Buy Nothing Day, Revised

      Tax Day Cometh! We took advantage of a dreary slow work day to do the yearly task of updating our budget and filling out forms for the accountant. We came up with a hit list of things to change which will help ensure the survival of our business and our Backyard Homestead. It's like making New Year's Resolutions, but with real consequences.

     First we printed out a list from Quicken of our past years spending habits. We found out right away that we were not doing a particularity good job tracking our spending. Second, we had a few ugly surprises in the form of how much money is unaccounted for and wasted. We began to ask ourselves: "How can we change our over-consumptive behaviors?"

           We have participated for years in the "Buy Nothing Day" event promoted by Adbusters and The Reverend Billy and The Church of Life After Shopping. Instead of one day, the Friday after Thanksgiving, my idea is to do it for one month and then another and another till we meet our goal of ONE YEAR without shopping. Each month we will assess our spending and buying to determine how successfully we are changing our lifestyle.
         

     
We already have a commitment to buy organic and local whenever possible. We frequent our Farmer's Market. Food and it's cost is not the issue, but we often turn a day at the market into a shopping spree buying CD's, pottery, art, and other locally made items. When we  make our monthly trip across the mountain to the feed store, we often stop at favorite shops and come home with many items that are not on our list. We are prompted not by need, but by our emotional state at the moment or by the effects on us of the visual displays and the perverse fact that shopping is fun. It is this spur of the moment shopping as recreation that we mean to curtail

    So to put the breaks on our wasteful spending we came up with this list:

1. Use Quicken more efficiently by adding a memo to each expenditure
2. Once a month print out a report and use it to assess our progress
3. Research and find a more affordable health insurance plan
4. Stop using credit
5. Limit use of Amazon, E-bay, Pay Pal
6. Buy only consumable products necessary for our life, homestead and business

      But wait, how can we justify spending and buying and still participate in the "Buy Nothing"? Well, because the items we buy must fit into a special criteria:

• Food items that we are unable to produce on the homestead
• Consumable products that make life bearable: toilet paper, shampoo, toothpaste,etc.
  
• Products necessary to run the business: paper, ink, stamps, etc.

   Next up? A list of the items that will no longer be in our shopping cart!