Sunday: Consumption

Today's challenge was to "Live a fuller and happier life by buying less stuff."  In other words, stop consuming new goods (except food).  This wasn't hard for me today and I don't anticipate it being hard for the week ahead, as I'm not generally a big collector of products I don't actually need.  However, I do have a staple collection of products that I regularly rely on, such as face and body products, which all come in some sort of packaging... which gets me thinking about tomorrow's challenge, trash...  But back to TODAY.  The real challenge is to look more closely at my consumer habits.  If I must buy something, I can think about whether I can buy it used, borrow it, or make it myself.  Perhaps as a longer-term challenge I will learn how to make my own body products :)

I watched Annie Leonard's The Story of Stuff video today and it got me thinking a lot more about the consumer treadmill.  Ninety-nine percent of consumer goods are trashed within 6 months!  This is largely the result of planned obsolescence, where products are designed to break or become obsolete as quickly as possible (especially obvious with computers and electronics), but not so quickly that the consumer loses faith in the product and won't go buy another one; and perceived obsolescence, where consumers are convinced that they need to throw away products that are still perfectly useful (especially obvious with fashion and design) and buy new ones.  Very very interesting.