Check out this amazing site i just discovered. Its a movement called “Buy Nothing Christmas”. It encourages people to have an anti capitalist, non materialistic Christmas by giving thoughtful home made presents. I know that this Christmas I will not be buying Anyone Anything. And i don’t want to receive anything either. I will never give birthday presents and i don’t want to receive birthday presents. In fact, i am totally against all forms of present giving (with the exception of thoughtful cards, cash donations and “1 free massage” coupons). I am Anti the accumulation of material possessions. I think it is wrong for these 8 good reasons:
1) possessions give off bad vibes. They just make me feel yucky.
2) Why is my room messy? no, it isn’t because i don’t put things away, its because i have too many things to put away.
3) I look around my room at all the useless crap i own but that are too expensive to throw away and they are all presents! People spend hundreds of dollars on presents just so that we can get a momentary pang of excitement, but then it fades into this background of rubbish that fills our lives.
4) Just because you spend lots of money on something, doesn’t mean it is valuable. My most treasured possessions are thoughtful cards my friends and family have made me for free.
5) Possessions tie you down. How can i decide to move to China tomorrow if i have a house full of stuff?
6) Everyone else dose it.
7) Buying things you don’t need helps uphold the vicious cycle of consumerism that makes the rich richer and the poor poorer. and no one needs that.
There is actually no purpose to spend all this money on presents. think really hard… there. is. no. real. reason.
GUESS WHAT? This Saturday, November 24th, is international Buy Nothing Day. I will defiantly be participating. (I don’t think i have spent more than $10 on anything but petrol in the last month!) It can be my first step against materialism, consumerism, capitalism and all those yucky ‘ism’ words that just get-you-down. Soon I’m going to PURGE my room. I’m going to start with one corner and just grab everything everywhere and put it all in a plastic bag, then I’m going to drag it outside onto the veranda and sort out all the things i actually need and throw the rest out! And so on and so forth until my room is completely liberated from all objects that have no purpose. *sigh* I can feel the good vibes already.
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haha, my 8 turned into a cool dude! thats so funny/weird.
Its like the computer thinks it knows what i want more than i do… grrrr.
Make sure that you let me know when you’re purging, I’ll organise someone to take care of the overflow (i.e: me) (by take care of, I mean take the things that I like that you’re throwing out).
Instead of throwing them all out, you could give them to a charity like the Salvos or St. Vincent de Pauls and they could put them in their second hand stores….err, or not i guess.
i went back to my mum’s house for a few days earlier this week and cleaned a huge amount of stuff out of my room that had accumulated over the years. I got TEN plastic shopping bags full of stuff that I don’t need!! Clothes and shoes I don’t wear any more, decorative things, and lots of random bits and pieces that i never threw out because yes, they cost money, whether it was me who paid for them or someone else who gave them to me.
So I donated ten bags full of unnecessary stuff to St Vinnies
My room is way cleaner, and hopefully other people will benefit from it too.
Our thoughts are in sync! [Note: that is not a pun referring to my 90s boyband obsession]
The other day, Nanna asked me what I wanted for Christmas, and I told her, “NOTHING! Don’t buy me a thing! I want to spend TIME with you, so, let’s hang out at the beach or something, BUT DON’T BUY ME ANYTHING!”
I think she was quite shocked. I’m actually quite excited. haha