Welcome to the post that links you to a wealth of additional information about some of the topics raised in my recent graphic novel on #minimalshopping.
19 Background
The backlash or misunderstanding of Marie kendo’s premise:
The point isn’t “do you have too much stuff”, rather it is ‘does what you have spark joy”! In these cases I think we all agree that YES it does!
The cases being homes stuffed with colorful flotsam
More confusions
A friend of mine wondered if she should tell me my comic was pissing her off. She was disgusted by my not shopping project as being irresponsible. She had a point, but she wasn't aware of my bigger picture! This lead to my adding a section clarifying the project towards the front of the book.
This isn’t about no shopping so much as it’s become more about mindfully shopping
Supporting individuals and small groups who make or provide things and services close to home or with ethics and focal points that align with your personal ethics
It’s about researching where the stuff you buy comes from, how it gets made, who benefits from the sales.
It’s about asking questions. Doing research.
It’s about mindful consuming.
It’s about cutting back on unfulfilling even harmful consumption and becoming more involved in supporting efforts that do things like
Pay living wages
Treat workers well
Treat the environment well
Are positive participants in the marketplace, the community and beyond
Seek to be responsible global players
Boomers bad choices
Page 33 Use, Re-use, Repair, etc.
Buy nothing day
Secondhandseptember
Making do
56 Fast Fashion
These were some of the fast fashion fly by night sites that were in action when I drew the pages that covered this topic. Many are since defunct or renamed.
Hong Kong fashion
Newchic.com
Popjulia.com
Yesstyle.com
Chicnova.com
Shein.com
8banana.com
Great blog post comparing the sites shopped from with sales photos and pix of actual purchases: https://www.refinery29.com/en-us/2015/11/96886/shopping-asian-e-commerce-style-websites
77 Marie Kondo
Marie's website: https://konmari.com/
She says: "As a young girl fascinated with tidying, I thought the goal was to get rid of as many things as possible. This single-minded focus on discarding had a negative impact on my health – one day I actually fainted from all the stress!
Coming to, I had an aha moment: Tidying is about what you want to keep in your life, not what you want to eliminate.This epiphany inspired what is the bedrock of the KonMari Method™ – choosing to keep what sparks joy.|
91 Deep Seated Shopping Impulses
Affluenza symptoms
Affluenza was a hot topic a couple of decades ago when boomers started noticing that their materialistic ways weren't fulfilling their dreams.
Inability to delay gratification or tolerate frustration
Difficulty maintaining interest in anything requiring effort
False sense of entitlement
Expectation of material goods without responsibility
Loss of future motivation
Life activities don’t seem very real and nothing matters much
Low self esteem, self worth, and loss of self confidence
Approval dependent on possessions and status rather than on personal values
Preoccupation with externals and habituation for more material goods
Difficulty believing people like them for themselves rather than for possessions and statusInability to trust prevents true friendships
Emotional energy becomes invested in material gains and sensitivity toward others declines
How to move past the impulse to buy buy buy!
Desire is an unwritten contract you make with yourself that keeps you dissatisfied until you get the thing.
95 The History of Shopping
Retail Therapy
Why we shop
Is Happiness Having What You Want, Wanting What You Have, or Both?, Jeff T. Larsen and Amie R. McKibban, Psychological Science, Volume 19, Number 4, 2008
Why We Really Shop
Psychology Today
Also
What Causes an Addiction to Shopping?
According to Ruth Engs from Indiana University, some people develop shopping addictions because they essentially get addicted to how their brain feels while shopping. As they shop, their brain releases endorphins and dopamine, and over time, these feelings become addictive. A professor in applied health sciences, Engs claims that 10 to 15 percent of the population may be predisposed to these feelings.
105 Astounding Stats
Minimalism and Clutter
Eye opening clutter stats
The Story of Stuff
Video
Keep everything
121 The Capsule Wardrobe!
Capsule wardrobe suppliers
Ethical fashion suppliers
List ethical capsule wardrobe providers
Link to how to build a capsule wardrobe article: Build it over a year
Great Pinterest board
Super sample assembly
Project 333
20 ways to tie a scarf video
(Mentioned in panel 65)
Clothing rotation
Forbes
Super great article on why and how to create your own ‘capsule wardrobe”
Everlane
eco conscious athletic wear list
Franchise capsule wardrobe lots of pix and links
What happened when I stopped buying cheap
135 Social Media's Impact on Shopping and Consuming
Negativity bias
The Business Journal's Article on average ads seen per day
Instagram realities
Influencers
Social Media Addiction Statistics lanierlawfirm.com/social-media-addiction/statistics/
156 - Set Back
J. Peterman: https://www.jpeterman.com/
167 Goals
Goals and motivation
Expectancy Theory
Replace Setbacks with Pursuit of Happiness
177 Shopping & Wealth Perceptions
Are YOU Rich?
wealth comparisons
USA median and average
Compare using your own info
186 Cosplay
Cosplaysky.com
Panel 110 or so
193 A Wealth of Gratitude
31 Benefits of gratitude
197 NO-wnership
Experiences over stuff
Great article on why
Millennials and NOwnership
A staggering 74 percent of Americans prioritize experiences over products. The focus on experiences is closely related to the growth of the sharing and experience economy.
But today it’s a different story. Firstly, let's establish that both millennials and every other generation are opting out of accumulating stuff and exploring experiences instead. People young and old are opting for experiences over things. These markers of success are no longer as meaningful as they once were.
As kids millennials saw their parents' lives crumble as a result of the financial meltdown, and watched as their parents lost their life savings to the banks and Madoff’s Ponzi scheme. Now the new normal is to see people in their 70s working at grocery stores when they should be retired. People have become increasingly disillusioned with the status quo.
As a result of changing times, millennials want to seize the moment, and they are skipping the mall for carpe diem. People want to experience all that life has to offer, and since acquiring things no longer dictates your class or status in life, millennials are simply enjoying experiences over things, access over ownership.
Many millennials opt to live in cities and rent rather than buy a home in the suburbs, and they don’t feel limited by this life choice, but rather freed by it. My fellow millennial women are waiting to have children. In fact the average age mother of first time moms in San Francisco where I live is 32.9 for (married women with a college degree).
Access over ownership, and living life on their terms are trends not going away for millennials.
Instead of playing board games at home, people now go to escape rooms. The typical bar experience has been replaced by organized bar crawls, scavenger hunts and distillery tours. Even running has turned into an experience with the growth of novelty races, including 5Ks with bubbles, beer and rock bands. It’s all about having a unique experience and being able to share it with others.
Why do millennials value experiences over things? Because it makes them happy. And they aren’t wrong—studies have found that spending money on experiences brings more lasting joy than spending money on things. Experiences are also more shareable, which is important to younger generations. It’s easier and more effective to share pictures and stories from a hike or cooking class than it is to show pictures of a new TV you just bought.
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New Experiences Samples
Puppy parties
Piggies parties
Goat yoga
Check out the offerings on airbnb experiences
Scan the listings on Atlas Obscura - https://www.atlasobscura.com/
30 more experiences to consider https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/30-mind-expanding-life-experiences-you-should-have-before-youre-30-a7876556.html
30 more ideas closer to home https://www.lifehack.org/articles/lifestyle/30-new-things-today.html
Fine. 1000 more ideas! https://bucketlistjourney.net/my-bucket-list/
8 weird things to do in Japan https://www.hostelworld.com/blog/8-crazy-awesome-things-to-do-in-japan/
More things with good reference pix https://bestlifeonline.com/fun-activities-2019/
209 Case Studies
Talk with Carol S.
Interview
She sent this link, too:
TRAVELING MAKES US FEEL WEALTHY
More info on Travel experiences over purchasing things
Thomas Gilovich, a psychology professor at the university, has revealed that people experience the same amount of happiness when making a purchase they want and when they travel. And here’s the important bit, while the happiness you derive from a purchase reduces over time, the memories of your traveling experience still supply you with happiness hormones for a long time.
As Dr. Gilovich says, your experience is a bigger part of yourself than your material goods. You may actually like your purchases and you may even go to the extent of thinking that a part of you is connected to that stuff; however, they are separate from your identity. On the other hand, your travel experiences are part of who you are.
Your richest and most cherished memories aren’t from the material goods you’ve bought. Rather, they’re a total sum of the life experiences you’ve had.
The experiences you purchase, on the other hand, are temporary. A day trip to the local museum. An hour-long painting session. A month-long tour of Asia. All of these activities eventually come to an end.
The fact that they don’t last is maybe one of the greatest advantages they have over material objects. Experiences are outside your regular routine, so you savor them while they last. Objects last past that initial point of excitement, which makes them lose their luster over time.
Dr. Gilovich explains that our experiences form a larger part of ourselves than the objects we own. So no matter how much you love your shiny new car or your spacious house, they still remain separate from you. Rock-climbing in New Zealand and snorkeling in the Caribbean, however, are experiences that shape who you are. They become part of your identity.
Things, on the other hand, are predictable. They’re safe. They’ll give you an outcome you expect. And for this reason, many people choose possessions over new experiences — despite what they could potentially gain otherwise.
—
Robert Waldinger, head of a 80-year old research at Harvard University knows much about happiness. The results from one study revealed that individuals who most connected to their family, friends, community, and other people were the healthiest and happiest.
In light of that, Waldinger says that you need to deepen your relationships by doing new things together with the people in your life. He goes on to explain that experiences connect you to others in a way that material things can’t. To Waldinger, some of the most important experiences in his life are travel. Traveling, he reveals, brought him closer to his family.
Home swap info
A new crop of home-swapping companies is here. Sites like Love Home Swap, Knok, and CasaHop are quickly shaking up the home-swapping scene, providing new alternatives to established exchange sites like HomeLink, HomeExchange, and Intervac,
216 Experiential malls
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219 Ace Backwards
Ace's Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/ace.backwords
and his Wikipedia entry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ace_Backwords
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223 Lauren Leonardi
Lauren's book project: http://justsayme.com/
Lauren's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fairtradetravelista/?hl=en
How to Know if You're Buying From an Ethical Clothing Company
Look For The Company’s “Impact Report”
The first place to start when determining if your clothing was made ethically or not is simply to ask. Send an email or a direct message on social media asking about the specific standards the company has in regards to worker wages, working conditions, and health standards. Look for their transparency on product creation and sourcing, and seek out the company’s social impact report.
Generally speaking the more transparent and aware a company is about their production process, the more likely they are to actually be producing clothing in an ethical fashion
.....
Choose Smaller Companies Who Know Their Garment Workers By Name
This is one of my favorite ways to ensure that you are really purchasing clothing that is supporting companies that put their garment workers first. While smaller companies are often going to be more expensive (their margins will be much lower than larger brands) they often will be directly involved in every aspect of the production process and will know the NAMES and family members of the people making your clothing.
When you support a small-ethical business you really are supporting a community and it doesn’t get much better than that.
Abrazos is THE perfect example!
Great list of ethical brands in this article
243 A No-Shopping Exception
What is a Cabalgata? It is a pilgrimage on horseback to a sacred place. Often there is a mounted mass for the pilgrims and their horses. Below is a video I made of such an event in the town where I live. Maybe next time I can assemble a video of my next cabalgata to San Martin
251 The Gift Dilemma
Holiday Gifts, Etc.
Christmas waste
History of gift giving
Scroogenomics
Destined for landfill - Gag gifts
Gift cards info
267 Hoarding etc...
Swedish Death Cleaning
Book
Referenced in panel 165 https://lbre.stanford.edu/pssistanford-recycling/frequently-asked-questions/frequently-asked-questions-holiday-waste-prevention
Extras
Sussing Out A Company's Real Ethics
4 WAYS TO KNOW IF A COMPANY IS ETHICAL & SUSTAINABLE
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Most wasteful companies
Coca-ColaPepsiCoNestlé - brands listed https://www.nestle.com/aboutus/overview/ourbrands
Danone - brands listed https://www.danone.com/brands.html
Mondelez International - formerly Kraft - Mondelez International's portfolio includes several billion-dollar brands such as Belvita, Chips Ahoy!, Nabisco, Oreo, Ritz, TUC, Triscuit, LU, Club Social, Barny and Peek Freans (cookies and crackers); Milka, Côte d'Or, Toblerone, Cadbury, Green & Black's, Freia, Marabou, Fry's, Lacta (chocolate), Trident, Dentyne, Chiclets, Halls, Stride (gum and cough drops), Tate's Bake Shop and Tang (powdered beverages).
Procter & Gamble - brands listed https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Procter_%26_Gamble_brandsUnilever - brands listed https://www.unilever.com/brands/Perfetti van Melle - Mentis etc - brands listed https://www.perfettivanmelle.com/our-brands/overview/Mars IncorporatedColgate-Palmolive
Container recycling info
Each day in the US more than 60 million plastic water bottles are thrown away. Most end up in landfills or incinerators, and millions litter America’s streets, parks and waterways.
How can America be spurred on to recycle more?
Ups info
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