel good was identical to what I had done when I decided to get out of debt.

I could learn how to live with less and save more.

I decided to do what I often did in these situations: challenge myself to go without something for a set length of time—in this case, one month, or 31 days.

started researching the zero-waste movement and coming up with ideas for how I could slowly start to reduce mine. I spent time outdoors, going for walks alone and hikes with friends. I had two mentoring sessions with women I looked up to, and caught up with even more friends on the phone or video chat.

I could live with the silence. What I couldn’t live with was losing hours, days, and weeks of my life to things that didn’t matter.

Because I was only allowed to buy one new sweatshirt, as an example, it had to be the best. Not the best brand or the most expensive or the highest quality. It had to be the best for me.

The truth, I was learning, was that we couldn’t actually discover what we needed until we lived without it.

Since no one can physically see you in person, you feel the need to be online and available at all times, to prove you are, in fact, working.

my friend Kayla, in Denver, told me how unhappy she was at her job and that she’d promised herself she would quit by July 1 that I realized I needed to do the same. I needed an end date.

Stretch goals were something I had first learned about through reading personal finance blogs. People set them to challenge themselves to accomplish something even faster than they thought they could—by stretching their limits, so to speak.

I should have known I didn’t need a lot of money to achieve my financial goals. However, I had also always been stuck in the consumerism cycle.

“But what do you really want to do?”

may: finding myself in unusual places

we scoured websites that sell unsold hotel room inventory at discount prices to save on accommodation.