Shop Your Closet. Stop Buying Stupid Stuff. Excellent Articles on Creating a Much Better Holiday Season.

Several articles bring home the point about how to completely rethink holidays. Read on.

As we head into stupid season, which is simply another extended version of Making Jeff Bezos Richer, I wanted to weigh in on the topic of gifting. We’ve been gifting that grifter Bezos with billions during quarantine. Some folks have finally realized that stuff doesn’t make us happy, the hit upon opening the smiling box is brief, and just like dope, we are soon in search of the next hit.

We love, as Americans, the addiction of purchasing. It implies wealth and privilege, which it doesn’t convey. It does convey credit card debt, the need for a bigger house to hold more stuff. To that:

Stuff is a burden. Ask a hoarder (my hand is up) or anyone else about beautiful clothing we never wore, shoes that never saw sand and umpteen boxes and roomfuls of very nice junk that never got used. I’ll bet you can relate. Mostly, I bought for a life I never lived, for a world that wasn’t mine, to please people who never came to my house, and for a family I never had nor was a part of.

The American economy banks on that kind of stupidity. And for too many of us in America we don’t take into account the price the rest of the world has to pay for us to have our stuff, and then when we don’t want it, we dump it Over There. To make room for New Stuff.

China, by the way, can’t be bought to buy our toxic waste anymore. In that regard, good for them.

Not good for us. However.

As a veteran buyer, even I was righteously shocked as I opened old boxes and cleared out my closet in preparation for my Big Move. I nearly ran my tires bald selling, consigning, dumping, donating. When I got to Oregon, now more than a year ago, I kept right on doing that very thing. Some good news: I found people who could use a great many of the things I no longer needed, and that path gave me pleasure.

A lot of beautiful things ended up as gifts (here, please take my stuff) and a few beautiful things still live in my closet. Most of those are from another life, and while I could drop an inch in my waist to zip a few of those up, Eugene doesn’t have the business vibe to wear a Dior jacket.

You get my drift.

We are already being bombarded with Black Friday early bird deals. While I am quite happy to see the end — I hope — of idiots camping on the sidewalk to get in early into Best Buy and beat the holy living hell out of others over a widescreen TV, I am also at least somewhat hopeful that our compulsive shopping is slowing down.

We might have finally realized that stuff doesn’t replace love. Maybe. More importantly for those virtue-signallers (happy me, I got to use that new word twice today) who like to bark about what they’re doing for the planet, the free return policy from too many companies guarantees not only massive costs in shipping as well as wasted gas and increased pollution, but those same products often end up in dumps.

Yeah.

To that please see this:

So your uber-expensive Burberry coat, once returned, might end up, unworn, on a pile in Ghana. Or wherever. Not sustainable, any more than our shopping habits. It sure as shit wasn’t “worth” thousands, and to that, please see this:

There is no such thing as a jacket “worth” tens of thousands of dollars, especially if when you return it, said exclusive jacket is little more than landfill.

The other day I picked up this article which got my attention. I’ve had my share of boxes arrive lately, largely due to technology breakdowns and the slow die off of a router and modem. Those boxes are a necessity for someone living in the midst of firs, which block signals, and make a home office hard to run when the phone drops signal all the time. So, at least this is worthwhile.

However, my habit, and that’s all it is, of “treating myself” to a new blouse once a year had to stop. Look: I live in Lycra and Gore-tex. The beautiful blouses that I have already haven’t been worn yet. Not even once. Getting another doesn’t do a damned thing for me at all. If I want to dress up I can bloody well shop my own closet, which is full of lovely things that I’ve yet to wear.

To that:

But that’s not all.

One of my favorite writers, Jessica Wildfire, penned a piece that, for me, gets to the heart of what makes sense to dump, rethink, re-frame and redirect in a year when so much of what people want back- “normalcy” — is remarkably stupid. I’m with her:

From her article:

From now on, I have a feeling the only rest we’re going to get is what we give ourselves. Things aren’t going to get easier. Right now, I’m all about lowering expectations and freeing myself from society’s demands.

There’s a number of things we as humans in a western, capitalistic culture actually don’t have to do. We just think we do. We do these things because they make us look or feel normal. We learned to do them as we grew up, and never thought about them. We simply assumed they had to be done. We feared judgment for opting out.

You don’t have to agree. However, for my part, my very very bad habit of overwhelming those I love with goodies which probably mostly got re-gifted to some other poor sod just to get that crap out of the house has got to stop. Not only do I not have the money (thanks, Medium, for the most recent devastating rip of the payment algorithm) but it’s just plain stupid. Those I love want my time, attention and kind words from me. Gifts aren’t me. They are avatars for me, and a way to say I’m here without the commitment of actually showing up.

I can give far fewer, better gifts, and most of those are cheap or free. My time isn’t free, but I don’t have to clean out my checking account to prove to anyone that I care. That’s learning a different love language.

However the larger point is that we are a nation of seriously bad habits and Covid has been the slap in the face we so badly need to wake the hell up and take notice. She is. I am. So is this next author.

Finally, from Medium writer over at Forge Annaliese Griffin, there’s this:

Last year as I dumped out my boxes upon BOXES of stuff I paid to move to Eugene, I realized that my mother’s china, among many other items, was gathering dust and dying a slow death. That is all now in regular rotation and damn the chips. Good china, fine clothing, nice jackets, all of which I had been saving for The Right Moment are now in full use.

Because as I wrote about this before, and agree completely with Annaliese, for Christ’s sake: there is no Right Moment. I could get hit by a damned car tomorrow, and all the lovely things that are sitting unused will end up in a landfill like that pricey Burberry coat.

So will I, but at least, for my part, I plan to chip the china before I get planted.

Here’s to a far more sane, sober holiday season, and maybe even take those lessons forward.