Prairie Style (Lack of) Shopping

One of my new year's resolutions was de-clutter my home "to the extreme," and I've been doing just that. For years now, I've been doing annual de-cluttering sessions in my home to get out all the excess. But just as soon as I clear it all out, it starts piling back up. This year is different. This year I'm breaking the cycle by preventing things from coming in while I'm sending them out.

Why am I de-cluttering? After all, my house is pretty tidy, and it's pretty small, so we don't have junk rooms or junk drawers because every square inch of our house has to be usable. I am de-cluttering for a move towards simplicity because I feel like my life is ruled by stuff. Sometime around the new year, I realized that a good portion of my time is devoted to buying, cleaning, and putting away stuff. A lot of it is stuff I don't need.

How did I get all of this stuff? Shopping. I love(d) shopping. My mother and I used to hit clearance sales ever week. Nothing gave me a greater thrill than finding clothes 75% off and dishes 90% off. Who could refuse such bargains?  After all, I used coffee cups on a daily basis and wore clothes everyday, so I'd put everything to good use, right?

Wrong.

I had 20 coffee cups in the cabinet, and we barely used over half of them. Clothes would get worn just a few times. Christmas decorations never got used because I had too many. These things weren't "needs," so I didn't make much of an effort to ensure they got used.

About a month ago, I had a revelation. While falling asleep one night, I had the phrase "you need less but you need more" on my mind. I don't remember hearing this anywhere, and honestly, I'm not sure if God implanted it my head or if it was just my subconscious dwelling on some things I'd read, but either way, I knew God would agree with it. I had placed too much emphasis on stuff in my life and I had ignored how it affected my family. I should have recognized there was a problem when Prairie Girl always requested to go to Wal-Mart when I asked her what she wanted to do for fun.

I'm taking steps to reduce my shopping habit. I try to only go shopping one day a week, and on that day, I try to visit as few stores as possible. When I go into a store, I have a list and the necessary coupons in hand. That list has been carefully prepared at home and only includes things we don't have at home and things we need. We have a running list of things we want, and we're taking time to contemplate the and find the true need for them. Currently on that list are things like stainless steel water bottles, a couple of books, and dress pants. I don't spend time lingering in stores either. I get what I need and get out. Looking at things may not be the same as buying them, but too many times I have found myself coveting dishes or dresses, and that's not something I want to do.

So far I've drastically cut down my shopping. I've only bought absolute necessities like food and medicine. We haven't bought toys or clothes or gadgets. I even returned some things that I'd bought before Christmas because I realized we didn't need them. The great news is, we haven't suffered a bit. Since I've been spending less time shopping, we've spent more quality family time together. Instead of shopping, Prairie Girl and I have worked on projects, watched movies together, and cooked together. And Prairie Dad loves that we're not spending every weekend at a mall.

Something else has happened since I cut back on shopping. I've realized how much we have that we don't need. And as less stuff comes in, more stuff is going out, probably because I don't have new stuff covering up the old stuff. I'm simplifying routines and routines are becoming easier. We're discovery how, much like people who lived on the prairie, we don't need multiples of a lot things, and there are a lot of things we just don't need at all.

Bringing home lots of stuff did not bring us happiness. Time is bringing us happiness. More time is what we needed. Time to love, time to laugh, and time to live.