Spending Freeze
Or, How to See Stuff Differently
This is a story about quitting. It’s a story about an important transformation in my life. But it’s not an inspirational story. It’s a mixed bag: a little hope, a little insight, a little regret, a little grief. A classic mid-life tail.
Quitting has an element of travel—it can help you see your life from a new angle. Like the astronauts of Artemis II who left earth to fly around the moon and shared with us their awesome fresh perspectives on our planet, we can all see more dimensions of our own experience from a distance, when we’re not in the midst of the mist.
I quit drinking five years ago—I wasn’t a big drinker, but any amount gave me headaches and eventually I had to question my commitment to such discomfort. Stopping entirely gave me a new vantage point. Quitting something so normalized by our culture allowed it to seem less normal. We’ve centered alcohol within adult pleasure, relaxation and freedom, and questioning that placement has been eye opening.
Then, in January 2025, I quit something even more integral to my then life—I quit buying stuff. I don’t want to over-state the purchase pause I’ve been on since. We still buy essential items like a replacement pair of sandals when our dog eats our old ones. I’ve bought a few books because I can’t stop thinking of books as essential items (work in progress). My husband and I bought each other a Christmas present last December. We’ve bought our kids, who are growing and trying to discover who they are in the world, new items. But in the intervening 16 months (but who’s counting?!) I have radically shifted my spending habits and bought myself next to nothing.
Before this shift, I was a fairly ardent capitalist. I mean, I once owned a shop. It was an indie children’s bookshop, not a corporate mega-brand, but still, I made a living encouraging other people to buy stuff (theoretically made a living, that is— though I’m proud to say we made our bi-weekly payroll for the entirety of our lifespan, I was never able to put myself on it). It actually was a part of the business (and the principle business of the business, one might say) I never felt fully comfortable with. Many of our most beloved customers were librarians or educators or creatives, families I knew did not have loads of disposable income—should they really spend their hard earned money at my shop? I never fully resolved this dilemma internally and this ambivalence with the whole system showed up on our bottom line.
Beyond my uneasy identity as a merchant, I loved buying stuff. It was one of the reasons I opened a cute little curated shop. I loved cute little curated shops. Clothing shops, houseware shops, stationery shops. It was one of my favorite parts of living in Brooklyn, which was a mecca for such businesses. And I was a super fun shopper, a rare breed, I was alarmed to learn once I was on the other side of the register. I have an almost immediate yes/no when it comes to what I want or don’t want; I enthusiastically love what I love; I’m polite; and I cheerfully spend too much money.
