The Challenge

I am challenging myself to a "No Buy January".

Let me try to clarify this a little bit. For the entire month of Januaury, I am going to try not to purchase anything other than household necessities (food, gas, toilet paper, etc). That means, no new clothes which none of us need. No nothing off Amazon. I think I spent 56,000 dollars there for Christmas so if I succeed in this, their stock may suffer. Just sayin. No nothing off eBay. No cute antique silverplate items. No slightly used books. No craft kits. The more I list here, the worse this idea seems. Ugh.

I really am only doing this as an experiment for my own life. We're not in a financial crisis. My husband is not screaming about the money I spend. (He never fusses about money at all which is wonderful and odd at the same time.) But basically I had an epiphany of sorts during the beginning of the holiday season. Someone asked me what I wanted for Christmas and I could not think of one stinkin thing that I needed. At that same time, the idea of simplifying my life became this nagging, ever present idea for me.

So, if I need nothing and I know that God is calling me to make some margins in my life, then there really shouldn't be any difficulty at all in not making any unnecessary purchases for 30 whole days. Right? Right?

This isn't an all or nothing challenge. If one of the kids gets invited to a birthday party, I will buy a present. If somebody needs a black turtleneck for some school nonsense, I will buy it. I'm not doing this to punish my family. I'm guessing most of them won't even notice. I just want to see how much time I actually waste on being a consumer. And then see if I can put that time to better use.

And please don't worry about the state of the US economy. My grocery bill alone can sustain it.