A woman didn't shop for a year

Susie sent me the following link with the email heading – Right up your alley. A Consuming Life Could you live a whole year without shopping? Author Judith Levine did. Here's what she learned. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12099950/site/newsweek/from/ET/

I send it on to my mega shopping pal Rose. I am probably between the two -- Rose and Judith. I did shop on my mini vacation buying a new phone (I can now hear what people are saying and it works when my ASDL line is plugged in unlike its predecessor) and a new CD-player. What good are CDs without something to play them on? The old phone and CD-player have already been sent to the decheterie /dump and disposed in the proper recycling bins. Even if I had an attic, they would never be put there until I decided to fix them as my Swiss gentlemen friend does. We both know they will never be fixed, but it makes him feel better so why not. I also purchased a new printer ribbon. So I do shop.

Disliking shopping is not new for me. I remember when I ran away to my father’s (too long a story to go into) and we had to go shopping for clothes for me. I was in an out of that store so fast that it became a building block of our relationship. I didn’t know he hated shopping and it was a real act of love and need that he had taken me.

Part of the dislike is that I don’t want the things that shopping brings cluttering up my life. Things have to be dusted. Things have to be taken care and I do. My oven and food processor still look almost new despite three and five years of use respectively. When I have too much stuff it gets lost.

However I am not sure that I would want to give up ice cream, movies, going out to eat or wine as Levine did. We all have our levels of consumerism don’t we?