No New Stuff
I’m not buying anything because I already bought everything.
I don’t usually make New Years resolutions because I hate setting myself up for failure.
I’ve endured enough aborted resolutions to understand that my motivations won’t suddenly change on January 1st, and that the thing I’ve been putting off all year will not magically become appealing just because a ball drops in Times Square. I’d rather avoid that specific flavor of self-loathing—the one that arrives when you fail to do what you resolved to do while you were hopeful on December 31st, only weeks (or days) into the new year.
But this year, I did make a resolution. Less out of hope and more out of desperation.
And my resolution is this: I will not buy any stuff until April 1st.
“But toilet paper!” “But food!” “But but but!”
Yes. I will be buying toilet paper and food. The point is not to suffer, or to wipe my ass with old newspapers pulled from the trash. The point is that I have too much fucking stuff and not enough fucking money, and something has to give.
Not forever. I’m not a monk. I’m not chasing moral purity. I’m trying to survive my own accumulation. The plan is simple: no buying things for the first few months of the year, and after that, a strict low-buy. A conscious one. One that forces me to feel friction instead of anesthetizing myself with another little purchase.
This will be hard for me because I am not a restraint person.
I don’t diet. I don’t restrict. I don’t deprive myself for sport or virtue. I don’t believe there’s inherent moral value in wanting less. Call it hedonism, call it gluttony—I’ve always believed pleasure is one of the few honest things we get in life. But when I look around my apartment—my beautiful lair—I don’t feel totally indulged. I see gaps in a growing collection of things, a never-ending itch that will never be fully scratched. I feel like a pharaoh sealed into a tomb, surrounded by objects meant to accompany me into the afterlife.
The problem is that I love ~stuff~.
My ~stuff~ isn’t junk to me. It’s treasure. As I write this, I can see a candle I bought at Notre Dame before the fire, a skull mask I made by hand, a tiny Virgin Mary statue pulled from my grandfather’s belongings after he died. My refrigerator door is layered with handwritten notes and Polaroids, a shrine to moments that mattered. Behind me is my perfume collection—one scent for every mood, every version of myself I might need to become. A five-foot skeleton pillow leans against the wall next to three dried roses from a bouquet I received after my divorce. There are little baggies of teeth pinned to the wall (I will not be elaborating), a mannequin head rescued from a dying beauty supply store, a turtle shell my dad found in the woods as a kid, a party hat I needle-felted for my cat’s birthday.
These objects are endowed. They carry weight. Memory. Meaning.
And I hold onto them.
I’m in my mid-thirties and I still wear clothes from college. Boots from high school. A top I’ve worn on nearly every Valentine’s Day from 2012 to the present. Objects that have followed me through every iteration of my adult life: dorm rooms, Manhattan apartments, marriage, divorce, a brief suburban exile, and then back again. Some of my things live with me in New York. Some live at my parents’ house out east. Some live in a storage unit in New Jersey that only my ex technically has access to. I’ve built a collection so sprawling it now threatens to consume me whole.
And my particular affliction isn’t buying brand-new things. When I walk into Target or Marshall’s, I can’t help but see the merchandise as nothing but landfill. I’ve never made a SHEIN or AliExpress purchase, although I do order less glamorous necessities on my mom’s Amazon Prime account (my last order was comprised of toilet cleaner wand refills, an SD card, and knee pads for dance class). Could I buy these items in person—at my local hardware store, B&H, or a sporting goods store (wherever knee pads live)? Yes. But I don’t, because I’m prioritizing convenience over ethics here. Oops.
But more ethical consumerism is still consumerism. And just because most of my purchases are secondhand or from small businesses doesn’t mean I don’t have the same worms in my brain conditioning me to want to buy stuff all. the. fucking. time.
Thinking that buying secondhand is somehow net-zero for hyperconsumerism is false. You can find “thrift hauls”—still an insane concept to me—on TikTok and YouTube. If you need further proof, just look at my apartment. In the past couple of months alone, I’ve thrifted or bought from artists or small businesses:
Three dolls
A lenticular print of an eyeball
Three bottles of perfume
Vintage lingerie
Two incredible prints from Brooklyn artist Lucia Gallipoli (and two picture frames via Amazon, eek)
A deer jawbone
Three skeins of expensive yarn that may or may not ever become a scarf, plus needles sized specifically for that imaginary scarf
All things I love. Nothing I need. All gap-fillers for small holes in my soul. And perhaps if I were a person of substantial means, with a three- or four-bedroom home and a garage, I wouldn’t be reconsidering my choices. But that is not my situation.
So here is the plan:
I will not buy any ~stuff~ until April 2026. ~Stuff~ includes, but is not limited to, home decor, toys, antiques, clothing, flowers, and makeup. If I run out of a daily-use item (toothpaste, toilet paper, etc.), I may replace it—but only when I fully run out, and only if I have no suitable replacement already at home. So if I run out of my favorite moisturizer, I can replace it only if I don’t own any other moisturizers, even if they’re not my favorite.
I will not buy random beverages throughout the day. I will drink water.
I will allow myself to get my nails done once a month. All other beauty rituals must happen at home with items I already own.
I will bring my lunch to work every day. To remain social, I will allow myself to get food or drinks with friends when invited.
I can continue to spend money on experiences, since they don’t accumulate in my home. AMC A-List remains in effect.
How will I stick to the plan? By reminding myself of these things:
You can love something without owning it.
Consumerism is not a hobby.
Consumerism is not a shortcut to self-expression.
Shopping addiction is deeply ingrained, and massive corporations rely on you being brainwashed for profit—often while funding things you don’t align with. Push back by abstaining.
No, but really—once you start noticing how everyone is always trying to sell you something, you can’t unsee it. For fun, I set a five-minute timer and scrolled TikTok normally, counting advertisements (covert or overt):
An influencer talking about her favorite Erewhon products.
An ad for a cotton workout set.
An ad for tickets to a Mel Robbins live event/course.
Four separate perfume influencers telling me what to buy (the algorithm knows me).
An ad for magnesium glycinate.
An ad for fleece-lined tights.
An ad for facial moisturizer.
An influencer recommending books to buy in 2026.
An ad for body butter.
An ad for a freckle pen.
An ad for golf outfits (?).
An ad for berry-shaped birthday candles that were honestly very cute.
Another facial moisturizer.
An ad for Glossier blush.
An ad for embroidered jeans.
An influencer unboxing PR from a purse brand.
Also worth noting: when I searched TikTok for “no-buy” inspiration, I was served an ad-in-disguise video of an influencer discussing her no-buy rules—before pivoting to sell her budgeting platform. I don’t blame influencers for monetizing their lives, but it’s a useful reminder that nowhere is safe.
Picture this hypothetical: a teary-eyed influencer films herself in her parked car. “When my dad died, nothing gave me comfort. I stayed up for days asking existential questions. My grief showed up on my face. Then I got a lymphatic drainage massage that made it look like I wasn’t crying 18 hours a day! Use my code DEADDAD20 at checkout.”
Off social media, the pressure doesn’t let up. Advertising has targeted women since the dawn of modern marketing, recognizing early on the buying power of the gender traditionally tasked with running the home. I’m watching Mad Menright now, by the way.
This wasn’t accidental. Once advertisers realized women made most household purchasing decisions—food, clothing, cleaning supplies, cosmetics, gifts—they stopped selling products and started selling identities. Good wife. Good mother. Good girl. Clean house. Youthful face. Calm demeanor. Desire was engineered, refined, and weaponized.
The result is a low-grade hum of compulsion. The intrusive thought while passing a store. Going in for one thing and leaving with a cart full of junk. The dopamine hit masquerading as agency. Women are the favorite daughters of consumption. Entire industries are built on our perceived inadequacy—and the promise that the right purchase will fix it.
Shopping, for many women my age, has been rebranded as a hobby. Or should I say the hobby. Ask what they like to do and you’ll hear it proudly: “I get a Starbucks and walk around Target.”
Good girl. You’ve been trained.
But walking around an ethically dubious superstore with an ethically dubious beverage isn’t a hobby—it’s a consumption loop.
Women often feel most powerful through consumerism because that’s where power has been safely handed to us. Buy this and become that. Purchase your confidence. Purchase your calm. Purchase your worth.
We are relentlessly courted—first by advertisers, now by influencers. Buy, buy, buy, but make it aspirational. Make it soft-lit. Make it look like a lifestyle instead of a transaction. Instagram didn’t invent this—it just accelerated it.
Social media has never been a huge source of jealousy for me personally. I don’t spiral watching others succeed or perform happiness. Instead, I follow artists, niche creators, offbeat it-girls with excellent taste and better captions. And they, too, are constantly trying to sell me shit.
And the result? I am often influenced. I am rarely immune.
That’s the quiet truth underneath all of this: awareness doesn’t grant impunity. You can see the strings and still feel the pull. You can critique the machine and still feed it. I can soothe myself by talking about my taste and the ethics of my purchases, but at the end of the day, I am still just a person trying to buy herself into the life she wants. The advertising industry no longer needs to shout at women—we’re fluent in the language already.
So maybe this no-buy—ostensibly about slowing accumulation and giving my wallet a break—is also about stepping out of that loop. They say the best things in life are free, and as much joy as my ~stuff~ has brought me, it doesn’t come close to the real best things: making out in a park, walking through fresh snow, calling a friend just to talk nonsense, cooking without a recipe.
I want to live in my life instead of shopping around its edges. I want to use what I already have, love what already exists, and let the gaps stay gaps. Not everything needs to be filled.
I am going to enjoy the things I already own—and stop mistaking accumulation for meaning.
really solid memes here on top of thought out concepts & good writing