Use what you’ve got pt 2 (or why do you even have it)

I’ve talked before about using things that you have to try to squeeze every last drop of usefulness out of things. (My husband jokes that I have a vegetable stock factory in our kitchen, I make it so often.) But now I want to ask you an important question: Why do you have these things at all?

I have a very general rule at home: If I’m not using something, there had better be a good reason why I still have it at all. For example, I might have a formal dress I keep in my closet for the odd occasion where I need to look really nice. It makes sense that I don’t use that dress regularly, because it’s just there for special occasions.

But things like, for example, a face cream or a set of sheet masks or a set of fancy kitchen knives or some extra cool drill bits or whatever? Those are things that are meant to be *used* — so if you’re not using them, why do you even bother to have them? And from that, ask yourself why you bothered to buy those things, and what you’ll do about buying those things (OR NOT) in the future.

This is a pretty broad rule, of course, and there’s no hard and fast time frame attached to it for me. But maybe for you it makes sense to adapt that rule and come up with a specific amount of time. I had a dorm-mate in college, for example, who had a rule that any item of clothing she hadn’t used in a year would get tossed. (This resulted in some hilarious outfits when some pieces were coming up on their year deadline but she still didn’t want to get rid of them.)

But what matters most is the essence of the rule. Thinking about this when I go shopping — will I really truly *use* this if I buy it — has helped me curb the occasional impulse purchase. It’s made me realize that sometimes I have the urge to buy something just to buy something, and not because I need or care about the thing itself. And when that happens, I know that what I really need is about refocusing my energy, about finding something to keep me entertained or to soothe my anxiety or to help me feel a certain way. And that’s not about *things* at all.

I know this sounds incredibly simple, but it’s actually not. We live in a world full of distractions our brains are trained to want distraction and stimulation all the time. And stores want their goods and services to be that distraction for you. They make it super easy for you to buy things, to get that quick high of doing something or acquiring something, whether you need it or not. So doing nothing — sitting with that fidgety feeling that you should be doing something, anything — can be hard. Pausing, taking a breath, asking yourself a question about your own motives, about why you’re doing something, and then deciding to walk away, is not necessarily what modern life is set up for. It’s okay to step away from that. It’s okay to not do anything. It’s okay to go steady on instead of chasing that white whale.