My Year of No Shopping. May 2023.

Is there a difference between buying and shopping? Six month into this experiment, I’m making the claim that there is. Perhaps I’m splitting hairs. But to me, shopping refers to time spent wandering - aimlessly or otherwise - through stuff that I don’t otherwise own, contemplating owning whatever lies before me. Browsing I’ve heard it called. Defined as “survey[ing] goods for sale in a leisurely and casual way.”

Buying without shopping feels different.

Early in the month my husband declared that he’d used his 2nd mulligan (the first was a record). I exclaimed, “But, it’s only May!” How, I wondered in my tone, would he possibly last the rest of the year?

He told me he bought running shoes. His other ones were four years old. He was replacing them with good ones on wicked sale (there might have been some shopping involved before buying to find that sale…).

Without missing a beat I declared, “That’s not a mulligan.”

Why, you ask? Because buying new running shoes is a replacement item. One grounded in health. A healthy lifestyle that involves running, yes sure. But also, we are in our 40’s, folks. Perhaps you heard that I have silver hair. The gig is up. We are middle-aged. Let’s wear good shoes to protect our ankles, knees, and arches, m’kay?

And so, he retained his last mulligan.

I, on the other hand, feel like I fell off the bandwagon a smidge this month. May was the last month of 1st grade for our daughter. Busier than normal with school events. Including the bi-annual book fair.

This is what I’d been training for. Instead of buying books, we will lean fully into the library. (I mean, we already do use the library, but, you know, we’ll use it more, somehow.) My daughter is now of the age where we do not read the same book 15,000 times. To purchase isn’t necessary.

But the book bair. First of all, proceeds go to her school. Secondly, core memory stuff. Do you remember the days of your book fair? I do. I coveted books. I thrilled in buying something on my own, without my parents there. And, I loved my collections. I even mention my Berenstain Bear Book Collection in my TedX Talk. This collection now sits on my daughter’s bookshelf. My mother saved it; I begged for it back. She relented. Clearly, this minimalist harbors some attachment issues.

My daughter is discovering her own attachments. To the Babysitters Club collection, to be specific. The new-to-me graphic novel version. I kept finding her curled up in different parts of the house, nose stuck in a book. I even left her in the car in the garage once, she couldn’t unbuckle her belt or even move because she had to keep reading.

May she be instilled with a love of reading. That and learning to get along with others. These are my endgames when it comes to school. And by God, she was loving reading.

So we handed over money for two Babysitter Club books at the book fair. No harm, no foul.

But then I opened Amazon on my laptop, guys. And many of the other books in said collection were half off. And I just piled them into my cart and clicked “purchase” and cared not if I was breaking my rules or cheating on the library.

The nostalgia of my own childhood collections coupled with my deep-set values in learning to not just read, but love it - it won out. I’m not even calling this a mulligan. I’m not. Sue me.

For Mother’s Day, I gifted myself a movie rental. I’d been holding out for fear that my daughter would hate it, but now it was time: we would watch the 1985 version of Anne of Green Gables together on Mother’s Day weekend. Guess what? You can’t rent that movie anywhere. These producers know there is a singular crop of women who were wide-eyed children in 1985, who consider this movie to be on par with the Bible. I was one of those girls. (In recent years, I’ve come to wonder if Anne's desperate need for kindred spirits, and my desperate need to emulate her, encouraged some co-dependency issues in early life but la-di-dah I’ll take that conversation to my therapist.),

The movie was impossible to find. Except on this one streaming platform, Gazebo, which houses the entire Avonlea collection. My husband was out with friends and I texted him that I’d found my first mulligan. I wanted to buy the whole collection so we could watch it whenever our hearts desired.

But as my daughter and I watched the movie - I still cried when Matthew died, don’t worry - I didn’t see the same spark of wonder in her eyes that were in mine at her age. And, more surprisingly, I didn’t care. I want her to find her own wonder; I don’t need it to be the same as mine. So, I loved watching it with her on that Saturday afternoon. I doubted we’d ever watch it again. I didn’t purchase Anne of Green Gables.

People.can.change.

May also brought warmth. Praise be, spring comes again. We survive the dreaded Indiana winter, and my daily dog walks now became coatless. Every spring that this occurs, I am at a loss as to what to do with my key and phone (because with walks come podcast and audiobook listening, so I need that phone). In the cold months, I have my coat pockets to carry the accessories. In the warm months, I don’t. For the last two years, I’ve borrowed this awful wee running fanny pack from my husband. I’ve also browsed online for my own fanny pack.

But I hate fanny packs. I know they are en vogue. I disagree with this. I know these new cross-over bags are also the latest trend. They are not for me. And so, every year, after browsing for fanny packs, I remind myself that I hate them, and I don’t amke the purchase. This year, I came to that same conclusion, but couldn’t find my husband’s awful fanny pack. I took one walk with the dog, holding my phone in my hand.

Don’t do that. It’s just no fun. It’s awful.

But during those 45 minutes, I started thinking about purchasing my own fanny pack (again). And as my dog took a squat I noticed how her poop bag holder had a Velcro strip that wrapped around the leash so I - wait for it - wouldn’t have to hold it. I wished there was a similar holder, not for poop bags, but for my phone and keys. And then I remembered —

My sister-in-law had gifted her bridesmaids a small black Coach clutch on her wedding day. Was it a clutch? A wee purse? A travel bag? Who knows but it’s a small leather bag just big enough to hold my iPhone. They got married in the mid-aughts and I rarely use it anymore. My daughter discovered it and plays with it sometimes.

But why I bring this up is because the handle has a clasp. It could unlatch and then intertwine with the leash. I had a small bag to carry my necessities ALREADY. I could have been using it for the last 3 years of dog walking. No matter. I started using it the next day. It was better than perfect.

I didn’t use a mulligan on a fanny pack I detested. Good decision.

But I did use one of my mulligans. Two days before school let out, I had lunch with a friend on a restaurant’s patio. We were in the shade but it was muggy. I was in jeans. By the end of lunch, I was sticky and sweaty and the jeans felt like (damp) cardboard against my legs. As I reflected on how to avoid this discomfort over the next few months, I realized I had two pairs of shorts, and both were jeans. Pool season was upon us, and I wanted something light and airy to counter the humidity already descending upon us. I use to own two pairs but they no longer fit and I’d resold them.

I bought one pair of $20 shorts at Target.

I know. I can’t believe that is my first mulligan. Not epic crewel curtains. Not an online class that teaches me how to sew. Not a piece of artwork. Not even Anne of Green Gables. Cheap shorts from Target. They sat on my bed for close to a week. Maybe I’d returned them. But then we were met with a particularly humid day and I put them on and met the wall of heat head-on… And I felt light and airy despite the mugginess.

I don’t regret the purchase.