Consumerist withdrawal

[featherynscale]

I'm at an odd phase in the whole consumerist/anti-materialist tug-of-war.

I need a pair of tennis shoes. This is a legitimate need if I'm going to do this fencing thing, since my boots don't so much have traction on the bottom (which encourages me to slide rather than pick up my feet -- my first Bad Habit! -- and will no doubt one day trip me up, causing me to collapse in a heap with my foil up my nose). So I think I'll go pick some up today. No problem - legitimate need, legitimate purpose. The problem is that I think if I'm going shopping, I should hit a few more places. Now, I don't need anything else, and in all likelihood I won't buy anything else, but I can't resist the temptation of going to look, even though I know I'm not going to buy.

I guess this is a form of cheap entertainment, so on the scale of the world's evils, pretty minor, but still. What a waste of an afternoon.

Comments

Re: You are not your sneakers.

[capriciouslass.livejournal.com]

My typical response is to give stuff to family (chosen or biological) then to Disabled Vets or other such worthwhile charity before selling. I figure it's easier to just take the deduction also.
However, the chaos producers and I are going to go through many years of toys and such in the next several months. I would be tempted to just donate the whole boxes to charity, but then there would be something that should be retained for the memory value that would be gone. Since we have to go through it anyway, there's a mercenary streak in me that would like to get a little something back out of that stuff.