Serge the Concierge

Buy Less Stuff: Shortest Road to Going Green and Saving Some

December 30, 2008 by serge the concierge

People often talk about the third rail of politics or business, in Taboo Talk in Green Business: Buy Less Stuff (GreenBiz.com, December 22nd), Joel Makower offers one of his Strategies for the Green Economy (also the title of his book).

He notes that "reducing or limiting consumption is antithetical to marketing, or at least it has been so far" yet offers that "talking to consumers about buying less stuff just might be the third rail of green marketing".

On the practical side reducing your shopping Buy Less Stuff is also A simple way to save money and get ahead as BloggingStocks reminded us as far back as December 2006. Did anyone listen back then?

Presh Talwakar in One Reason to Buy Less Stuff (Mind your decisions, January 2008) reminds us of a basic fact in the following sentence "when a new product is introduced, I often see that I’ve lived all these years just fine with what I have. I think I can continue to survive just fine".

Ready for a radical change How to Buy Nothing (WikiHow) offers a 21 Steps Guide to go cold turkey.
Number 21 is: "Ask Yourself the 3 Questions - WANT, NEED and AFFORD Can I afford it? Do I Need it? and Do I Want it? If you can answer ANY 2 out of the 3 questions then you can buy it."

Paul Graham opened his take on Stuff (July 2007) with these words:

"I have too much stuff. Most people in America do. In fact, the poorer people are, the more stuff they seem to have. Hardly anyone is so poor that they can't afford a front yard full of old cars. It wasn't always this way. Stuff used to be rare and valuable. You can still see evidence of that if you look for it. For example, in my house in Cambridge, which was built in 1876, the bedrooms don't have closets. In those days people's stuff fit in a chest of drawers".

It puts new light on the fact that big boxes do not fit in my kitchen cabinets (the house is fairly old).

To conclude are we gonna go from the "cheap enough to replace that I can just throw it away" to "durable enough to pay a bit more for it" or "keep it since it still works fine".

A Consumed to Thrifty take for Green Day # 59

Related: Nanny or Botox Treatment...Botox Wins? Cutting Back

Posted on December 30, 2008 in Books, Consumer Products, Food and Drink, Green Day, Health, Luxurious Sensible, Personal Organizer, Serge the Concierge, To Do Lists, Web/Tech, Weblogs | Permalink | Comments (0)

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Paul Graham opened his take on Stuff (July 2007) with these words:

It puts new light on the fact that big boxes do not fit in my kitchen cabinets (the house is fairly old).

To conclude are we gonna go from the "cheap enough to replace that I can just throw it away" to "durable enough to pay a bit more for it" or "keep it since it still works fine".

A Consumed to Thrifty take for Green Day # 59

Related: Nanny or Botox Treatment...Botox Wins? Cutting Back