Only What You Need to Survive..

The last week of the buy nothing challenge and I have spent...

A lot of the money went to school things. New school t-shirt; lanyard (to help kids keep up with their flash drives); safety patrol badge; choir shirt; and percussion ensemble shirt. I also bought some stuff in preparation for our Disney trip. Wet-ones; Anti-bacterial hand lotion; 88 cent ponchos; mints; snacks; coloring books and band-aids. I bought my friend's god-daughter a "good luck at boarding school" itunes gift card (because you need tunes to study). Also, I normally cook Sunday dinner for the family. My mom insisted on cooking for us this week. Sunday afternoon I found out that meant that she called me to pick up barbecue from the really awesome restaurant I live right behind. In her defense she did cook us a can of beans and a bag of salad to go with it.

So now that the challenge is over what have I learned? Something that I already new was that I eat out too much. I did a better job than normal of not eating out. When you consider that I grew up eating out every meal almost every day of the week, the fact that I have managed to keep that down to about once a week I consider a victory. I also really looked at every purchase I made a lot closer. Its easy to go into Target asking, "Do I really need the extremely cute notebook when I have 5 unused sitting at home?" But its harder to do that at the grocery store. I think I'm there to get stuff I need. Everything there is a need on some level. Like the wine. Not that I buy wine when I'm not going to take it to a party or dinner, but I never thought of it as not a necessity. I know you don't need it. There are a lot of items we don't need, but we have just gotten so used to them as part of our landscape we don't even notice them anymore. How many "can't live with out" items are we cluttering our landscape with? What really counts as a "must have?"