Over the last few years I've been thinking more and more about how consumerism affects my life, and, finding the effects are mostly not great, thinking about what I can do to resist it.

By consumerism, I mean all the societal and cultural forces (from government policy to what big companies do, all the way down to how I gather with and engage with my friends) that come together to reinforce the idea that buying and possessing lots of consumer goods is a path to happiness and fulfillment in life. It's the idea that there's always a product out there that could make life easier or that you never have quite enough. It sees shopping and acquiring as leisure activities, not chores.

Fighting against all this is hard work! As a teenager in a small town, key Friday night fun involved driving with my buddies to one of the nearby towns with a Wal-Mart, and making a lap or two around the store before driving back home. As an adult, I could spend hours perusing the shelves of any given bookstore, and I'm a sucker for those little boutiques in touristy downtowns that sell things like mugs with snarky sayings on them and candles with Frida Kahlo drawings. (I usually don't buy anything, but I want to see it all.)

But, I also see now that a life driven by "stuff" (having stuff, wanting stuff, strategizing about the right stuff to want, figuring out how to store the overload of stuff I have acquired, working harder and harder to make sure I can acquire more or better stuff) is not the kind of life I want. I don't want it on a personal level for myself; I don't want it for my kids; and I would really prefer to live in a community where "stuff" isn't the driving force for the people around me, either.

This consumerism stuff though isn't just something I arrived at on my own out of thin air; it's deeply embedded in the culture I grew up in. So even if you know you want to do something different, it's hard to know where to start. Here are a few things that I've been trying to practice - sometimes succeeding, sometimes not. It's a work in progress.

# Some things to practice

# No free advertising

A small language shift I'm trying to make is to talk about actions (especially ones I do online) a bit more generically rather than by brand name. "Do a search" or "search online" rather than naming the service one might use. I prefer not to wear clothing with prominent brand labels, though I'll make an exception for non-chain, small local businesses like my favorite coffeeshops or indie bookstores back in Lincoln.

One aspect of this I feel ambivalent about still is how this relates to my kids. They're at the age where they aren't buying their own clothes, obviously, but the older one (aged 3) definitely has opinions about what she prefers to wear. And wow she really loves wearing stuff featuring either of her two favorite cartoons. It makes her really happy, so I don't want to take it away. (She's gotten some from us and some as gifts from other family members.) But I sometimes feel weird about it.

# Less advertising, period

The world around us (and certainly our devices big and small, too) is downright saturated in advertising. I try to let as little of it as possible reach me. This can be challenging if you don't know what tools to use so: gonna do some free advertising here in disregard of the first practice I mentioned!

I have found it hard to block ads on Youtube (other people say their adblocker can do it fine, not sure what I'm missing?) so to be honest, I watch as little as possible there. I know a lot of short-form video in general is laced with "buy this to change your life" or is made by influencers that is designed to make me want the same products, home decor, outfits, hobby supplies etc that they have, so I mostly just avoid short video platforms in general - fewer Tiktoks, Youtubes, Instagram Reels or Shorts. I use youtube occasionally when I need a how-to video, but most of the time, I prefer text format, anyways.

I use uBlock Origin with Firefox to block ads on my desktop browser. (If you're using Google Chrome, you can get a more privacy-preserving and less ad-driven experience immediately by switching to Firefox even if you do nothing else.) It works pretty well. On my phone, I pay a few bucks a month for an app called 1Blocker that block trackers in apps as well as blocking ads in mobile Safari. I want to set up a home server running AdGuard Home, to block ads for all devices on our home internet connection even if they don't have ad blockers running (like on our TV). I haven't done so yet, though, because it's a little more of an involved set-up process. In the mean time, we've mostly stopped watching youtube through the smart TV directly at home, and screenshare one of our computers (running ad blockers) or play cartoons from a good old-fashioned DVD borrowed from the library.

There are some newsletter writers I started following because they had interesting cultural writing, and over time, I noticed they were doing more and more writing instead about stuff they purchased - home decor, outfits they bought, cool gadgets or toys or kitchen tools. I get why it happens; I hear from those writers that those are the emails that people open the most, and when people click the links and buy stuff, the writers get paid. And it's often hard for writers to get paid these days! Truly, I get it, in the same way that I get why the recipe websites are now covered in ads and auto-play video (also with ads) and I don't really blame the creators for it even if I hate it. But for the newsletters, at least, when I start noticing it, I think carefully about if I'm still getting what I initially signed up for out of that newsletter, and often, I choose to unsubscribe to stop being advertised to so much. For recipes, I save the recipe to my Paprika app if I'm going to use it again. And I check out cookbooks from the library and flip through those for ideas - no pop-up ads there! Paprika is a one-time purchase, not a subscription, and my partner & I use it for storing recipes, meal planning, and grocery lists. I can go back and look at the recipe in the app later without being on the original ad-filled website.

I also unsubscribe immediately from whatever company just started sending me email promotions - they're not sending me a 20% off coupon out of the goodness of their hearts; they know that if they do, there's a good chance I'll spend more than if I wasn't getting their emails and occasionally a coupon. So they aren't allowed to keep entering my inbox; unsubscribe!

# Less shopping as entertainment

The opportunities available to me for entertainment are so much broader than when I was a teenager 20 miles from the nearest Wal-Mart, which was pretty much the only indoor space other than someone's house that a teenager could be after 10pm without their parents. When I feel the need to get out of the house, I try to find something else to do that isn't just wandering around a store, thinking about all the stuff I could buy some day. I could get outside and just be in nature, maybe taking a book with me. I could go to the library. I admit that I wish I had more options here for indoor, no-purchase-required places I could spend time - even in the city of a million people I now live in, it can be hard to figure out where to go to just exist for a bit without needing to buy something. This would be the loss of third places that you may have heard much (justified) hand-wringing about.

Shopping as entertainment isn't just in the physical world, either. Do I go to the websites of places you like to buy stuff sometimes just to see what's new, or only when I have a particular thing I'm trying to buy? How much time do I spend reading "holiday gift guides" just to see what cool stuff is suggested? Or seeing what new "deals" are being pushed on whatever product review site I happen across? I have historically enjoyed all of these things quite a lot, to be clear. But there are other things I enjoy too, that aren't driving me towards wanting to buy stuff, and I'd like to do those other things more and the shopping things (even when I'm not intending to purchase that day) less.

# Hobbies you do, not that you buy

I have definitely been guilty in the past of having my first step of trying a new hobby be to buy lots of stuff that it seems like one might need for it, before I have really determined if I actually like the hobby all that much in the first place. I am trying to be more intentional about this going forward. I know that I will keep wanting to try new things, and that, based on past experience, it's very likely I'll be interested in it for a while and then move on to something else. I am trying to be more mindful of doing the new activity rather than just shopping for the new activity. And finding ways to use the craft supplies I already have, rather than getting a bunch of new stuff for every new project I want to make. When I do need a new kind of tool, can I borrow it first or buy used?

Another part of this is that "hobby as collection of stuff" often ends up as a joke within that hobby community, and I try to avoid indulging in those jokes myself. You've surely heard about the knitter with a closet full of yarn, the quilter with a room full of fabric, the reader with piles and piles of unread books, and seen some jokes shared (especially on social media, but even in person) poking fun at this phenomenon but also sort of wearing it like a badge of honor. I've done it too! Maybe I even did it in the first paragraph of this section; I want to defend my own past hobby practices and make you think I am passionate and excited and interesting, and not spend any time feeling actual guilt or shame for my past spending. But, I'm trying to do it less, because all of it contributes to what feels normal and good, vs what feels like something we should maybe think twice about before following along with.

# More to come

Like I said, this is all a work in progress for me. These are some things I've been trying to do, and sometimes I find it all easier than at other times. Over time I'm hoping it will all get easier, and that I'll find more ways to resist consumerism, too.

What are some of your ways? Tell me about it on mastodon, perhaps, one of the few places to experience ad-free social media?

# Added July 10: Avoiding one-off purchased items

I thought of another one! I have also been trying to avoid purchases that are for a single occasion - decor I can't reuse, costumes or special outfits for one particular party, etc. If I really want something like that, I see if I can borrow from a friend or purchase used (there are so many Halloween costumes and themed party decorations on used online marketplaces, and items can go right back there when we're done with them). But often, those things are not as necessary as they once felt. I've bought tee shirts before with pretty "of the moment" political references or memes on them, and not only do I not end up wanting to wear them for more than a year or so, no one else is going to want to, either. When I need something to wear to a special occasion like a funeral or wedding, I am trying to find pieces that I can re-wear more frequently rather than things that will never be worn again.

(I'd love if I could just wear the same stuff I wore years ago for these kind of occasions, but through two pregnancies and other life changes in the last decade, the way clothes fit me has fluctuated quite a bit. I know now there's a good chance that it will again before the next big "special clothes" event, so I keep that in mind when I purchase.)