The joys of buying too much

(Hebrew text after English)

It is Thursday night and we are in the kitchen. I am complaining because I really want strawberries but we have used almost all of the weekly food budget already plus that it is still early in the season and they are still a bit expensive. “Who decided that we need this budget, anyway?” I ask. “Well, you” dear husband answers and of course he is right. How annoying especially since we mutually decided on our wedding day that I would always be right (you know, just to avoid arguments :-)). As much as the budget gives me the security frame it can also feel so limiting, especially when there is something I really want.

Buying things can often be divided into needing versus wanting. Some things like toilet paper, toothpaste or medicine we really need while other things like those really nice booths or that bag is something that we really want. The wanting part of shopping is so much more emotional and therefore also so much more fun.

With our changes, we have also limited the sums we use to purchase clothes and shoes. As with the food, we take out a certain amount every month and put it in an envelope. The nice thing about the envelope, that sometimes for months we don’t touch it and it just accumulates. Then when we, for example, have to get the kids new shoes for winter and then the feeling is as if we are not really paying, because the money is already there.

In the last five months, this is what we have bought: Shoes for the big one, shoes for the smaller one, underpants, socks and two sweaters (sale) for my dear husband and a t-shirt for me (that I didn’t really need but wanted…).

I read somewhere that the 80/20 principle also applies for clothing, meaning that for about 80 percent of the time we use about 20 percent of what we have in our closet. For me that is about right and that is also why at this point I don’t really need new things and can wear all the things that have accumulated in my closet over the last couple of years. It is therefore seldom that I actually have to buy something. With the kids it is of course different as they still grow, but there we have been very fortunate to receive both new and used clothing from family and friends.

So what I am saying? That maybe what we already have is not that bad and it certainly doesn’t cost anything to think again before buying, if this is something we cannot live without.

And yes, in the end I did get the strawberries…