Editor's Note: This is a recurring feature in which comedian and admitted horrible person Alex Blagg documents his attempts at becoming a slightly better individual.
I have so many wonderful things.
Just looking around my apartment as I write this, I am eased by the comforting presence of gear, gadgets, accents, organization solutions, baubles, knick-knacks, fun-size snack packs, doodads, disposable conveniences, and decorative boxes filled with yet even more trinkets I have purchased at one time or another.
But as I look around, I realize my feelings of pride and contentment are fleeting, for even though I am surrounded by all this stuff, I can't ever seem to enjoy my home without mentally planning the future purchases that must be made to attain some nonexistent ideal of completion. I honestly believe that I'm just a new living room rug and cool '60s-modern floor lamp away from finally catching the happiness I've been chasing. Another thing I apparently have is a sickness.
Whenever I don't know what to do, I tend to buy something. In those excruciating situations when I'm neither hungry nor sleepy, happy nor sad, busy nor bored, but just existing, those are the awful moments that can only be escaped through the almighty power of purchase. And I will buy almost anything.
Whenever a manufacturer repackages an otherwise unnecessary product with a "wacky new flavor combination," or an "all-new scent," I'm the sucker who will purchase these items out of sheer curiosity. Classic example: I don't really like Doritos, and I know I shouldn't eat processed snacks, but I simply must discover what "Late Night Taco"-flavored tortilla chips taste like. I take them home, eat a handful or so, realize they basically taste like Nacho Cheese chips mixed with Cool Ranch chips, then throw away the mostly uneaten bag a few weeks later when its contents have gone completely stale.
I do this kind of stuff on the regs.
The Problem With This:
Everything we buy carries with it a cost much higher than the low, low prices (always "the lowest price," ALWAYS) that advertisers seduce us with as part of their trickery. You see, there's an environmental cost associated with the manufacturing, processing, packaging, transporting and marketing of every single item we buy.
And then there's the matter of getting rid of all this stuff once we've used it up or just decided it's time for an upgrade. The average American produces 4.5 pounds of trash each day. There are more than 300 million people in America. Do the math. Now try to picture it (oh that's right, you can't, because it's a RIDICULOUSLY HUGE amount of trash).
The point is this: Every purchase we make sucks up a little bit more of what's left of the Earth's limited resources, then turns into a little bit more trash we must do something with.
How I Tried to Be Better:
After taking a long, painful look at my shopping psychology, habits and behaviors, I committed to buying only things I absolutely needed for at least one week. To accomplish this, I identified the following modifications that needed to be made in my behavior as a consumer:
— Plan meals in advance, and buy only what you need to eat
— Don't go shopping out of boredom (instead take an inventory of your old stuff and see what can be re-used)
— Ask yourself "Do I Need This?" before putting anything into your shopping bag
— Break the IKEA cycle
— No reward/impulse purchases (energy drinks)
Findings and Observations:
— Like most busy people, my wife and I desperately try to get our grocery shopping for the week done in a single trip. The problem is, this often leads to a bunker mentality, wherein we find it necessary to "stock up" on snacks, pantry items, and a surplus of cleaning supplies as if we were on the brink of a long nuclear winter. Planning our meals in advance gave us a much more focused shopping list, which saved us money, cut out wasteful purchases, and actually sped up the whole nightmarish grocery-gathering experience. We also enjoyed the unintended side-effect of eating healthier, as our meals were focused and composed as opposed to just thrown together from whatever we had lying around (if I were on Top Chef, I'd be unstoppable at Quickfire Challenges calling for MacGuyver-like meals made out of random pantry garbage that nobody should be eating).
— Weekends can be kind of terrifying, with their endless expanses of free time that must be filled with… something. When I don't have work to do or social engagements to attend, I usually take comfort in going to a nearby mall, where I wander around buying stuff until I am in a good mood. This is ridiculous and horrible. So this weekend when I woke up with no plans and nothing to do, I tried filling my time with a few other activities: taking my dog to the park, cleaning out my closets (finding old shirts I had forgotten about was sort of like shopping!), and wasting 15 or so hours on the Internet (guys, this is about progress, not perfection).
— When I did go shopping, I adhered to my "Do I Need This?" motto pretty well. A quick sampling of things I put back after asking myself this question: a giant jar of sea salted caramel sauce next to the free samples table at Trader Joe's, a mysterious contraption claiming it would permanently prevent my dog from shedding fur, and a humor book about cranky things some guy's dad apparently says on Twitter.
— One of my biggest shopping vices is the "impulse purchase" that usually falls into one of two categories: candy, and fancy beverages. My candy dependency is fairly common, but the crippling addiction to the dark and shadowy world of fancy beverages is something else entirely: I'm a real sick puppy. I literally cannot stop myself from buying any and all drinks that claim to have some kind of health-giving or energy-restoring properties, no matter how preposterous these claims may seem. Energy drinks, expensive teas, fizzy tonics—I am powerless over all of them. I sometimes suspect that the makers of energy drinks and vitamin waters have a giant poster of me that they worship like a God. But for the purpose of this experiment, I did manage to restrain myself from buying any energy drinks. However, I'm not going to lie to you: I'm EXHAUSTED.
— We moved to a new apartment recently (another pretty great reminder of the ridiculous amount of stuff I've amassed), and following such moves, I am always tempted to make a big IKEA run to find stuff to "fill in" sudden gaps in our feng shui presented by the new living space. IKEA is great because it offers relatively inexpensive furniture with an eye toward design. The reason IKEA sells its Scandinavian-modern stuff at such low prices is because it was cheap to produce, usually made with cheap materials, and since it is so cheap, they know you will be coming back to replace it soon. They're essentially fostering a lifestyle of convenient disposability, and it's easy to see why this is so popular: I can get all the aesthetically pleasing home items I need in one stop, for not too much money. But this time, instead of doing my bi-annual IKEA upgrade, I'm going to try spending a little more money on stuff that's unique, and will last us a lot longer.
Conclusion:
Whether it's sugary candy, sugar-free Red Bull, a miraculous new lifestyle solution, or a Danish modern decorative table, most of the things I want to buy are not things I actually need to stay alive, but things my brain—which has been thoroughly conditioned by a lifetime of advertising messages—tells me I should buy in order to feel happy.
But the fact is: I can easily not buy these things, and feel just fine (and also rich).
We've got be more mindful of the resources we're taking, what we're buying, and what we're wasting, because no matter what we own, the future is ours to share, whether we'll be inhabiting a healthy planet or piled up together on top of a dystopian trashpile made of stale old "Late Night Taco" Dorito bags.
Photo courtesy of k.ivoutin/Creative Commons via Flickr.
Alex Blagg is a writer and comedian in Los Angeles. Most recently he created the satirical website BajillionHits.Biz, for which The Daily Beast called him the "Stephen Colbert of New Media." Prior to that, he was the founding Editor-in-Chief of MSN's Wonderwall.com, won two Webby Awards for his work running Vh1's "Best Week Ever" blog, and was included in The Huffington Post's list of "50 Funny People You Should Be Following On Twitter." He is truly a horrible person.
Quick Study: Green Living
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