Dejunk Yourself Week Eight: How to Stop the Re-Buy Impulse
Don't undo all your hard work
Welcome to “Dejunk Yourself,” an 8-week course filled with practical guides for decluttering your life. This is a paid subscriber-only course. If you want in on the fun, subscribe here with a 7-day trial, free e-book, simple living courses, and weekly waste-reducing recipes all for $5 a month / $50 a year. That’s just $0.32 - $0.38 per course module ⬇
De-junk yourself course directory
Week one: Learn from my mother
Week two: A capsule wardrobe without the capsule
Week three: Dejunking the best room in the house (the kitchen)
Week four: Empty the drawers
Week five: Mid-course mindset
Week six: Misc spaces
Week seven: Kids = crap
Spend enough time in the minimalism space and you’ll quickly learn one of the key pushbacks to the movement:
What if I get rid of all my stuff only to find I have to re-buy it all?
This problem is even more pertinent if you’re not living on a big salary. Some people can’t afford to jettison everything in an “I’ll just re-buy it if I have to” kinda way.
Society has done a good job of convincing us empty spaces should be filled. Clear closets are an excuse to go shopping. Barren bookshelves? Buy more books.
Before you know it, you’re back where you started with a house full of clutter, or you’ve gone broke - or both. So you clutch your clutter, unwilling to part with it just in case you may need it in the future, or for fear that you will only want to re-fill the space.
I’ve been there.
So what do you do?
That’s what week eight - the final week in our Dejunk Yourself course - is all about.
So you’ve spent the last seven weeks decluttering your home. It looks good - tidy, clutter-free, calm. Or at least, it’s on the way to it.
When you reach this stage, you’ve essentially given yourself a second chance - the chance to start over with your buying intentions.
At the end of the day, decluttering is one big lesson in intentionality. You’re intentionally making room in your house by intentionally removing what you don’t need.
The last piece of the puzzle is to only buy with intention from now on.
Every single item dropped into your shopping cart. Every item on your Amazon wish list. Every time you buy anything, think: is this a need or a want? Can I wait a day or two before hitting that buy button? Is it on my shopping list?
Shopping mindfully and with intention is the number one way to stop re-buying stuff you don’t need. And the more often you do it, the easier it becomes.
It starts with a single question:
Why am I buying this?
Good answers include:
I need to replace an item I use often.
I’ve wanted *insert item here* for a long time.
I’ve thought longer than 1-2 days about buying this item.
Bad answers include:
I’m bored.
I grabbed it on my way through a store.
I’ve been pressured to buy this item.
I’m buying it without a specific purpose (I might need this in the future).
Shopping with intentionality is even more pertinent if you live on a low salary because you are literally parting with more money than someone who is wealthier ($5 to you is worth much more than $5 to them).
Shopping with intention is a superpower. It changes everything.
Enjoy the space!
That hard work wasn’t for nothing - it was to gain freedom, space, and money. So if you’ve decluttered even just a little bit, enjoy the freaking space! Forget about buying something to re-fill and breathe in the calm.
Stick it on Instagram or Pinterest, show off your efforts. Maybe even take “before and after” shots. Accountability is a great motivator.
Sit and enjoy my friends. You’ve done the hard work and you deserve to reap the benefits of that. Remember the feeling when you take in the space - it will help you kick the re-buy impulse to the curb.
Never make a pre-emptive purchase again
If you followed week four, your junk drawer should be looking pretty sweet right about now, and we want to keep it that way. So promise me — and yourself — that you will follow this rule:
Never make a pre-emptive purchase ever again.
I’ve seen this time and again - friends and family who buy items “just in case” they may need them someday. This is how junk drawers are made - and re-filled.
Not buying pre-emptively means no buying anything unless you need it there and then or for a specific purpose.
No to extra hammers and nails.
No to big sets of batteries when you only need one or two.
No to new notebooks before your current one has been filled.
I’ve seen it time and again - people declutter then they re-fill Just In Case. But not you. Because you know better.
Live with the unsettled feeling for a while. It will pass
If you used purchases and clutter for comfort, you might be looking at a couple of empty shelves and feel, well, empty.
If clutter was familiar and normal for you, it’s not surprising you might feel a bit off once the stuff has gone.
The solution? Live with the discomfort for a while. It’s a habit, and habits can be broken. Give it a couple of weeks before you decide to re-buy anything. You’ll probably find the feeling passes in much less time than that.
Practical ways to stop the re-buy impulse as tested by the internet
Never check out your Amazon cart as soon as you put in an item. Leave it alone for at least 24 hours (a week is better).
Want that *insert non-essential item* here? Stick it on a gift list for your birthday or Christmas (and see if you really want it by the time one of those events rolls around).
Use The Minimalists’ “Wait for it” rule - if you want something and it costs less than $30, wait 30 hours. If it’s $100 or more, wait 30 days.
And finally, if you’re worried about jettisoning all your stuff only to re-buy it, remember this story
My friend just told me about some friends of his who have sold and re-bought everything three times.
They wanted to move from the US to Norway, so they sold everything in the US and rebought similar items in Norway, only to realize the lifestyle wasn’t for them a year later. So they sold everything again and went to work on cruise ships. A year later, they — you guessed it — decided the lifestyle wasn’t for them so returned to Norway and rebought everything again.
Or as my friend’s friend put it - I’ve bought the same espresso maker three times.
Throwing out a few old towels and unused items doesn’t feel so bad after you hear that someone has sold their whole life three times over. All you need is a little bit of perspective.
Dejunk Yourself course is done!
That’s 8 weeks of practical advice doled out in nearly 16,000 words.
First, I’d love to know how you got on. I’m at charliebrownwriter@gmail.com or you can leave a comment below. Anything you struggled with? Any wins? Let me know.
Second, next week we start to tackle your finances. I’ve decided to make a change to the way Monday mailouts will be structured. Instead of a course-style design, I’m going to write a series of essays based on the topic of finance and money in a similar style to my Friday essays.
The reason for this is twofold:
One, the topic of finances is so personal to everyone, doling out practical financial advice can be really hard. What works for you might not work for someone else. There is also plenty of advice floating around the internet (and I will be pointing you to it) about how to save, budget, invest, etc, so you probably don’t want to hear the same old advice from me.
Second, after 8 weeks of writing the De-Junk yourself course, I feel my strength lies in essay-style writing, rather than in practical courses. I’ve written hundreds of essays on personal finance on Medium, many of which have gone viral and helped a lot of people. I want to bring that sort of energy here.
We’re going to tackle everything from money mindsets to simplifying finances to finding the right finance strategy for you.
I can’t wait.
See you next Monday.