What causes the urge to ACQUIRE?

The feeling is gone so soon after it is home, on a hanger, on a shelf.

The hunt is the thing; a dopamine rush.

Hard-wired into the meaning of homosapien is hunt, gather!! (Own. Possess!!) Show your self-worth to others by the things you have!

This coming year-2026-I want to push past that; to get the same satisfaction from what I already have. I will need distractions until the feeling I need to “hunt and gather” passes. (Play with the fabric I already OWN as opposed to buying more)

Shopping is like hunting. Even one of the Christmas commercials this year came out and admitted it.  (Homegoods, maybe? TJ Maxx?)  

Resisting the urge to after-Christmas shop is hard– we have been acclimated to the giant rollup of BUY BUY BUY for two months, the payoff being finding those steals the day after, when you “say” you are looking for Susi’s February birthday but you come home with everything but. Shopping has become an activity to share with others. It’s the “let’s go do something” and the something is talking each other into BUYING that, you deserve it!

I collected a dozen new gift bags at Christmas from the gifts we received and I have a tub of wrapping paper still unused in the attic. And, NO, I don’t need a better container to hold it all!! (but, it’s so PRETTY! I could be more organized if the container was perfect…) The Semi-annual BBW sale is hard to say no to, but there is a vanity full of shower gel, lotion and body spray in the cabinets; there are enough candles for a week or more of no electricity. And July will arrive, in due time, for the second half of “Semi.”

Scrap-cooking, as a friend calls it, means adjusting the recipe if you are out of something. It may be amazing and it may be ehh, bad idea, don’t try that combo again. But applying that to most everything as I go about my days– Minimizing my $$ output can’t harm anyone!  

We are past The Depression. We are past Little House on the Prairie. We can’t do two pairs of shoes and three shirts and a single cup and plate per person any more. We think “deprivation” means not having matching holiday hand towels for each holiday, for all three bathrooms. We forget we were raised with a single bathroom for a family of 4, 5, 8? I remember fondly the giant Hellman’s mayo jar of broken Crayola at Great Aunt Gene’s house. When we visited we had something to do as the adults chatted. But crayons are ubiquitous and inexpensive today. Reduce reuse recycle. Easy enough, with a bit of thought.

I read Marie Kondo. She is not me. She has some good thoughts (does it spark JOY?) The concept, good. The will to live it? Not so much. Most declutter books/articles etc, are like that, one size fits all. Wear only black or grey tee-shirts! Eliminate color and life from your world and free up closet space the easy way!!! My grandmother only and always, in all the years I knew her, wore Windsor Rose nail polish. She ate a soft-boiled egg with bread, a cup of coffee and a cigarette for breakfast. Her lunch was a ham sandwich with mayo on rye bread. Her dinner was a hamburger on a plate with a slice of tomato. This was her routine. No matter what we ate. (Our menu choices were slightly more eclectic)

I can’t do “sterile”. I don’t want a magazine spread of soulless grey and white (or whatever two colors are currently de rigueur) and no, this isn’t a hint I am planning to paint. I like my things and I like them out where I can see them and touch them. This butts right up against “I love boxes and containers for things, so things have homes.” People are complicated.

I had someone once tell me my home was like a museum. It’s not of valuable things, to be sure! I am not hiding a $100,000 baseball card payout someplace on a bookshelf. There are no  placards of the stories of everything, hung at the bottom right corner, but there’s little without a story.

I could do “curated”. (my curator needs a bit more focus, maybe)  I don’t want my mother’s house! We had to leave it ALL. Someone climbed through the mess to rescue great grandma’s china, but there was no way we could get the china cabinet out of the house. That was a sickness.

And, then, as I was writing this, pondering whether Minimal was the right word for 2026, this story popped up on Bluesky. >>>>  https://archive.ph/jXbVt  Boomers Are Passing Down Fortunes — And Way, Way Too Much Stuff

How easy it could be to tell myself that if I get it at Goodwill, it doesn’t count. It does minimize my financial output! I already get most of my clothes there. Which means I probably need to stay out of Goodwill –which is shorthand for thrift stores, writ large. (No lectures please, about how Goodwill has issues of X or Y or Z. You shop at hobby lobby, Target and Walmart. Pick your poison.)

And I don’t need any more craft supplies! Honestly. Because being creative should mean working with what you have, not buying your creativity. More thread? Well, sure, thread is a consumable. Running out of glue or sewing with dull needles would be foolish. (but, to be honest, it will take some time to use up those things, too)

If I get the THINGS part sorted, then maybe the DOING parts… getting out to do the  things/go places …I’ve got what, 25 good years left?