• About|
• Contact|
• Help|
• Login

How One Middle Class Woman Stopped Shopping.

‘I gritted my teeth and hid my credit card. For one year, I would not buy anything that wasn’t strictly necessary…’ Samantha Weinberg has given up shopping in 2008, for ethical reasons… just when everyone’s credit has started to crunch.

‘By the time New Year came, I’d told too many people to turn back. So I gritted my teeth, hid my credit card, and set the parameters of my pledge. From midnight on 1 January, for one year, I would not buy anything that wasn’t strictly necessary. Food was all right, obviously, and other consumables – light bulbs, washing powder, loo paper and diesel. Magazines and greetings cards were out; stamps in. Children’s games and toys were verboten; their clothes, when strictly necessary, would be second-hand, but their shoes could be new. My only luxuries were books – used or borrowed where possible – and anything that might grow into something edible.

The first week was fairly easy. I revelled in self-denial, and only felt a pang when I had to walk past a window display in our local Wiltshire town of cut-price James jeans. The few occasions on which I nearly broke my promise were a result of absent-mindedness: it didn’t occur to me until I was about to hand over the cash that buying a pen or a roll of Sellotape from the post office counted as shopping. …’

Read the rest of Samantha Weinberg revelations on a year without shopping here.

Related action:
Buy Nothing Day in November

Photo: Samantha Weinberg and her children, ©Katherine Rose

Back to news index

Join the fray by signing in.