I am old enough to witness how Long material things can last:

When one was younger with the money, I was keen to buy things. Now at the age of 36, without realising it, I have actually owned some of my things for more than 10 years:

·         Deuter 40 L pack for 16 years

·         Camelbak day pack for 14 years

·         Quechua base layer with fallen zip and loose threads for 12 years

·         Of course, army leather boots for 16 years

·         Even the pathetic berms I bought with HuaYang from Bugis should be more than 10 years old.

I have grown old to witness things “living” for more than a decade.

How does this scare me?

Many of the things I buy back then were revolved more around price, rather than quality. It was more about what I can afford. Now, if these average quality brands can last so Long, why do I need to buy Patagonia? Only for the social and environmental reasons?

That being said, it is not that these items remained in pristine condition: I had to resew my berms and bag pack, cut off “extra” tightening bands on the bag pack, burn loose threads on the decathlon base layer.

If my expectation is to be like the poor Indonesians who cannot afford new clothes, I assume that I can actually go on using these items for a Long time. It will be about managing my expectations for things to remain pristine.

Sadly, most of the things I have chosen to give away may just be tops/ t shirts that look slightly less pristine.

However, As the Diamond Cutter or the Japanese book on minimalism states:

We do not only own our objects physically but that we need to spend the time to shop, clean them or even to maintain them.

I am spending precious life and time on things...on the research on what to buy, on surfing for the cheapest deals.

Now, experiencing how Long things can last, I need to learn how to buy things with even more caution.

It is in a sense just lying to your self to simply give things away: the quality of pre loved clothing reaching Senegal (https://youtu.be/elU32XNj8PM) maybe so low that they choose to burn it in a landfill. We think that we may be donating to Salvation Army but they may find it useless to resell and throw it away too.

Let’s :

·         Have less desire to buy so that we do not even need to do any research - cause time is the most precious resource.

·         Don’t buy because it is cheaper with discount and because I have the desire. I just can’t wear finish so many berms! There must be a function that is not played by any other item I already have that I need to buy this new item.

·         My daypack can still be my summit pack, just a tighter fight for space inside the big bag pack. There may not be a need to buy Patagonia summit pack

Rejecting Temptations in Stores

Seeing things in store:

- go and walk MUJI then feel like buying storage to store the spectacles
- struggle to want to buy the neck pillow , when I have 2 plastic air pillows
- go past NIKE then feel like buying the $248 flower shoe

It is at those physical stores that I am tempted to buy, in the first place I didn't even desire not want to buy.

That's the good thing about online shopping so you can directly find what you want to buy. But that is also bullshit because there are random offers online as well.

Since, I didn't even intend to buy those things in the first place, maybe the best thing to do is to avoid all these physical shopping or to an extent online shopping - it means less decision fatigue.

Spend the time physically cycling around and enjoying nature instead.

A store is designed for you to buy things - the more we stay away from that, the less we need to exercise our limited discipline muscle to reject that.

Clothes, income and my style.

For most of my growing up years, I have always dressed simply – Most of the time, I am one of those sloppy dressers who wear T shirts and Bermudas for lessons in NUS.

One of the reason I give myself to not dress better is really because I was living on pocket money – I can’t be spending my mom’s hard earned money from working more than 10 hours a day on looking good?

This perhaps explains why this recent few years, my friends may find that my style has been a little one the wild side (or mildy put: funky) for them to accept.  Cause I feel that I now make my own money.

The end result: Over this 3.5 years of working, I owned over 21 button shirts – T Shirts are even more countless because of the sheer number of events that I joined.

What are some of the thoughts that hold me back from clearing them?

•            I have been reluctant to clear them away via donation to Salvation Army mainly is because these shirts cost me money – even if they are cheapo event T shirts of lousy material.  I just feel that to get  my money’s worth, I have to wear them  out even before I donate them! 
•           This probably has got to do with my younger years in childhood and teenage whereby money was not aplenty.

Why do I suddenly want to clear away so many of clothes?

•      It is really the entire “Less is more” movement I am into this 30^th year after reading “The Power of Less” and “Steve Jobs Biography”.  I kind of believe that less things in our life helps to clear up our thoughts.
•  How does more items in life create a more cluttered mind?  Deciding what to wear when you have many clothes to choose from is just many of the small decisions that we have make throughout the day that can lead to decision fatigue.
•  This is perhaps with a linkage to our evolutionary past as hunter gathers that our ancestors never had much material stuff, and our brain is not wired for so many possessions.
• Because I have the time now to think and slowly savor.
• For the environment – the less things I owe, the less resources I consume. And this is really what I use to motivate myself to donate things that are still rather new  – for a completely new race event shirt that I don’t really want to wear can go and clothe another poor individual.
• I don’t why it took me so many years to be hit with this point, perhaps, I really felt it only due to Story of Stuff and Patagonia – Don’t Buy This Jacket advertisement. 

How to make new buys?

•      Looking bacd, I realized that in the past, there were really a couple of times where I bought things that may not have fitted that well because they were on discount. 
• It could be due to my slightly not well off childhood or simply the entire consumer culture that lead me to behave that way.
• So now it must really be:
•  Does it fit well? ( I used to buy clothes that may be a little big because it is on a discount)
• Does it look nice?
• We often are keen to buy things at a discount because we believe that it will save us money that will allow us to buy more things. However, if I only want to own a few items – I really don’t need more things. And seriously, I can’t get round to finish wearing all the clothes if I have too many. 

There is something else that peeves me about buying things that are too cheap.  I remember seeing these 3 watches that are going for $10 at Chinatown.  $10 bucks! I walked away depressed because I just thought that at the back, how may workers are underpaid, what safety standards are being ignored and what environmental pollution is not being managed.

Hence my new mantra will really be:

Buy LESS, Buy Well.

We do not need that many items in our life – we can do with less and we will feel more relaxed for it.

Buy well and not merely just for discount so that someone else is compensated fairly and hopefully my item will last for a long time that I need not buy a new one for years – so far I only have faith in Patagonia for that.  Let me continue my experiments on brands and update again.