What I Want to Shop For

I've hit my first obstacle in our shopping fast. 1 month down and I haven't really struggled with overwhelming shopping desires so far. I have, however, come across a stumbling block.

I the past I've had a hobby of making/selling pens out of wood and other materials. I had someone approach me with a request for a pen to give as a gift, so last week i got to make the first pen I've made in about 7 years.

One of the decisions pen turners have to decide is how to finish the pen. One of the most beautiful and likely the most durable finish you can use is a super glue finish. Sparing you a more detailed explanation, using a super glue finish gives you a thin, high gloss, extremely durable layer of plastic over your wood. I never have figured out how to do this finish properly - until last week. Having finally figured it out, I was super-excited to make myself a pen, the 2nd pen I've made in the past 7 years. That's the pen in the picture above.

The problem now is this - I'm out of super glue! No more super-shiny beautiful finishes for my projects! I do have a Lowes giftcard leftover from Christmas which falls under the birthday/Christmas gifts from other exemption, but I'm definitely feeling the need not to blow it, since it's all I have for the next 11 months.

I guess I won't have any true need for more super glue until I have another reason (other than just wanting to) to turn any more pens, but having picked up the hobby again, I'm itching to do more! One thing I've realized about creative hobbies is that unless you have people wanting to buy or take whatever it is you make, you end up accumulating stuff. So even if I had all the super glue my heart could desire, there would be no point in amassing a huge stockpile of pens around our house - it'd just be one more thing to minimalize.

Sigh... Time to focus on the things around the house that actually need to be accomplished...

What's Making Us Discontent?

I heard a story that I can't verify is actually true (despite numerous searches on Google), but I thought I'd pass it on. The story goes like this:

A large american corporation opened a factory in a remote part of the world where the local people had little in the way of local commerce - no local shopping at all. The company was pleased that they were able to employ plenty of people to work and things got started well. The factory was running nicely for the first one or two pay periods, then people simply stopped showing up for work. The plant managers were confused until they learned that their employees, who'd never had much income at all, suddenly had all the money they could need, as they were living just as they had been before the company came but now had several good paychecks to provide plenty of security/comfort. The managers were baffled about how they could get the employees to return to their jobs, until one of them had an idea. They had a Sears catalog delivered to everyone in the village. The villagers, having never seen all the things that their money could buy, suddenly realized that they didn't have nearly enough money for everything they could want. They returned to work and the plan no longer had any difficulty getting the workers to show up. 

Whether it's a fact or a parable, the lesson is poignant. The villagers were perfectly content with the lives they were leading and the comforts they possessed until they let someone else, whose goal was to get them to buy more, start showing all the things that could make their lives "better". Once they'd been convinced that they "needed" those things, they were willing to trade large portions of their lives (M-F, 9AM-5PM) for the things they had just recently been content without.

The question I have is who am I allowing to make me discontent? There's a multi-billion dollar marketing industry who's whole purpose is to make me believe that what I have isn't sufficient and that what they offer is. The fact that this industry is kept in business speaks to the fact that they're successful at their mission. The mailers that come to my mailbox every day, the emails from the various stores/websites where we've spent money in the past, and the banner in my web browser - all of these are tailored specifically to convince me that I should purchase what they have.

One of the things I've really appreciated about being on our shopping fast so far is that I've come to see these things differently. I used to take the monthly mailer from my favorite woodworking store and keep it as my bathroom reader for a while. Though I don't buy new clothes too often, I keep allowing one of my favorite clothing stores to send me emails EVERY DAY - in case something comes across that I do actually "need." Since buying any of this stuff is not an option right now, it's been really easy to realize what these things are trying to do - they're trying to make me break our fast! Ok, that might not exactly be what they had in mind, but it comes down to the same thing.

So, if I know that these things I've invited into my life are trying to get me to do something I don't want to do, why keep them around? I've been unsubscribing from every advertising email that comes through my inbox, and it's amazing how quickly the spam mail goes down :) We set up a recycle bin right by the garage door so all those mailers can go directly in the bin without them having the chance to try to make us discontent with the wonderful things we already own.

Stopping the mailers is a bit more difficult than stopping the emails - it turns out that signing up for the mailers is very easy, but unsubscribing takes at least a direct email, more likely a phone call. Another option is to mute advertisements while you're watching TV. Better yet, turn the TV off and put your time into a pass-time that's more personal gratifying - family time, playing games, reading, crafts, hobbies.

We can't stop the billboards on the side of the road, but we can definitely choose what messages we grant a forum in our minds at home.

- Morgan

P.S. If you really want to mess with the website banners, spend a little time "shopping" online for things you don't care about in the slightest. The results will be amusing and not at all tempting :)

Contentment

I was thinking about being content this morning, so I looked up 1st Timothy 6:6:-11:

But godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it. But if we have food and clothing, we will be content with that. Those who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs. But you, man of God, flee from all this, and pursue righteousness, godliness,faith, love, endurance and gentleness. (NIV)

Reading this passage, even though I've read it many times before, amazed me. So many verses and passages in the Bible seem to come to life in whole new ways when they're viewed with through the lense of simplicity, non-consumerism, and minimalism. The thing is, this passage shouldn't require any of those lenses to hit us, because it's so straightforward. It's so easy for us to think about the gain we want to have in life - possessions, money, status, promotions, status symbols. We spend so much of our lives and attention thinking about and pursuing these things, and the thing is that when our focus is on what we need to obtain next, we're by definition rejecting contentment because we're focused on and pursuing what we don't already have. 

I love that Paul didn't just say contentment is great gain, but that godliness with contentment is great gain. Basically, if we want to pursue advancement and gain, let's pursue it on the path of sanctification. In fact, this is one area in our life where we're not supposed to be satisfied, but to constantly quest for purer, more complete godliness and sanctification. 

Aside from that, Paul tells us, so long as we have food a clothing we ought to be content. Why should we be content with such basic supply? I think the answer is in the sentence before that - we brought nothing into the world and we can take nothing out of it. Our focus is life is not to be on the temporal, physical life we lead, but on our walking with God and journeying toward heaven. All the status symbols and possessions in the world will mean nothing as soon as we pass into the hereafter. What will matter? In Matthew 25 we're told what is going to matter - I was hungry and you gave Me food; I was thirsty and you gave Me drink; I was a stranger and you took Me in; I was naked and you clothed Me; I was sick and you visited Me; I was in prison and you came to Me. All these things that the righteous did out of the outpouring of their love for Christ are the things that will last for eternity, long after every possession, title, and accomplishment have been completely forgotten. 

To pursue anything else sets us up for  temptation, traps, and foolish and harmful desires that plunge us into ruin and destruction. Given the benefits and the alternative, accepting God's invitation to the joys of contentment sounds pretty awesome.

-   Morgan

minimizing distractions

flickr: Hunter Langston

Morgan's smart phone broke this past week, and we were faced with a question: does he NEED a smart phone? We knew that yes, he does need a phone. As a doctor, it's rather an essential. But a smart phone with a data package that costs an extra $30/month plus all the time/distraction a smart phone adds? I wasn't going to ask him not to get a smart phone (that's a pretty big sacrifice to ask when he's had one as long as I've known him). But he admitted immediately that it was a luxury he doesn't need. It will save us money that can go into our debts every month. And possibly the biggest thing is that it will remove that distraction from our lives. I told him I think I may like the no-smart-phone version of him even better, and he agreed that HE may like himself better without the smart phone.

During Lent, we both gave up Facebook. As I looked toward the coming year (this was before minimalism, shopping fasts, etc) and what I wanted for my family, it was obvious to me what stood between me and my daily goals: the distraction of social media and all the time I waste there. So we decided to experiment with simply giving it up. And wow, it was incredibly freeing! I liked myself better. I got so much more done, I sat ignoring my children less. I had more focus. I was a better mother. When Easter came, I actually dreaded the option of getting back on and letting old habits into my life. I'm still trying to figure out what the balance should/can be. Maybe it needs to be a once a day thing... or maybe a once a week thing... or maybe I just need to accept it's a distraction not worth the gains... I don't know. We'll see. :)

With Morgan's smart-phone life being removed, I feel as though God has made our distractions smaller for us. Our children won't see our heads buried in the screen, or feel like they have to compete with technology for our attention. There will be the minor inconveniences of not being able to check the weather just before bed (I guess moms figured out how to dress their kids before smart phones, so I'll be ok), and we won't have constant GPS on trips (people used to look at maps; we can probably do that too!). But I think we're going to gain so much more than we lose! We have been forced to ask ourselves if the gains of technology are worth the cost on relationships and the time we aren't spending talking to our kids about truth and how to navigate life. I'm really excited about this! With less, we get to experience more. Yay for a broken phone!

When God does bigger things

Today is the perfect day to begin my own account of this journey. Some days it's so abundantly clear that the One who made the Universe hears our prayers and knows our hearts, and opens the windows of heaven to show us His blessings.

Months ago now, Morgan and I asked God to help us get out of credit card debt by the time our 3rd baby is born. The number was rather staggering to me because I couldn't see a way to get it paid off. But our money is His, our lives are His, and we knew it was time to bring ourselves back into honoring Him with how we use them. This whole year I've studied the life of Moses, and how the hearts of the people of Israel constantly strayed to other gods. Throughout the year, the Lord convicted me of my love of stuff. He kept reminding me that I cannot love both God and money! But yet, like the Israelites, I constantly turn to stuff - shopping for comfort, shopping for pleasure, shopping simply to have something new to be happy about. Why did I do that when HE is my comfort, HE is the greatest treasure, and HE is the only true joy that can last beyond the moment? I kept telling Morgan about it, trying to figure out what my limits need to be to combat this idolatry in my life. But it never really got to my heart.

Then Morgan proposed the shopping fast. I knew immediately this was the answer, and still my heart clung to the last bits of my idols... I could hold off buying stuff until my birthday, and then shop online, find what I wanted, and let others buy it for me! Plus I still had leftover Christmas money, so I could still buy those shoes I've been 'needing' for a couple summers... But Jesus wasn't content to continue letting my idol sit next to Him in my heart, even though it took a couple of weeks to show me. Just as the Israelites were supposed to physically destroy, cut down and demolish the idols of the pagan nations, I needed not to simply move my idols to a back closet, but cut them down, remove them, be DRASTIC! I knew I had to simply say no - nothing for myself throughout this fast. Nothing but needs, and for things like birthday and Christmas gifts, ask for the practical (and boring) things I never want to waste gift money on, and give the rest to people who really need it!

Who would have thought that telling myself no would give me joy? But as we go into a season of uncertainty, a season I have dreaded for months with more anxiety than I've ever had during our marriage, HE wants to be enough for me. Morgan will be gone so much this coming year, we will have 3 kids, and I will be so much more 'on my own'. He doesn't want me trying to worship other things this season. He wants to be the only God and King in my heart. And as I say no, I am truly free! I don't even know how to describe it. I'm so thankful to know He is going to show Himself in little ways, day by day, week by week, month by month, until we're here next year. He will be faithful. We will lack nothing.

And that brings us back to today... We asked God to provide ways for us to pay off the credit card debt, and then Morgan got hit with the minimalism bug. We started purging, wave by wave (so far I've gone through my wardrobe 3 times, and each time it gets better!), and boxes upon boxes of stuff stacked up. Why not take the 'stuff' clouding our lives and turn it into money to pay off our debts? So we planned a garage sale. I thought maybe a $100 or $200 would be good...

In the midst of planning, my friend (never go through garage sale-ing alone!) and I forgot to go to the bank for small change until it closed, so I started digging through our desk (a dangerous job I avoid at all costs) for small bills. I found $520 stashed away in there!! And day 1 of the garage sale? $430!!! Not to mention an absolutely perfect day, when originally it was forecasted to rain. My hopeful $200 turned into almost $1000, which has already been applied to the debt! Not to mention we have a full day of the sale tomorrow!!

Now, looking back at this day, I am so blessed, so content and full of joy. In seeking to remove our stuff and choose less for ourselves, He is showing Himself to be more. As our stuff becomes smaller, He does bigger things. What is an idol compared to the One who holds the universe together and breathes life into creation? It just took saying no to myself to see it. :)

Kyra

Making Your Life's Styleboard

When going through our stuff - clothes, accessories, knickknacks, decor - I've found it helpful to think of my stuff in terms of a style board. A style board is basically a collage of pieces that are put together to define a person's style. This can be super helpful to figure out how your various accessories go together to define your style, how your accessories work together, and identify anything that doesn't work well with the rest of the collection. This will also help you to identify how you might want to adjust your style.

For me, in defining my style as it's developed to the this point, I have a casual, but professional look. Jeans, a button down, and loafers are typical for me. So when I'm arranging my clothes in my mental style board, where do my old Converse fit in? Basically, they don't. These are a well-loved relic from a previous stage in my life that aren't adding anything to my style today. They're going to the garage sale tomorrow.

This can also be applied to a style board for your home. Are you leaning toward more of a sleek, modern kind of look? Then perhaps an ornate/vintage/country knickknack doesn't really fit in to your style. On the flip-side, if you're trying to put together a warm, comfortable, cozy environment, then maybe modern/mental furniture or accessories are actually preventing you from creating the space you want.

This can also be applied to the style of your life. What's the theme you want to dominate your life? What are your priorities? Family? Recreation? Sports? Hobbies? Learning? Try building a collage of these things in your mind, then ask yourself if there's anything that seems out of place. Do you have a hobby/interest that takes away from the rest? It might be time to cut this from your life - especially if your significant other has suggested this to you in the past.

Tiny House Infographic

Here's an infographic I put together based off Andrew Morrison's TEDx Talk. Look at the graphic, but definitely watch the talk!

Celebrating What Isn't There

I know that really influenced right now by my new focus on minimalization, but a theme struck me today. As we've been trying to be more intentional what we have in our home/garage/life, I've been struck by the power of what's no longer there. The things we've gotten rid of so far were items that we thought we needed to have around - they added to/strengthened/bolstered our lives in some way. Instead, we're finding that their absence is having a far better impact on our lives than their presence ever made.

Though this is a new realization for us, it's by no means new. This past weekend the world, or at least large parts of it, celebrated the absence of something 2000 years ago - we celebrated the absence of Jesus' body from the tomb. The Pharisees and the Romans thought that keeping his body in that tomb would serve as a form of a trophy - this rebel had been defeated and here was the proof. Even his followers thought that they would find comfort from being able to visit the body, by having it kept to decay in peace within those stone walls. What NO one could have predicted was the power that was found when Christ left the tomb.

The question I have then is this - what "trophies" am I keeping in my life that distract me from the profound place that the empty tomb should rightly hold? What are the things that I'm allowing to clutter my life such that I'm not living with the intentionality with which I would truly desire to live? My call to action is this - to expel these things from my life and NOT replace them with new toys/trophies/clutter, but to keep the empty place they so recently occupied clear as a testimony to the power Christ's victory. I'm not saying that decluttering is a pious work or a spiritual discipline, but for me at least it needs to be about focusing on the important and eliminating the rest.

Forbid it, Lord, that I should boast,
Save in the death of Christ my God!
All the vain things that charm me most,
I sacrifice them to His blood.
                                - Isaac Watts

Original Photo: Flickr - emeryjl

Defining the Shopping Fast

Ok, so we've agreed go on our shopping fast and I think we're actually already on it (maybe I should confirm that...). Things we've been working on a little bit in terms of finalizing our plan for the fast is what exactly are the parameters of a shopping fast. Obviously, you can essentially decide for yourself how exactly you want to define the fast, focusing on what your goal for the fast really is. A few points we've been working on might help if this is something you're going to consider.

1. Duration. This is pretty much the first term of the agreement. I was originally thinking of making our fast 3 months long, but Kyra suggested stretching is through next June. I think this is where the purpose of the exercise has to be made clear. My thought was to go through with the fast for the sake of learning how little we truly NEED to add to our lives/household while keeping it at a manageable duration. Kyra was focusing less on experience for experience's sake, and more of removing herself from a dependence on shopping to deal with stress, boredom, etc. Since I'll be extra busy from this July through next June, Kyra wanted to extend it for that whole period. I've seen articles where people have tried a 1 month clothes fast and failed miserably, then I've seen (and shared) where whole families have gone a year without shopping for any non-essentials. The point of the fast is to challenge yourself to give something up and to grow through the experience, so if you're thinking about how do you need to go for it to be a challenge at all, then how long you're willing to maintain the challenge. 
2. Scope. The second part is to determine what you're targeting for your fast. Again, what you're hoping to accomplish is going to be the driving factor in figuring this out. Are you wanting to do a socio-political freegan experiment? Are you wanting to curb your dependence on new clothes? Are you wanting to stretch your self-sufficiency by only buying food? Are you going to only allow yourself non-consumables? We're focusing on stuff, we're essentially stopping all stuff-related purchases. We haven't gone to so far as to say that Zip-Lock bags aren't technically consumed by use so we won't purchase any more. Instead we're going with if we use something up we can replace it - food, ingredients (including for our homemade soaps & toiletries), cleaning supplies, etc. 
3. Pre-determined exceptions. We're human, and humans need some grace, so determining where you might be willing to allow wiggle room. One question we raised was about what to do with gifts at birthdays & Christmas. I found this excerpt from Joshua Becker that I felt addressed this subject well - "We have taken the approach of still allowing our relatives the opportunity to buy gifts... It is an expression of their love. They desire to show their love by giving gifts...We did not want to take that away from our family" So gifts of money/gift cards will be accepted and spent gratefully for the love with which they're given. Also, Kyra has a couple small, specific gaps in her wardrobe (don't even get me started on women and their low quality shoes), so she's perfectly free to spend previous gift money on those specific items. Also, we had a baby due in a few months and it's completely possible that a true need will arise that we didn't foresee, meaning we'll need to be flexible. 
4. What about the kids? This is another question to get ironed out early if you have children. The temptation may be to exempt anything child-related from the fast, but the truth is that their clutter adds tremendously to the mulch in our home, not to mention to new expenditures. We're already getting our 4 year-old son involved in our minimalizing efforts (he LOVED ranking his stuffed animals until we mentioned that we were going to bag up the half that were least favorite) and he makes occasional comments about us selling some of our items. It's definitely a goal to have them grow through this experience also, so we need to take a cue from some of Becker's points in the article I linked earlier. Letting them know what's going on, start with our items, let them know what to expect, focus on positives, and work in special, bonding experiences. Now, we're ok making gifts for the kids for their birthdays and Christmas, but we do want them to experience giving to others. We toyed with the idea of having them make all their Christmas gifts this year (something we'll be doing), but decided that rather than giving all their aunts a macaroni & finger paint masterpiece that we'll relax the fast for them so they can continue to focus on giving to other at Christmastime. 

Oh, and I had to resist my first purchase yesterday. It would have been a great book to read, but the point is to have to grow and practice a little self-denial. If you read it, tell me the high points :)

Photo: Flickr, hospi-table. Image altered. 

What to do with DVDs?

Flickr: bobbigmac

I'm not sure what your media center looks like, but ours looks beautiful - on the outside. But open the doors (and they always tend to hang open) and it's purely chaotic. There are DVDs stacked up that were haven't been put away since Christmas. Of '13! Really, you could argue that minimalizing our DVD collection could be extremely easy - just throw away all the DVDs that are sitting in our DVD racks! :P This situation is complicated by a couple factors. 1. I've never in my life been in the habit of putting my media (starting c/ VHS and tapes) away when I'm done. 2. Our kids watch the same cycle of about 5 DVDs day in and day out. Actually, that wasn't very many factors, was it...? It's hard to look at the media center and not get frustrated with the way we keep it, but that hasn't yet led to real changes in our system. 

Since starting to work on minimalizing our lives, I've developed this wonderful vision of ripping all our DVDs, storing them on an external hard drive, and streaming them to the TV. PC World has a good article here that describes how to accomplish this using a nice app called Plex. The problem is that doing with require buying more stuff.We could then get rid of all the cases, and just keep the disks in a nice disk binder. At a minimum I would need to buy another external hard drive, a large disc binder, and some way to splice a tablet to our TV.  I've argued with myself that buy more for the sake of minimalizing might be acceptable, but that argument isn't gaining in my mind. When you couple that with our impending shopping fast, it gets halted completely. 

So what options are left to us? The first step will be to do a minimalization just like we've started in the rest of the house. All the DVDs will come out of their racks - added step of going back in their cases - and then we'll decide which ones are really worth keeping. For the sake of ease we'll move the kids' FWDs (frequently-watched DVDs) up by the TV (in their cases!) and put the remaining disks back into their racks. 

The Minimalists advice for your DVD collection was basically this: get a life and stop watching the same movies all the time. Others have said to embrace Hulu or Netflix instead. I get those thoughts, but we're also trying to spend less time in front of the TV completely. We do really enjoy watching the movies we have and we found that when we had a subscription service we were spending WAY too much time watching it because there was always something new to watch. I think if we focus instead of having a core collection of movies that we actually value enough to keep around and watch repeatedly, we'll had the right things that we'll watch the right amount. 

Any thoughts/ideas that I haven't covered here? What have you done to try to mange your media? I'd love to hear some more suggestions!

Attacking the Kitchen

Flickr: rubbermaid

We started minimalizing our house about 3 weeks ago. We started in our bedroom closets and are gradually spreading out from there. I will admit that my closet isn't done, but I have several things still mentally tagged for the sell & discard destinies.

The biggest area of clutter in our lives is our kitchen, though our bedroom was a top contender until very recently. It was difficult to know where even to start, so I started with the most visible thing in our kitchen - the utensils canister that holds the kitchen tools we use on a near-daily basis. I took some cues from Leo Babauta to guide me. Here are some of his tips:

1. Do it in small chunks. One canister, shelf, or drawer at a time. 
2. Take everything out of a shelf or drawer at once. Dump it all out, and maybe take the chance to clean the drawer/shelf/canister while you're at it :) 
3. Sort through your pile, one item at a time, and make quick decisions. Put back the stuff you KNOW you really use. The other stuff sort into sell/give away and throw away piles. 
4. If you are on the fence with a lot of things, create a “maybe” box. There were some kitchen tools we weren't sure of, so we put them in a grocery sack so they could possibly be saved from donation/selling. These were things like the 4th and 5th spatulas - Kyra does a lot of canning, so maybe she really does need that many, but probably not :P
5. Celebrate when you’re done! Don't forget to admire your accomplishments!

After we'd gone through this process with the canister, we'd managed to take out 1/3-1/2 the tools without eliminating a single type or size of tool that we frequently use. Duplicates were an easy choice, as were damaged items. 

2 days ago we started in on our glasses. We had multiple sets of very nice breakfast glasses that we simply have not used. If we hosted more breakfast parties, then perhaps they'd get a lot of use. That's DEFINITELY not where we are in life. 

The first real difficulty we had was our mug collection. I was all for eliminating most of the non-matching mugs and sticking to the mug set that matches our plates and bowls. Kyra felt the opposite - she prefers to have unique/special mugs to drink from on a regular basis and wanted to get rid of the boring matching mugs. We were at a small impasse until later that day I realized what our family norms are. My mother's kitchen only has matching mugs, my MIL's kitchen only has random mugs. For their family, choosing your morning mug is almost a part expressing your feelings about the morning. 

One thing we've learned in our marriage is to respect family norms, then work around them in a way that works for our little family. So with that we got rid of the random mugs that just didn't have much significance or were just plain ugly as well as about half of the matching mugs. We decided to keep 12 mugs. That number might end up going down in the future months, but it's still a good step. 

Other high points from the kitchen so far - if you honestly can't remember that last time you used a kitchen knicknack - no matter how useful it seems in theory - get rid of it! 

We're going to have a great garage sale in a couple weeks :P

Anyone need a couple sets of barely-used breakfast glasses?

Our Shopping Fast

So, last night Kyra and I went on a great date. We saw the new Cinderella movie (really, very good!) and had some great conversations. I've been spending a lot of time lately reading through the Becoming Minimalist archives, and I came across this article that talks about the idea of doing a "shopping fast." I also found a trio of interviews here  that wasprobably themost informative part. Quick refresher: a fast is a time of intentionally giving something up for the sake of a spiritual/philosophical time of growth. Think Lent. So this family decided that they were going to fast from shopping for anything but true essentials - food, toiletries, etc - for 1 year. I read it and thought it sounded like a great idea! We've been working on minimalizing recently, and part of what it's made me realize is that we really simply purchase too much stuff. So when I read this idea, I thought it sounded great. What I didn't expect was for Kyra to agree to it immediately! Here are our reasons:

1. We need to minimalize more. Our hope is to move into a small house (less than 400ft2) in the country within the next 2 years. In order for us to physically fit in that space, we need to have fewer things than we currently own! This won't be possible if we keep amassing more and more stuff.

2. We buy too much stuff. We both feel that we shop more for pleasure than for actual need. When we're stressed/tired/bored, sometimes getting something new just seems like an easy pick-me-up.

3. We're carrying consumer debt. It's not a horrible ammount, but until about a year ago we'd never carried a credit card balance for more than 1 month. For the past year we've been "trying" to get our balance paid off, but we've made little/no headway, despite me working a small side-job.

4. We don't want our kids to learn our shopping habits: Our kids are old enough to see stuff and want it. We're experiencing the toy aisle meltdowns. Maybe this is the nuclear option, but we want to be able to start teaching them now that joy doesn't come from things.

Next step: defining the terms of our fast. Hopefully that goes as smoothly :)