No Buy Week #19: I have some explaining to do...the true WHY behind the no buy

hi everyone and for this check-in in week 19 of my no by year I wanted to talk about why I really want to stop shopping the true reasons why I'm doing this no [Music] bu so after the previous few videos and reading some comments I have the feeling that I have some explaining to do so again I'm sorry if it's a clickbait title it's just kind of that kind of week I guess where I'm poking fun at bigger influencers and how they kind of suck you in with with these titles that don't really tell you anything but make you curious I wanted to get into a few more details of why I really want to stop buying things and change my habits with consumers my relationship with consumerism and become a more conscious consumer that's kind of my channel title actually and I haven't really explained that that much so far here but for me it's a matter of values I guess principles and values it goes deeper than just the surface level of I want to not buy anything and of course it does and I know you all knew that it's not like okay I let me start over so everybody who's doing a no by year obviously has their reasons for doing it some of the comments on the video where I failed my Noby made me think because I am so appreciative to have such a kind and non-judgmental community on here and I'm so thankful to not have gotten any hate and not have people putting me down on that video especially but I wanted to kind of address the reasons I was so disappointed in myself and the reasons that I kind of set out to do this in the first place and the reasons why I kind of think it's a greater need in society as a whole so now with that Loft introduction let me get into some of the specific reasons why I really want to break up with shopping so the first thing is just the matter of simple values where we use up what we have we don't replace what we don't need kind of going back to simpler times of my life more like when I was a kid and you had what you needed and not a whole lot more and I was happy back then like that for the most part and I wasn't over here pining for things to add more to my collection for again for the most part I remember in the 90s I'd see the occasional commercial on TV for the magic drawing board or the light up little doodad or whatever and I would momentarily want it but it wasn't like my behavior as an adult where I'm seeking things to want and to feel something and to track something and to be productive by buying something and to follow the items journey to my doorstep it wasn't like any of that and I want to get back to that simpler way of being towards stuff and I guess it's again going back to that old phrase if it ain't broke don't fix it if it ain't broke you don't need to buy a new one and finally one of the ways we can really show that we value and love the things that we have is to use them and use them often and to me there's really no downside to this so I know there was a stigma about outfit repeating but I don't even know where that came from and I think that's totally ridiculous because there are so many good things about outfit repeating now there's going to be a point where it's too much like if you literally don't have enough shirts to make it through a week without having to repeat a shirt three or four times then maybe you need some more shirts just for practical reasons not really being able to do laundry that much maybe sweating in your clothes Etc but aside from being at that point of literally not having enough clothes if you're choosing to wear the same stuff in your wardrobe more it shows that you have a signature style it shows the world what you prefer to wear and how you prefer to look and chances are you're you're going to be really comfortable because you're wearing the things you really like so I just don't think there's any downside to outfit repeating up to the point where you have enough clothes to get you through a week in a reasonable manner without too much laundry or body odor and I know it's you know it's a different matter if you really can't afford to have enough clothes or you have to wear things that are dirty and stained or have rips and holes in them but for most of us watching this video here or floating around on the internet we're probably not in that scenario so for most of us outfit repeating is actually a great and wonderful thing so these values also go into environmental concerns and resources so valuing the world around us and the future of the earth basically I am not a climate change expert I'm not a resource expert I do like to consume content from channels that talk about sustainability I am interested in being a more sustainable consumer more sustainable human I've experimented with veganism I followed a vegan diet majority vegan diet for a few years I'm no longer totally vegan but I might actually talk about that later because there's actually quite a few parallels I'm finding in my mentality towards that and shopping so the philosophical values um anyway for another day I don't want to alienate anybody here but uh I mentioned that because veganism is supposedly a more sustainable diet and that was one of the interests I had in following the vegan diet for a while I like the idea of recycling I really hope that most of our stuff is actually getting recycled I've seen a bunch of myths about how you put it in the bin and it just ends up in the trash anyway but I I like to think that it's better than just throwing everything in the trash I am hopeful and optimistic that more sustainable ways of living do exist in other words and I want to participate as fully as possible and one of the easiest ways for me to become a more sustainable person is to just stop buying stuff especially stuff that I don't need so the more the the more I know bu the the further I get along in my year of no buy failures non withstanding I realize that to buy something I don't need really doesn't line up with how I want to live and it's really helping me as I go forward some of the items that are on the back burner of my wish list um things that I objectively don't need like the headphones come to mind the Apple airpod Maxes but I will not be replacing my headphones until they are well and truly at the end of their lifespan until they don't work anymore same thing with the Casio watch I already have a watch that functions but I'm going to stop talking about this now because I want to maybe do a dedicated video on the things that I really don't need and didn't buy so stay tuned for that subscribe if you want to be notified when I eventually get around to doing that so there's the environment sustainability and then there's also a human rights component to that right so we know that there are people in sweat shops working for less than minimum wage less than a livable wage making these things that we don't need and can you imagine the job satisfaction frustration level of these people right I mean I had job frustration when I worked at Panera serving people food and people need to eat I know a fast food job is not Glamorous by any means but it does kind of fulfill a basic human need by feeding people or providing people with an option for food imagine if you were in a factory that produced little plastic doodads for Teemu or something like that or fast fashioned for sheing if you were sitting at a sewing machine trying to get as many pieces produced as possible that were lowquality crappy fabric that nobody was going to keep for more than a few wees and that was your job aside from be being paid not enough to live on and aside from the horrible working conditions just okay imagine you were paid enough and had a place to live and it was an okay work environment the satisfaction of being in that position would be so low and I just don't think we need those positions to exist I think we should have better opportunities for these people and better we should be using our dollars to create better opportunities for these people okay I feel like I could get more more and more into detail on that and maybe even dedicate more videos to the concept of sustainability and being a sustainable consumer but I'm going to move on for today because I have a few more things on my list of why I personally really want to stop shopping so the next thing is that I want to manage my own addictive behavior and I want to feel like I have the ability to tell myself no and actually follow through on that so I mentioned something about I want to control this and some of my comments made me think a lot about whether or not my desire for control in this way is healthy or whether or not it might be a little bit too much I don't know if it's as much about control as about keeping promises to myself living in line with my values I think is the bottom line here I keep on saying that living in line with my values I think will make me more at peace with myself and happier so it's not so much about gripping on having control over you know forcing myself to do something but it's trying to guide myself to a life that I am more willing to stand behind and that I'm more proud of behavior that I'm more proud of and that's one of the reasons I'm doing this no bu to be honest is because then after a year of not buying things which for me will be from May to May because of the failure of my no Buy in April but after a complete year of not buying things that I don't need I think I will feel a sense of accomplishment that will help me be at peace with my levels of consumerism and also recalibrate my levels of consumerism going forward and the way that I think about buying stuff and the value that it has to add to my life to be in that collection of things that I buy because I'll be able to justify why I don't need so many more things than I used to in years past and I'll Escape that cycle of marketing social media consumerism that is seem seems to just be growing and growing and growing in our society and I just want to step away step back and and have again I'm going to say full control over my actions because actually in a way I do think that social media and the algorithms and all this is controlling us and I'll come back to that in the future because I'm in the process of reading the book stolen focus and I'm in a section right now where the author is actually talking about this directly where technology is manipulating and controlling humans and it's blatant it's not it's not actually as subtle as we might feel or think they're blatantly doing it it's all on purpose and I just want to not be susceptible to that so again more on that later when I've actually finished the book possibly but I want to remove myself I do want to have control over my own actions in a positive way though so I want to be able to guide myself to the things I actually value and away from the behaviors that I'm not proud of and that I want to have the option of saying no to without it feeling like a a battle Within Myself I also want to reset my sense of what is normal so I think we actually don't need like 90% of the things we have and I know cognitively that I have too many clothes more clothes than I need that's a non-debatable point so too many is maybe a debatable point for each person you know what feels like too much but I know that I have more than I actually need that is not debatable and I think the quantities of stuff that a lot of us have is just not normal we've been skewed to think that it's kind of okay to have such a full closet such a full makeup vanity drawer whatever it is storage just for your makeup and things like that and this is just not it's just not normal it's not a worthy pursuit in life again it creates bad situations for the people who manufacture these Goods a lot of the time it creates a bad situation for the Earth using the resources so much of the makeup products we use are packaged in single-use plastic um and it's not keeping us alive alive right I know a lot of foods are packaged in single-use plastic as well but we don't have a choice about consuming food but we do have a choice about consuming excess makeup and beauty products and excess clothes so I want to dial back what I think of as normal and get away from the perception that the media has instilled in us I will admit I do have a walk-in closet it's practically another room in my house I've had large closets before and actually we've put the crib for our first two children in in the closets of some of the rooms in our houses or apartments because the closets are so big and the closets are kind of near our bedroom so it made a lot of sense so I do have a walk-in closet in my house my goal is actually to free up a lot of that space I mentioned doing an entire wardrobe try on in my last video I am doing that I'm taking all the clothes out of my wardrobe and I'm only going to put back what I wear and I'm also going to apply the container concept from Dana K white so where you have a container and that is your limit for how much you can keep and I'm going to plan this in advance so designate areas of my closet for specific things and also designate areas for space because I do not want to fill up my whole area of the closet obviously I share it with my husband but I don't want to feel the need to fill up the space that I have because I know I have too much space I might even actually use my closet for things like book storage and put other things that aren't just clothes in my closet because I do have the space there so stay tuned tuned for that I'm going to be sharing that on this channel as well eventually so going back to the media and marketing we know that there's so many ads on social media all forms of media Billboards magazines or the oldfashioned ways but now they actually track our Behavior online on our devices and use targeted ads they're not going to quit that right the marketers the social media the devices the technology is not going to stop so the only way to stop being influenced by it is to change myself I can't fully eliminate my exposure I limited it by getting off of the short form social medias as much as I could so I don't have I only have Tik Tok and Instagram accounts for my music work now and I'm not spending as much time on those platforms so I'm limiting my exposure but I can't completely eliminate it I want to quit being a Sitting Duck for them to be targeting me in the marketing the wanting to want things the being influenced and that's another reason why I'm doing this no by year if we didn't consume like this if we weren't influenced so much by ads and influencers then things like Fast fashion could not exist if all the consumers demanded better quality and less turnover of Trends then these companies would have no funding and they would have to stop so I want to be part of the shift of valuing fewer nicer things there's a lot of content as well that talks about the inundation of fast fashion at thrift stores which is a problem as well because then people who are thrifting only have access to lower quality clothes and they will also have to go back and buy more clothes when their clothes inevitably wear out faster when it's lower quality it's just all part of a harmful cycle there is not really any upside to fast fashion and I know there are some difficulties that individuals have you know Finding sizes finding Trends finding clothes they feel good in that fast fashion is addressing right now but it could also be addressed through better more quality Brands better more quality sources of clothing and if we didn't support the fast fashion to the extent that they were the only option or the only reasonable option for some people then we would not have the problem that we have now the thrift stores would have better quality options in them maybe more people would have preserved the skills of sewing and altering clothes if we didn't have access to such cheap clothes because it's cheaper to buy something than it is to fix something now so I just think we need to make it so that fast fashion doesn't have a place in our world going forward I told my husband about the statistics that there's enough clothing on Earth to clothe the next six Generations I've seen that floating around and the first thing he said was well why are we producing more clothes and isn't that just it right but again I think fast fashion is part of the problem because the clothes that are being produced just don't hold up anymore they end up in the deserts in Chile the landfills in Ghana the resale markets where nobody wants them we ship them off to third world countries and it's just a bad cycle and we got to stop it there's enough clothes for the next six generation ation but I just don't know how much of that clothing is quality enough to last six Generations um in fact I would venture to Guess that almost none of it is good enough to last the next six Generations but if we made things with the quality in mind then surely the clothes could last at least a few more generations and be passed down and thrifted responsibly and limit the need for new resources being produced and so it comes back to myself and my behavior if I buy more clothes that I objectively don't need that and I'm participating in that broken cycle even if I'm buying from nicer brands or thrifting I still think I'm in a cycle that I don't need to be in as somebody with objectively more clothes than I need to have and that's why I'm doing the no by year I'm not saying I'll never buy new clothes but I will definitely prioritize quality Brands and thrifting for all of my clothing going forward I really really want to break up with fast fashion so at the very least I want to be as sustainable as I can reasonably be and I want to step away from that cycle that again supports the deserts in Chile the secondhand markets in shipping clothes to Ghana and Africa other African countries the circle and cycle of excess and waste and resource exhaustion and horrible working conditions to conclude this rant I guess I am part part of the reason that I'm here on YouTube is to fight the presence of consumerism so yes I'm primarily sharing my own person personal Journey with my no by year and what I'm struggling with and I feel like I'm representing a normal average human being I'm not an influencer I don't get things for free I am not even trying to be that that's not the goal of this channel I really just want to relate to people and show them the everyday struggles of somebody who has no skin in the game and I want to show how difficult it can be to break up with the cycle of consumerism that social media has geared us all up to be a part of there's that but I also want to fight the presence of this consumerism on the social media platforms so by putting out these videos onto YouTube I hope that I am a voice of reason or a voice combating the whole culture the culture of Trends the culture of run and bu this now the culture of Stanley Cups and Trader Joe's tote bags the culture of disposable stuff I'm taking myself back to a new normal or maybe I'm taking myself forward to the new normal of reasonable consumption and I hope that there are other people that want to go there with me to the land of reasonable consumption and I hope that by being here I can kind of provide some help and support for those people and maybe convert some more people along this journey too that would be fantastic my dream actually is that by learning how to get through the struggles I'm having and by educating myself more and more about sustainability and fashion and the problems and all of that I can maybe eventually make some content geared towards that to help other people stay the course to maybe educate other people who haven't heard of this information before and just basically be a source of support and motivation you know when I when I was in my financial journey of getting out of debt I listened to a lot of podcasts about money and getting out of debt right because it would help me stay the course so I want to be part of the resources you can listen to if you're trying to buy like stuff I want to want less stuff I want to buy less stuff I want to really stick to all these reasons I just talked about for making my actions line up with the things I value removing myself from the cycles of consumption resetting my concept of normal and Paving the way for a more sustainable future and certainly starting with my own children you know being a living example of conscious consumerism I hope that has illuminated some of the true Reasons I'm doing my Noby some of the reasons I was so disappointed when I failed because of the values that I'm starting to get more and more strength in I'm starting to have more and more conviction in and I do think it is truly the right thing to do to consume less and I guess that's that's the video right I could have just come on and say I truly believe the right thing to do in society right now is to consume less and that could have been the whole thing anyway I will see you in the next one thank you so much for being here on my journey of conscious consumerism bye for now [Music]

Channel: Conscious Consumerism

Views: 1,468

Keywords:

Id: vkc30u07FPs

Length: 21min 19sec (1279 seconds)

Published: Thu May 16 2024