Buy Nothing Challenge July Update: Community And Giving

Buy Nothing Challenge

It’s already been more than seven months since my wife and I started this buy nothing challenge.

Other bloggers have joined in on the fun too. It seems like we are all doing decently well. Nobody is buying fancy cars or expensive yachts (at least from what I can tell).

The truth is, we can’t realistically expect to buy absolutely nothing. At some point, we are forced to buy at least something essential in our life.

In fact, Busy Mom is back to buying stuff. But the reality is that she is only buying new clothes because she is starting a new job that requires her to be in an office every day. She can’t be wearing her worn out, coffee-stained clothes to work! Looking presentable at work is essential. Since the only thing she bought is an essential item, she is doing better than good– she’s doing fantastic!

 

Another “Busy” Mom

Speaking of busy moms, my wife can be considered a busy mom too. But she actually doesn’t like the word busy because at times it has a negative connotation. She doesn’t like the idea of being “too busy” for people or “busy doing things” like watching TV.

When you think of it that way, I guess being busy can be a bad thing. What I will say though, is that a lot of her time, energy, and attention goes to caring for our baby. Feeding her. Getting her to nap. Entertaining her. It’s a process that repeats itself throughout the day. She barely has time to feed or take care of herself.

Caring for a baby can be tiring and exhausting. You have to be alert at all times despite having very little stimulation. It’s kind of like sitting through bumper-to-bumper L.A. rush hour traffic– you have to be so alert of your surroundings and aware of the other cars, but the traffic sucks all the energy out of you.

However, as our baby gets older, it is definitely getting easier.

 

But Why Though?

You might be wondering: Why is he telling us all this?

The reason is because I am introducing another aspect of our life that is relatively new.

Recall in my previous “Buy Nothing” post, that I plan to talk about a new aspect of our life just to keep these posts more interesting. People would probably be bored every month if I kept saying something like: “I still bought no clothes (yay me!). We spent $300 on groceries, and I bought this and that baby item.” Boorrringgg.

Last month, I talked about little bit our tax spending and savings (actually earnings) on electricity. That was new.

The month prior to that, I started giving updates on our baby.

Ok, so what was new in July?

 

Back On Facebook

Being a new stay at home parent can be isolating. After a few months, most people start to get a case of cabin fever and adult starving. It’s really a thing. And my wife has definitely felt it at some point.

When our baby was three months old, my wife went back on Facebook. A few years ago, she had deactivated her Facebook account for several reasons. She wanted to mute all of the political nonsense that was flooding her Facebook feed. None of that was making her happy. She also wanted more privacy in her life. She also thought it was a waste of time to scroll through random people’s narcissistic selfies; instead, she wanted to focus on giving more attention to the people who actually matter in her life. And finally, she wanted to reduce her screen time to reduce anxiety and improve the quality of her sleep.

But this all changed. She intentionally and deliberately re-activated her Facebook account. She went back on Facebook for the purposes of community and giving.

 

Being Part Of A Community

To combat cabin fever and adult starving, she joined several mom groups on Facebook that aligned with her values. Some examples include a minimalist mom group, a local baby wearing and attachment parenting mom group, and a non-toxic mom group.

This allows her to meet up with other like-minded moms for adult interaction while I’m at work. It also gives our baby an opportunity to play with other babies. Seeing the babies interact with each other is so darn cute!

Another group that she is actively involved in is the Buy Nothing Project, which uses Facebook groups to encourage people to give and share within their local community. I’m going to write a more detailed post about this soon, so stay tuned.

Back To A More Minimalist Lifestyle

In addition to being relatively frugal, we also live a fairly minimalist lifestyle.

Now that we are getting more used to the routine of caring for a baby, we have more time to focus on other aspects of our life. Such as minimalism.

Since our baby’s birth, we have some how managed to accumulate a lot of stuff. Most of it was stuff we don’t need. Some things we just held on to, but never really used.

 

The Stuff We Gave Away

The Buy Nothing Project has helped us give away stuff we don’t need in a way that is effective. Our unwanted stuff goes to people who really want it and will actually use it. This is in contrast to donating to Goodwill where you’re not absolutely sure where your donated goods go. Sadly, some of it goes to the landfill.

In July, we managed to give away more things than we bought.

Here’s a sample of things that we gave away.

The Eco Coffee Cup

Some of you might be wondering why we would give this item away. Why would’t we use ceramic cups with reusable silicone lids? It is certainly aligned with our desire to live a non-toxic, zero waste lifestyle.

Here’s the reason. First of all, I wouldn’t use the cups because I don’t drink coffee (which is unusual for an anesthesiologist). In addition, we already have similar eco cups that my wife uses for hot beverages.

It was a gift that was sitting around the house for awhile. Unopened. And unused. It was time for us to find the cups a new home so they can actually be used. My wife posted it on our local Buy Nothing Project Facebook group and they quickly found a new home.

Random Small Plastic Bottles of Alcohol

I rarely drink alcohol these days. But when I do, I drink the good stuff. Sometimes I make it Dos Equis. 😉

Seriously though, we accumulated several small bottles of alcohol and I’m not sure how. Maybe from our flights back home after an international trip? Perhaps from party favors? They have been in our house for so long that I honestly don’t remember how they got here.

Anyway, the likelihood of us drinking them is zero to none. No one has time for low grade alcohol. Especially low grade alcohol that is old and in small plastic bottles. They have got to go. So we found a new home for these bad boys too.

My wife posted them on the Buy Nothing Project group and someone actually wanted them for a party they were throwing. Score!

Baby Bottles

We received several baby bottles as gifts from our baby shower. The thing is, we don’t need them because our baby is exclusively breast feeding.

There may be a time when our baby will take a bottle. But we already have great baby bottles that are made of glass. We are trying to avoid plastics as much as we can, so we wanted to give these away.

There are plenty of new moms on the Buy Nothing Project group. So it’s no surprise that this was a popular give away.

Paper Flower Decorations

My wife’s co-worker/friend recently had a party that involved all sorts of decorations, including these paper flowers.

She was simply going to throw them away after the party, but my wife asked to take them home. Even though she didn’t think we would use them, she thought that at least someone could find some use for them.

So she posted the flowers on the Buy Nothing Project group. Turns out they were eventually shared by a few people. Two people used them for their baby girls’ birthday party. The final recipient is a mom who used them to decorate her daughter’s nursery. It’s crazy to think that instead of sending the paper flowers to the landfill, they now serve as decorations for helping to make a little baby girl happy. Sharing is caring!

This collection of things is only a fraction of the stuff we gave away. The other things don’t really have a cool backstory so I’ll leave them out.

 

Stuff We Didn’t Buy

• Clothes. We still haven’t had the need to buy clothes yet.
• Gasoline. This month, we barely drove our old cars. I’m putting a lot of mileage on the Tesla…
• Electricity. Despite the heat wave and cranking up the air conditioner, our solar panels are still over producing more electricity than we use. The electricity company owes us quite a bit of money.

 

Stuff We Bought

Baby stuff ($44)

• Set of 5 Burt’s Bees short-sleeve body suits ($25) made from 100% cotton for babies 3-6 months. Our baby is quickly outgrowing some of her clothes!
• Ergo Baby organic cotton fabric teething pads ($19). She’s also starting to drool and chomp on things. It might be a sign of teething…

Supplements ($29)

• Vitamin B12 liquid drops ($15). A necessary supplement for vegans.
• Vitamin D capsules ($14). Even though we live in sunny southern California, we can still use more vitamin D.

Gifts ($115)

• Baby book ($15) for a family friend’s baby who turned one year old.
• $110 Go Fund Me donation to a nurse who unfortunately lost her home to a wild fire

Kitchen items ($16)

• Skoy scrub ($6) and antimicrobial silicone scrubber ($10). Our old scrubbers were really getting worn out!

 

Consumable Stuff We Bought

We spent a total of $406 on food.

$210 was spent on restaurants. We went out to eat five times in July.

$196 was spent on groceries. Roughly half of the money was spent at Costco where we typically buy boxes of tofu as well as frozen blueberries and cherries for our oatmeal. The rest of the money is usually spent at our local organic food grocery store where we buy items in the bulk goods section. This includes nut butters, oatmeal, rice, fruits, and vegetables.

Last month we saw some excellent deals on groceries.

Including 5 avocados for $1.00!!!

Obviously we stocked up and bought a lot of them. In fact, we bought 20!

We had so many that we started putting avocado on everything. Including these vegetarian Vietnamese banh mi sandwiches.

And as a complement to brown rice, broccoli, and Greek gigante beans! This dish has all the components of a healthy Blue Zone, whole food, plant based diet: legumes (beans), whole grains (brown rice), fresh vegetables (broccoli), and healthy fats (avocado).

Eventually we ate all the avocados.

Therefore, we didn’t get a chance to add it to this lovely dish: vegan Gardein “no fish” tacos dressed with homemade tartar sauce and a citrus kale salad on the side. Believe me, it tasted as good as it looks!

In Summary

• Caring for our baby is getting a bit easier now that she is older.
• My wife is starting to interact with other moms within the community. This has improved her quality of life while I’m away at work.
• The Buy Nothing Project has helped us participate in the local community of giving and sharing. This has helped us declutter and get back to our more minimalist lifestyle.
• We still haven’t bought clothes this year.
• We still eat incredibly well for not a whole lot of money. Life is good. 🙂

 

Over To You

Have you heard of The Buy Nothing Project? If you’re a minimalist, it is an excellent way to declutter and give to others. If you are frugal, then it can be an opportunity to receive free stuff that you need. We are frugal minimalists, so it is perfect for us. Go check it out!