Introduce Yourself

Hello all. I'm in Buffalo, NY. Right now I'm pretty good at Repurposing and really good at Repair. I'd like to learn new skills, perhaps do repairs for others not as handy, give away things I don't need and maybe pick up a few freebies. Maybe even win a copy of The book.

Hi, I live in Shaler, in Pittsburgh Pa. I love this idea of buy nothing. I am a real bargain hunter, and a DIYer. My friend hate my house because it is a mess with junk. I don't think it's junk. I tell them "I may need it some day". OR better yet "you may need it some day". I hate throwing away anything even if it is broke you can find a piece from it that may fit something else that is broke. Nothing is a total loss. And if I do go to the store to search for bargains. I get bargains no one believes. I just bought jeans for four of my friends, marked down from $29 to $1. and the same day I got tops for myself for summer from $12.99 to $29. and they were $1 each also. Sometime I get so excited, I actually sweat. I have a bag of broken jewelry here that I am going to take all apart and make new stuff with and another bag of broken Christmas ornaments to fix and make new again. Nothing goes in my garbage can. I am so excited to be here. So glad I found you. I have lots of things here to GIVE just have to get the pictures going. Love you all already. Have a wonderful day. Get a jar and collect all those funny looking do-dads you don't know what they are. You never know what they can be!

Happy Giving, Saving, DIYing, Happy Happy Happy Day

Donna Baldinger

😍

I'm from a rural area in Southwest Iowa,a bachelor I have inherited my family's stuff when I purchased the ancestral home. Hopefully I can make an impact on my local area by using the tools I am reading about in the book. It's important to preserve our environment by not continuing unbridled consumerism.

Hello! My name is Erin. I’ve actually just got to the Introduction to Buy Nothing part of the book. I’m feeling really hopeful and excited and warm thinking about this challenge and change of mindset. I’m all too often thinking of the next thing I can buy and where I’ll get the money to do so. Experiencing and going on this journey may just be the best thing for me and my mentality. I’ve already related so much with the comments of having no sense of self and wanting to identify with stuff coinciding. I’m in therapy, but this felt more therapeutic than my recent sessions. Thank you for this forum and for this opportunity to connect!

Sending gratitude and admiration for creating such a brilliant organization. Just finished your book. Wow! Many dream of doing good, but few put it into action.

I have been living a minimalist lifestyle for many years now. My husband and I recently moved from New York to Los Angeles with all we own in a Jeep Liberty. For weeks prior to the move I placed many items on the driveway with a FREE, TAKE IT! sign. It has gotten easy for me to shed possessions because I have learned, as you have, that material goods can be gotten cheaply or free if you are willing to use second hand stuff.

I don't want to bore you with my story, but after getting rid of everything I was incredibly free... but free to do what?? This is where the beauty of your program comes in. We connect in unhealthy ways with stuff, food, and millions of addictive activities because we don't connect with one another.

I joined a BUYNOTHING group and can't wait to get involved. I have never actually met a person who shares my values! I've read books, blogs, and listened to podcasts about such people, but don't know any in real life. My friends and family regard my choices with tolerance and amusement, but I know they don't relate. Thank you for creating this community.

May the beautiful impact you make on the world continue to ripple.

Hello I'm Djuana from Houston and just joined the group. I have some food items in multiples thanks to the rush of food shortage here in Houston. Looking through my house I discovered 2 books that I've read and think someone else might like reading.

Hi everyone! So glad to be here! I just did a post recently on the first of the R's, that I live by and that's Rethink. I started counting how many clothes I owned and where they came from. I created my 7R mantra while living in Bangkok, Thailand seeing the state of beaches and over-consumption literally on every street corner. Together with mindfulness and meditation, I have been able to reduce our lives to the bare minimum, so we returned from Thailand last year with 4 suitcases and 5 boxes (mainly books and some clothes). In my recent Insta post I reflected on how many pieces of clothes I own and where they came from.... Swap till you Drop community in Bangkok, second hand, friends... I came across 4 pieces, which I bought from a local weaving community during my travels... I really want to support local, if I do purchase something.

I grew up in Communist Germany, where I learned to grow my own food, repair and become a big DIY fan. After the Wall came down I spent 10 years in the US, which shocked me to the core .... I actually become obsessed with buying stuff during that time, but glad to have returned to my roots ever since. I think Thailand really was a wake-up call in terms of how I wanted to live and integrated that into my classroom. So proud of my students for becoming mindful consumers, some even minimalists, urban farmers and more. Truly believe that planting seeds in education can change our current world in so many ways.... empathy, kindness, art, music, happiness is what humanity needs....

My 7R's: rethink, reduce, refuse, reuse, repair, (recycle) and rot.... it worked well for me in Bangkok and following it in Barcelona as well.... growing a community of like-minded people here.

Showing my students on how to make soap from used cooking oil.... missing them a lot!

Hi I am Chauncey I live in NC. I am currently declutter and as I do I have been sending out some awesome gifts to my friends, so technically I bought the stuff but it has been in my house for a long time.

I also do something that I think is cool - I send real postcards to my friends on a regular basis.

Hi Liz! So excited that the book arrived for you today. That's great to hear, as we had heard that there would be delays due to C-19. And, yes, all watersheds eventually head to the sea. I learned this doing work on landlocked Nepal high in the Himalayas and seeing the trash from villages rushing down the streams and rivers into the lowlands and beyond. Thanks so much for joining this forum.

I am not a 'great' online shopper, but I managed to order more than one copy of the book, and they arrived today. I am eager to get into the book, and to learn about 'The Plan.' I live in the beautiful Issaquah Creek watershed. Our storm drains say 'Puget Sound Starts Here,' as a reminder that we are stewards of water that flows from here to Lake Sammamish, and then to Lake Washington, and then to Lake Union, and then.... to Puget Sound. That's the short version of a 49+ mile long story!

Hello from New York - I have been in a buy nothing group for over five years. I am the person in the community that people drop items to because they do not know what to do with it or lack time to share. I like to share it around by setting up in my living room or back yard then people come shop. I am here to learn more about a gift economy and get ideas.

Thank you, Carolyn, for your poignant words. I so agree with how important it is to remember the good in things, in this climate, as too often the vocal minority, who like to insult and demean, set the tone. Rebecca and I often feel that talking about "Buying Nothing" can bring such anger and misunderstanding from people. And so we pick ourselves up each day and try to explain again how non-consumerism has shaped our lives for the better. Although I grew up a generation after you, my parents' and family's ethic was similar to your upbringing, yet very different from most of my friends' experiences and, interestingly, I'm longing for those days again, have tried to raise my own children with the same values of making things and growing things from scratch, using simple machines, not being dependent upon the "grid" because too often we can't use it anyway with the constant power outages we have in the winters here. Now we're all making do with what we have right in our cupboards, shelves and refrigerators until they're close to bare, due to this pandemic and it's an instant lesson in learning to make things stretch as long as we can, and finding value and use in everything, rather than tossing it.

Thank you so much for that extraordinary sobering personal life perspective! 👏

Hello, I'm Carolyn Overcash from NC. I'm now retired; therefore, I'm probably older than some in this group.

I have used the rolling blade push mower that is people-powered, a scrub board and tin tub, helped dig a hole for an outhouse, helped move it, and filled in the <gasp, gross> hole with dirt. I have felled trees, cut and stacked wood, hauled coal, cleaned wood or coal stoves. Then again, I have helped build buildings, roofed houses, painted the inside and outside of homes. I have hauled water from a creek and pulled a bucket from a well. I have hung clothes on a clothesline that then freeze before you get finished hanging the rest of the clothing in the basket. I learned to scratch cook at my mother's side. You planned the next meal based on what you were fixing now. I learned to hem, sew, repair tears, and sew on buttons.

Growing up in a family of six, we super reused things. Our home was multigenerational with grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins who were sometimes living in our family's home. My sisters and I shared a bedroom with one grandma. Money was tight; both parents were disabled. We learned to repurpose or reuse lots of things.

My mom did Marie Kondo, and Swedish Death cleaning before the authors that wrote of these systems were even born. If you did not want or need something, you found someone who did. If you could do without something, and someone had a real need, you gave them what they needed.

When I got married, everything I owned fit in a medium suitcase, except for my winter coat.

After marriage, when my daughter was small, we used cloth diapers, not disposable. Cannot even find them in a store now, think of the savings to a young family. You can still get them online.

In June, hubby and I will celebrate our 50th wedding anniversary, we have been in our 1925 built house for over 44 years. We have been turning the home, built for active health mill workers, into a home for retirees with physical limitations.

Aside from my moral compass, which springs from my faith, I would recommend that everyone watch the movie "Pay It Forward." No matter where we are in our life's journey, we can always offer someone a helping hand.

In today's climate of bashing and fault finding, I have to remember to look for the good and make sure that I am not an anchor dragging someone down. I wake up each day with a prayer of thankfulness; things could always be worse.

Hello and thanks for this opportunity to join your movement! I too was born in the 40's and have always been of the mindset of "waste not, want not" as was drilled into me by my parents. And I'm proud of being that way ....even though others have called me a packrat. I've been able to use a lot of the saved items to fix, improvise or otherwise make use of them. After I retired from my (scientific) profession I worked several years with a team "deconstructing" houses and selling the used materials for reuse. I loved it. Hated to see houses and all their contents dumped in a landfill and we got so good we could salvage about 80% of a house. I've been washing and reusing plastic bags since I was in my 20's and my latest version of that is to take all those Amazon bags and use them as temporary "pots" when transplanting or giving away garden plants. Enough said already! I'm delighted to join this group and look forward to the book and the many tips I'll pick up and share along the way.

I live on the outskirts of Melbourne, I’ve ordered two books, one for myself and one for my co-admin. We are a relatively new BN group and I was having a fine old time using and applying the BN philosophy to our steadily growing community. It was a bit of a shock when the BN founders changed all the parameters around stewarding our group, and an even GREATER shock when we found ourselves in the middle of a global pandemic with ‘frivolous‘ gifting suspended!! 😂 No template for that!!

Needless to say the last little while has been spent finding our feet and deciding how we want to walk from here on in, at least in the middle term! I’m starting to get a sense of the possibilities, beyond materialism. It’s fleeting sometimes and hard like trying to exercise a muscle that has atrophied... or remembering a dream.

I (I’m the one the right, the one on the left is coadmin Annie Rees)

feel we have an unprecedented opportunity to change our ways and really truly buy nothing and get everything!

Hello all! I just recently discovered the buy nothing project and am very excited to learn more about this and to be a part of this community. Reducing waste, reusing and recycling are all a big part of my lifestyle. I have been all about decluttering and a minimalist lifestyle for the past 7 years. It's amazing how much stuff accumulates and I am constantly giving things away. I also have a small farm and do my best to apply these principles there as well. Waste not, want not 🙂 Happy to meet you all.

Thanks for joining us, Mary!

Wonderful! Thanks for the good energy here 😍

Thanks so much for joining us, Pat! I can identify with your discomfort with waste. My mother is very frugal and uses up everything in the household, many things that she uses are items she received around the time when she and my father got married, some 60 years or so ago. I love the pride she has in showing off these well-made useful items she would never dream of tossing. I love that you articulate how giving can fit into our current consumer culture, and provide joy. Thank you so much for participating in the Buy Nothing movement. We feel like we're at the very beginning of something that each of us can contribute toward growing worldwide, simply refusing to buy so much stuff.