Show and Tell

My husband noticed this on the work computer of a work colleague and asked if he could photograph it to bring home for “Show and Tell”.

Reviewing my consumer purchases of new items over the past 7 months…

Today I reflected on my purchases of new items over the past 7 months. I keep a record of these things under ” Buy Nothing New Exceptions” Page.

I focused on what I had personally bought for myself during this time.

socks
undies
bras
running shoes
sandals
MacBook Pro (shared Christmas present with husband)
book
necklace

The first 5 were to replace items that had worn out.
The MacBook Pro was a replacement for my old PC that I had owned for 7 years and kept on crashing.
The book was one that was not held by my local library, and I was unsuccessful in sourcing it second hand.
The necklace pendant was a purely spur of the moment, I “must have” that item consumer purchase. (Interesting to note that I don’t even know where it is at the moment. So much for “must have”!)

So for the 7 month period, I seem to be managing my personal spending on my “stuff”. Especially with the recent move, when I gave a lot of my belongings to the charity shop, it seems that I have had a net outflow of my stuff.

Also, all of these things, except the necklace pendant and the book, I have used a lot since purchase.

Getting your needs met – healthy food

In my journey of discovering a simpler life, I am focussing on getting my needs met, instead of my wants.

One of my needs is to eat healthy food. So I have been cooking almost all of our meals from scratch. It is interesting to reflect that when my life was more complicated when I was working such long hours, that a basic need to eat healthy food was one of the first casualties. We would eat out more often, or pick up takeaway, just because it was too late to start cooking by the time I had commuted home from work on the train and then picked up my daughter from care and arrived home. It was about 7pm.

It is also interesting to reflect that this way of living also had a huge cost in the money required to eat dinner by eating out or having takeaway food. So a lot of the money that I was making in my job in the city was going towards a simple need to feed a family of 3 conveniently before 7pm at night.

And I didn’t know how the food was prepared.

Now that I have changed to a simpler lifestyle by leaving that soul destroying job which took up so much of my life, I now make almost all meals from scratch. I know exactly how the food is prepared, and I use the freshest ingredients.

So focussing on my need to eat healthy food, this is being met so much more these days. And a secondary benefit is that I have lost 8kg since the change in lifestyle.

It is interesting to reflect that a basic need to eat healthy food was being neglected in the days before when life was much more complicated.