After last week’s newsletter, in which I listed the hundreds of items I gave and got on Buy Nothing over the course of one month…
*record scratch*
*freeze frame*
Yup, that’s me. You’re probably wondering how I got here.
Well, friends, I’m still trying to figure out the psychology of my gutter punk materialism. Why does stuff on curbs, peeking out of Dumpsters and in the online jungles of Facebook and Craigslist crane my neck and quicken my heartbeat?
Last week, Culture Study’s Anne Helen Petersen hosted a Friday Thread for readers to discuss their relationship to buying things. One commenter, who said she hustled her way out of familial poverty and makes no apologies for having nice things now, wrote, “I fully realize that there is no ethical consumption in capitalism but I'm not going to set myself on fire to keep the idea of revolution warm.”
I respect this view. It makes me wonder. All these hours I’m digging through trash to find treasures (if I’m lucky), what am I trying to prove? Does scouring eBay for secondhand do anything besides briefly alleviate my personal anxiety over the climate crisis? Is it a manifestation of low self-esteem that my wardrobe consists most days of someone else’s old T-shirts and castoff Lularoe leggings or stretched-out Target jeans?
To that last question: yeah, sometimes. But it’s also a responsible choice when I have two small children who use me as a human snot rag (or better yet, hand me their biggest boogers with a proud “Here you go!!” as if they’re giving me a freshly baked cinnamon roll).
Of course my thrift mentality has roots in my upbringing and my family’s access to (and attitude toward) money, but I think there are three factors behind my recent Buy Nothing obsession in particular.
First and most importantly, my relationship to material belongings changed as I became a mom.
It started in 2018 when I was about 12 weeks pregnant with my twins. I was staying with a friend while out of town on a work trip. After a long day of work, she saw me unzip my jeans in relief against the pressure of my growing belly. She squinted at me. Do you not have maternity clothes? she asked. I admitted I didn’t. It was a surprise pregnancy, and I was emotionally and materially unprepared. My friend, already a parent for nearly a decade, called on her clan of mom friends for help. They delivered.
Bag after bag of maternity and baby stuff started arriving for me. It filled half a bedroom! At the time, I was shocked by their generosity and wrote each woman a Thank You note. They were being generous. However, with a few years of momming now under my belt, I understand in my bones how happy those moms were to unload their crap on me.
The amount of clothing and toys and gadgets and gear that pass through a home with two growing babies is staggering — and not entirely necessary. Parents of young children are targeted mercilessly by ads seeking to take advantage of our sleep-deprived desperation to sell us shit. Researching, acquiring, sorting through and getting rid of this ever-changing stock of belongings is incredibly time-consuming.
I’ve come to call this job “kid stuff management,” and it’s a big part of the mental load I carry at all times. Child-related consumerism — not to mention the veritable mountain of disposable diapers we went through — heightened my anxiety about environmental degradation, which deepened my resolve to use secondhand whenever possible.
So, as they pass in and out of our lives, I’ve loosened my grip on material belongings. As Pete the Cat says (iykyk), “Buttons come and buttons go. But do we cry? Goodness no!”
Related: in the years since my pregnancy, my body has changed several times in such drastic ways that it caused me to disassociate from old habits. I’ve gone through bushels of clothes trying to keep up with my changing size, up and down and up again. For the first time in my life, feeling good in the moment has been more important than the box labeled “130” in the attic (ie., clothes I was saving for the supposedly magical day I’d return to 130 pounds). It is liberating.
Secondly, since I moved to Milwaukee last year, I’ve been seeking some kind of community. And mostly failing because I think that’s just what it’s like trying to make friends as an adult.
Probably my biggest failure was the time I ventured out at the height of the Omicron wave for a twin mom meetup at a suburban burger joint off the interstate — only to discover that the members of the group were almost entirely in their 70s with twin children older than me.
I came to commiserate about potty-training; instead, these ladies who had known each other for decades exchanged cheap Christmas gifts from Cost Plus World Market. I came with my own gift to give and left with a 2022 sexy firefighter calendar (which I passed on via Buy Nothing because those guys deserved more eyes on them than my home office could offer).
Buy Nothing probably isn’t the healthiest place to seek community. It’s pretty transactional. Still, it was the most interaction I was getting locally with people I felt some kind of kinship with, even if our interactions mostly consisted of an exchange of addresses, some heart emojis and a thank you.
Lastly, my loneliness, coupled with winter in Wisconsin and an increasingly distressing and exhausting news cycle, was a recipe for a deep depression that hobbled my life for an entire season and then some. Not coincidentally, these were the very months when my Buy Nothing obsession bloomed.
When nothing else could reanimate my dulled existence, Buy Nothing could. It forced me out of my catatonic state to make a quick run to pick up a treasure from a stranger’s porch or hang a treasure off my front gate for someone else.
This is shopping addiction in its purest form, but free and delightfully random. Sure, you could click 1-day shipping on Amazon, but this stuff is available right now. This is first come, first served, baby! This was the urgency my life needed.
Moreover, cheesy as it sounds, giving feels just as good as getting. It was a chance to feel needed outside of my family or work: someone actually wanted my old clothes, microwave-burned Tupperware, knickknacks, kids’ toys, half-full shampoo, burnt-down candles, and so on. I set up a “Buy Nothing table” by the front door to store my future giveaways. It is stocked with bags, boxes, bubblewrap and Sharpies for labeling. The table is rarely bare.
When I had to make the agonizing decision to euthanize my ill cat in June, I didn’t post about it right away on my personal Facebook page. Instead, I went to Buy Nothing first:
I had to say goodbye to my cat Oberon earlier this week. He was with me for 9 years. A great friend through some tough times.
I'd like to give away a few of his things...
-partial bag of feline pine litter
-a tub of Purina One dry food
-a can of EN gastroenteric wet food I got from the vet (I think it's high protein? Or low protein?)
Also his covered litter box and scoop. I cleaned it with bleach but it still has some staining on it. Should still be usable!
I also have some of his medications he was prescribed toward the end — he had advanced kidney disease and pancreatitis — but I'm not sure what the protocols are for giving away medication.
Pickup on KK @ Oklahoma.
It felt purposeful. People wanted Oberon’s things, even the medications. The comments and reactions flooded in. And I didn’t feel so alone in my grief.
As my winter depression faded (this usually takes until June or July because Wisconsin springs are hateful, too), I’ve been feeling my relationship to Buy Nothing changing. I’m not as compulsive as I once was, for starters. And I’ve been thinking about reducing the amount of secondhand fast fashion in my life and getting pickier about clothes. Also, I want to be driving less.
That’s it for Curb Alert this time around. Next week: thrifty reads.
In the meantime, stay adventurous and keep thrifting!