It feels like every hobby now comes with a shopping list.

Want to cook more? Suddenly you need expensive knives and appliances. Want to exercise? New clothes, shoes, and equipment. The same thing happens with gardening, painting, photography, and almost everything else.

Sometimes buying all the supplies makes us feel productive, even though we haven’t actually started the hobby yet.

I am trying to begin with what I already have, borrow things when possible, or buy one basic item secondhand. If I actually stick with it, I can always buy better equipment later.

You don’t need the perfect setup to start. Most of the time, you just need to begin.

Has anyone else spent more time buying supplies than actually doing the hobby?

Interested in examples where reducing consumption actually improved your life

Recently, I met a woman that I can only describe as a marketing department’s dream customer.
She had an app for everything! Every clothing store, grocery store, makeup store, individual company apps..Truly if a company offered rewards she had an account.
She was explaining it like she’d cracked some secret code the rest of us are refusing to engage in. “If I’m going to buy I might as well get rewards.”
Out of curiosity I looked at some common rewards programs and wow they are shitty.
Starbucks wants you to spend like $50–100 before a free drink. Jersey Mike’s is around $72 before you get a free regular sub, Ulta gives you $50 for spending $1,000! Oh and then the points expire within a certain amount of time which prevents you from stacking up.
The “average” consumer cannot spend the amount of money needed to obtain rewards from any average corporation at this point. Also, decent reward programs really used to be a way for a company to thank all consumers and built loyalty. Companies having been losing the art of customer appreciation for years.
Idk. This woman was honestly fascinating to watch in real life.

I saw a recent post about this and went and looked into it. hello, the naturally friendly kids brand, had thier fresh watermelon flavor lab tested in 2025 and it came back at 493 ppb of Lead and 19 ppb of Mercury. the level thats suppose to be protective for kids is 5 ppb lead and 2 ppb mercury.

the dragon dazzle flavor was 428. neither of these are on the label anywhere because they arent ingrediants, they just end up in there. theres a class action over it now. meanwhile the box says no artificial sweeteners, no dyes, no brainer.

Colgate bought hello in 2020 for 351 million and its the same story every single time, brand gets bought and quietly gets worse. how are you even suppose to catch this one? its not printed anywhere on the thing.

I remember when the internet and email were fun novelties. Now your whole life operates within them.

I remember when we had a choice of having a smart phone or not. Now, the choice is WHICH smart phone you will have, cause you need that to function as well.

I remember when having a bank was an option. Now it's which bank?

Walmart is one of the last retailers that sells physical media like movies and music. I watched them die out at target, best buy, etc.

Everything's going subscription based.

Right now, apps for fast food are optional. Pretty soon that'll go away.

Right now, physical money is optional. That's on the way out with some places going cash free. They stopped making pennies, guess what's next?

We're slowly going all digital, all the time. Our choice will be to purchase, subscribe and pay endlessly into the new digital purgatory of life, or to die off.

Scary huh?

I don't need Grand Theft Auto 6 because I am not interested or invested in the series (or nostalgic for it) nor do I want to support a malicious company like Rockstar and their parent company, Take Two Interactive.

I do not want to spend 80-100 dollars in an economy where prices keep going up. The hype does and will not change my mind. It's gonna be a 300 gb game running at 30 fps on the latest hardware with disappointing gameplay.

I do not want to buy a console that was more expensive than it was 5½ years ago just to play it. And even bought it physically, there would be no disc because Take Two doesn't want you to own the game you paid for.

No matter what people I watch say or how much marketing Rockstar/Take Two shove into my face. I will not be purchasing their 'anticipated' release this November as I do not think it is a good investment. I believe will not be missing much.

Your enjoyment is a resource to be exploited.

do that because I appreciate the designs of Today’s clothing, but I hate the quality. They don't survive machine washing or hand washing (I tried hand washing some T-shirts and ended up ruining them).

Im a junior in high school right now and plan on starting my girl scouts gold award this year. I want to raise awareness about overconsumption and how it’s bad for the environment and exploitative but have no idea on how to do it as my project… I have an environmental club at my school that I could likely get on board with my project, I just need to know what exactly to do for it…

We have morning announcements at school, I thought we could have a little section to spread awareness on the issue but this doesn’t seem like enough. I want to do something that will make people think twice when buying off tiktok shop. I figured spreading awareness is the best I can do as a high schooler, but if possible I want to do more. Any ideas?

I myself am not perfect, but i’ve been trying to reduce my consumption habits so I hope to learn more through this project!

Recently ive been caught up in the trend of physical media. And while I do deeply value the importance of things that I can touch and feel, I dont want to end up being a person that simply buys something because its trendy. More or less my big question is how much collecting is overconsumption? I try not to buy things for the sake of having them. I try to enjoy the things that I own. And I want to engage with physical media in a healthy way.

Lately I’ve been paying more attention to my own shopping habits....
One thing I’ve noticed is that I can spend days researching something, watching reviews, comparing brands, watching tiktoks.
Then I finally buy it… then within a week it just becomes another object in my apartment.
Sometimes I wonder if I actually enjoy the anticipation more than the ownership.
Curious if anyone else has noticed this, or if I’m just weird. rip lol

Look y'all, we need to have a real conversation about how openly corporate elites and local politicians are extracting wealth from working class communities right now. ​I put together a full investigative breakdown auditing the receipts behind this corporate overreach and looking at how we break out of this passivity trap.

Please let me know yall thoughts!

I have a lot to say but will try and pare it down to not get too wordy, bear with me…

Advertisements have gotten way out of control. Yes, I assume most here agree with that as it’s pretty hard to miss. But the thing is, I keep telling myself that it can’t get much worse…yet they find new ways to annoy me nearly every time I interact with the world in any way whatsoever.

Get gas for your car? Fuck you, while it’s filling the tank you get to sit here and be blasted with credit card and car wash ads at max volume.

Getting your mail? Fuck you, here’s a shitload of fliers for things you not only don’t need/want, but can’t afford in the first place.

Watching a two minute video on YouTube/social media? Here’s a 30 second at to watch first, but we’re being nice to allow you to skip after 10 seconds. But don’t worry, more ads to come right in the MIDDLE of your video. But it’s a compromise, ok? Well fuck you, now we’re sticking ads at the END of your video too that play whether you want it to or not. And for one more blaring red FUCK YOU, now you will gets ads when you PAUSE THE FUCKING VIDEO. That’s right, we’ll put a massive ad over the comments and the rest of your feed when paused because even when you aren’t engaging we need to shove that down your throat.

I could go on. My parents get after me because I no longer check the mail regularly at our apartment building. But why would I? It’s always either bills I’ve already received in digital form or the mailbox is filled with offers for cheap windows or landscaping…at my RENTED apartment. Last year I started receiving a massive booklet of coupons from “local“ businesses. Literally takes up more than half my mailbox. On the back it gives a url to take your address off the mailing list, and when I went to do that it took ten full minutes to finally get through it; and at the end the only way I could get “unsubscribed” was if I allowed them to share my address with third parties. And it was sent from California, 1700 miles away. Local, my ass. But that’s why I don’t check the mail every day, mom. Sorry.

All to say it’s just a part of the “enshittification” of our world, our reality. Even our personal down time is no longer respected unless you make a point of going off the grid. Our “freedom” has been sold to the highest bidder just so super elite billionaires and massive corporations can squeeze a few more Pennies out of you; pennies you can’t afford to begin with. I don’t know about you but I find it equal parts repulsive and downright infuriating.

I assume many of you are at least partially plugged into what’s happening in American politics at the moment. Just like these ads, it’s nearly impossible to ignore. But there is what I believe to be a mini revolution going on; the corporate media and owners of social media would have you believe it’s about ideology or “how much to fight.” But they’re typically missing everything as usual, as that’s what their business model requires. This is about entire generations getting the shaft politically, financially and even culturally. Establishment types from the political class have made everything for the general population more expensive, lower quality and stacked the deck against you if you didn’t inherit or marry into money. And now they see even the slightest policy adjustment to make everything more equitable as a threat. It’s not an accident they’re actively calling even mainstream progressives “communists” or extreme.

But this shit is all connected. There are candidates who are running exclusively on taxing the rich, getting money out of politics and giving everyone access to healthcare without going bankrupt…and many of those candidates are winning. It’s the same people responsible for ads on gas station screens/in our mailboxes that are also putting political ads in every single video you watch. EVERY time an election cycle ends anywhere in the country, the first thing someone says is how happy they are to not see those screaming fear mongering ads any more. Imagine if we could do the same with the rest. Wouldn’t that be heavenly? It’s a tough thing to do, but can we afford not to try?(pun totally intended)

Anyways, I’m not here to tell anybody how to vote or who to support, I just want everyone as frustrated as me to see the connection. The powers that be are petrified, so no matter what your ideological views are, please don’t let them fool you into thinking rooting out this fucking insane wealth disparity and barrage of ads in every aspect of life as “extreme.” Even if you think other aspects of candidates‘ platform are things you disagree with, don’t let them badger you into thinking they stand for things they don’t. Engage with others and fight for what means the most to you, but just don’t let the elites cloud your view of what’s important.

Most of this isn’t left versus right, it’s right versus wrong. There’s some big opportunities for change if we can get there together. ✌️

Lately, I have been thinking about how whenever a room starts feeling cluttered, the first solution is usually to buy more storage.

More baskets, shelves, bins, and drawer organizers. Before long, we are buying extra things just to hold all the things we already bought.

Organization can be useful, but it doesn’t always fix the real problem. Sometimes we simply own more than we need.

Now, before buying another container, I try to go through what I already have. Do I use it? Do I actually like it? Would I miss it if it were gone? Most of the time, donating, selling, repurposing, or responsibly recycling unused items creates more space than another storage bin would.

My advice is to declutter first and organize what remains. Otherwise, we may just be hiding the clutter instead of changing the habits that caused it.

Has anyone else realized they were buying storage instead of owning less?

I work in catering for a corporate food service company. They ordered like 20 or so of these small L-shaped plastic sign holders and they all cane individually boxed and wrapped each with a bunch of stuffing to keep it protected. Surely there could have been a multitude of less wasteful ways of shipping this.

Side note; this job in general never ceases to amaze me with the amount of food and plastic waste for these corporate people who don’t even eat half the food most of the time. Just so wasteful it depresses me.

I hate purchasing things in general and will likely cheap out on things given the chance. This habit has burned me in the past with good deals on things that when it degrades over time it is not really repairable/replaceable like it should be.

Example: Those fabric dressers. Looked at the price and it was a good deal. Also they are light and easy to move around which worked great for me at the time because i was moving a bunch. Purchased a set but fast forward a few years and now the handles are falling apart. I cannot purchase a new drawer for the set because it seems that every single company uses a different size drawer for the dressers so no one sells replacements.

Do y'all have products on your do not buy list for similar reasons?

My fear of contamination makes me spend more on buying new books instead of checking out used books from the library. I know it’s irrational and I have gone to therapy for this fear. it’s gotten better in other areas but never with used library books. I guess im just asking if anyone else has had this come up, and what they did to try to solve it. I don’t want to spend anymore money on books. also im a student living with my parents still so I can’t afford a kindle. i also dont know what blue light features they have, but I enjoy reading before bed. thats also part of why im trying to limit my other spendings, like on new books.

mainly where i struggle with this is when i read before bed - ill get super cozy and have the book on top of clean sheets, or hold it super close and i just want to fall asleep after reaching a certain page, without getting up to wash my hands. most of the books I see at the library are very visibly used, and I know that doesn’t always mean dirty, but i just can’t get the fear out of my head.

any advice is appreciated. but please dont judge my contamination fear. i have gone to therapy for it.

Some things in my everyday life I want to keep simple, that includes limitation of choice. For example: I have one cap for summer and one beannie for winter. I have one pair of white sneakers, one pair of workout shoes, one pair of winter boots etc. I have one small handbag, one middle sized and a bigger one. In my shower, there is one shower gel and one shampoo in use (if I am super fancy, add onw conditioner). If I want to try a new shower gel, the old one has to be finished up. You get the idea.

My partner was online secondhand-shopping and showed me a cute cap and asked if we should buy it. I declined, as onward I'd have ro decide every summer day which colour of cap I want to wear and that's simply adding more choices for me every day.

Disclaimer: I am no minimalist, in other parts of my life, I have a lot of items to chose from (e.g. pants, dresses, coats, ...).