Tariffs are starting to make the prices of things go up. That is an issue, but one I’ll leave to the economists.
Instead, I’ve been thinking about our collective accumulation of cheap goods, and even the more intangible services we buy—subscriptions to apps for streaming, exercising, saving; Substacks for literature and politics; services to help us get rid of the apps we forgot we had to track the shopping we are doing.
There is so much to consume. So many ways to consume. Some of the stuff is great, but a lot is mediocre, and so much of it we—I—don’t want or need. I know I’m not alone.
I work with clients to help them sort through their belongings and let go of what is no longer needed or wanted, valued or loved. For me, this is less about tidying the external space into perfection and more about reconnecting to oneself, which I view as the perfect objective.
Much of what clients dispose of in our work is stuff they forgot about soon after they acquired it. The first time they fling a cheap plastic object across the room into their junk pile, it is often done with great disgust. A confession follows. I don’t know what I was thinking.
I’ve come to understand that impulsive purchases come with shame, but mostly disbelief. Even when we look at the ones made with good intentions or the ones that were so cheap, we ask, “What was I thinking?” Chances are, you weren’t thinking, or, rather, connecting with your true self. There was an internal gap, and the cheap stuff did not fill that gap.
What remains fascinating to me is that the cheapest things are often some of the hardest for people to part with. (It’s good to keep in mind that one person’s “cheap” is another person’s “expensive,” but, all things being equal, these items are often the hardest for people to part with.) I think this is due to how they were acquired. What I mean is that the focus was on the thing filling up the person’s life rather than the person—the self—who was supposed to use it, or, in most cases, not use it.
We have become so focused on the consuming process, and cheap stuff has contributed to that. It fills a hole. It helps us “get” stuff. But getting the stuff leads to an emptiness because the void that needs filling, repair, and attention is the relationship we have somehow broken with ourselves.
In a 2022 study on compulsive shopping behaviors, researchers found “that more symptoms of compulsive shopping and buying are linked to ego-oriented shopping-related decisions and that a more egoistic everyday moral decision-making style strengthens this relationship.” Egoistic everyday moral decision-making refers to making decisions in one’s own interest.
This is not the same as self-care.
Based on what I observe, it is the lack or lapse in self-care, of truly relating to oneself, that drives consumption like this, particularly of unwanted and unneeded items, regardless of the price. The stuff that gets shoved in a closet or room, that we are ashamed to toss, is a metaphor for what we’re using to fill ourselves up. It’s like eating what is not meant to be food. When there is a pattern like this, there has been a breakdown in the process of discernment, of checking in with oneself, of knowing oneself, of caring about oneself.
Discernment, and the time it takes, is a form of self-care. The economists will decide on the tariffs. But we can use their cost as a cause for greater discernment and, by extension, self-care about what we purchase.