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

The excuse I would always tell myself was that I would do it “one day.”

The skinnier clothes definitely had to go, because holding on to them didn’t motivate me to lose more weight; it deflated me and stopped me from simply enjoying my new body and appreciating how far I had come.

I have always loved books and loved to read. But I have also always had a bad habit of buying more books than I’ll ever read in a month or even in a year.

As I poured, I said good-bye to the wasted money, wasted dreams, and wasted opportunities. Or maybe it was the opposite. Maybe it was the beginning of saved money, saved dreams, and saved opportunities.

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 each instance, I would pause, take in my surroundings, and try to figure out why I was thinking about making a purchase.

In the past, whenever I wanted something, I bought it—no questions asked, budget and savings goals be damned. To combat these impulses now, the only thing I could ever think to do was remember how much stuff I had gotten rid of and how much I still had at home. It was enough. I had enough. It wasn’t until I found myself in these situations that I realized the shopping ban was going to be more difficult than I’d thought.

It’s easy to look at a picture of a stereotype, point your finger at it, and say, “I don’t look like that, so I’m not that way.” By announcing

And I didn’t shop. It wasn’t going to help. It had never actually helped before, and it wasn’t going to help this time either.

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.

Even doing something as simple as choosing not to finish a book I didn’t like gave me more time to read books I loved.

And putting less energy into the friendships with people who didn’t understand me gave me more energy to put into the friendships with people who did.

also believe we choose who we share these internal struggles with before we make our final decisions, because we almost always tell the person who will enable us to make the bad choice.

because she firmly fell into the camp of friends who encourage people to make good choices.

It’s the concern that banning yourself from doing something altogether will be too restrictive. That going cold turkey will cause you to eventually give up, relapse, and binge harder than you might have if you’d never attempted to abstain.

Realizing that making an error in judgment didn’t make me a bad person.

Getting comfortable with being human.

wasn’t good enough, but this stuff would make me better. I wanted to read, wear, and do everything so I could become the person I thought I should be. Having these items in my home proved it was possible. I would do it all one day, and become a better person one day. This time, one day never came.

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

Why stay in the continuous loop of talking about living with addiction when you could simply go out and live?

All of these discoveries could have been boiled down to two questions: If it didn’t feel good, why would I do it? And what did I really want right now? To feel good—or at least, to feel better.

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.

It was the first one I could see myself wearing often, the first one I could imagine spending money on, and it took me nine months to find it. There was nothing impulsive about that decision.

Advertisements and marketing campaigns had conditioned me to believe everything was

now or never. It never occurred to me to wait until I actually needed something.

The truth, I was learning, was that we couldn’t actually discover what we needed u...

However, I had also always been stuck in the consumerism cycle. I thought I needed to earn more money each year, so I could have more of what I wanted.

When you want less, you consume less—and you also need less money.

you want less, you need less—and are then able to calculate how much money you actually need to earn.

Most importantly, I had put myself first. I gave up the feeling that I owed anyone anything, or that I could be someone to everyone. I did what I wanted when I wanted to do it. I put my happiness first. And I was okay. The pictures we took of that moment were beautiful, and have hung framed in my heart ever since.

This was a cycle that gave me a lot of stuff, a lot of debt, and not much else.

it dawned on me that I couldn’t remember most of the stuff I’d gotten rid of in the past 11 months, but I could recall details from every one of the trips

should have known by now that anything was possible if I made it a priority.

didn’t know if I would move back forever, but I also knew nothing lasted forever. If I was going to continue living one day at a time, that was where I wanted to do it.

But I was privileged enough to be in a position where I could choose what to spend money on and what to put into my body. This realization not only helped me become a more mindful consumer and save money in the process, it expanded my capacity to care for others and to feel gratitude for the simple things.

Knowing this about myself isn’t necessarily earth-shattering, but it does prevent me from ever thinking I should stockpile toiletries again.

Today I consider myself a former binge consumer turned mindful consumer of everything.

Remember that all you’re committing to is slowing down and asking yourself what you really want, rather than acting on impulse. That’s it. That’s what being a “mindful” consumer is all about.

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.

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.

Another idea is to transfer over any money you stop yourself from spending by not giving in to an impulse purchase. Finally, you could also deposit any money you make by selling things you decluttered.

Unless you really need something, try to live without it for at least 30 days, and see how many times you actually miss it.

The more we share, the less that goes into the landfill.

“This item is great but I don’t need it,” and choose to appreciate what you already have, my guess is you’ll never go back for the items you pass up on.