Cait Flanders is a successful blogger who writes about her journey to overcome binge drinking, crushing consumer dept and finally compulsive shopping. This book focuses on the year that Ms Flanders decided to do a shopping "ban" during which she only allowed herself to buy certain things, including groceries, toiletries (only when she ran out) and necessities, when they broke and needed to be replaced. As part of the ban she went through her belongings and got rid of many things she never used, totaling more than 60% of all her stuff. She found that she hadn't realized how much she used shopping to handle her emotions and as a social event. Her ban taught her to value what she did use, and to recognize the emotional burden of owning lots of things she didn't.
It is easy to compare this book to The Life-changing Magic of Tidying Up. I would say that Flanders is more relatable than Kondo--she doesn't seem so fanatical. That said, I didn't come away from this book with as much motivation to change my life as I did after reading Kondo's book, but that might just be because I read this book second. Flanders includes more about her life and her relationships with others, and how crisis in her life both threatened and strengthened her resolve to shop less. At the end, however, I had to wonder if her shopping "ban" was just another manifestation of her extreme, all-or-nothing, approach to life that lead to her drinking and spending problems (through a more healthy manifestation). I also ended the book feeling like, although an improvement, the commitment to spend less wouldn't ultimately make her as happy as she thought it would. Soon she would need some other "extreme" scheme to validate herself. Still, this is a good choice if you are looking for motivation to simplify your consumerism. (191 p, 2019)
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