zoe olesker’s Reviews > The Year of Less: How I Stopped Shopping, Gave Away My Belongings, and Discovered Life Is Worth More Than Anything You Can Buy in a Store > Status Update

1. declutter
2. take inventory
3. write three lists (what you’re allowed to buy when you run out, what you’re not allowed to buy, the approved shopping list of specific things you’ll need)
4. unsubscribe/unfollow
5. set up a shopping ban savings acct
6. tell everyone
7. replace costly habits with free/cheap alternatives
8. pay att to your triggers
9. learn to live without/get creative
10. gratitude

“more was never the answer. the answer, it turned out, was always less.”

“the best gift the ban had given me was the tools to take control of my life and get a fresh start as my real self.”

“i wanted to be surrounded by those who valued living over working, spending time outdoors over spending time time online, and doing things for themselves over paying for every possible convenience.”

“anything was possible if i made it a priority.”

“i gave up the feeling that i owed anyone anything, or that i could be someone to everyone. […] and i was okay.”

“what was done was done. […] the only thing we could do now was move forward.”

“when you want less, you consume less — and you also need less money”

“advertisements and marketing campaigns had conditioned me to believe everything was now or never. it never occurred to me to wait until i actually needed something. the truth, i was learning, was that we couldn’t actually discover what we needed until we lived without it.”

“the silence would hurt, but the noise had to go.”