One Year of Not Buying Anything: October Report

October was basically a good month. I bought a T-shirt for my youngest, a party barricade tape, but unfortunately, I ended up buying a new iPhone. I was actually very happy with my switch from the Max Pro to the Mini, but the poor quality of the camera bothered me a lot. In September, I was in Padua and had a rare opportunity to photograph the anatomical theater. Unfortunately, it was very dark there, and the photos turned out terribly. Was it an absolutely necessary expense? No.

1 Year of Not Buying: September Report

September was essentially a good month. The only new purchase I made was a pair of fingerless gloves, as it sometimes gets a bit chilly in the office. However, I didn’t want to turn on the heating just yet.

Then there was the Braun Atelier investment, which I had already written about and am still very pleased with.

However, there’s also an order I placed in September, which won’t arrive until December—the Kindle Scribe, which I might exchange for my Remarkable 2. Is the purchase necessary? Certainly not. I could print any article I want or need to read, and use a paper notebook. Can I work better and faster with paper tablets than with paper? Definitely. What I hope to achieve with the Scribe, I have already described in the article. If the Scribe doesn’t meet my expectations, it will go back. My reMarkable has very low usage costs since I use it multiple times a day. In the end, it’s about considering beforehand whether a technology actually improves something, or if it just serves blind consumption.

1 Year of Not Buying Anything: August Report

August was a moderately successful month. My purchases:

A bike saddlebag with tools for 18 euros. You can’t find something like this used.
Four Wi-Fi controllable energy-saving power strips, which are also unavailable used, for about 50 euros.
A wooden A6 index card box for my Luhmann note-box, for around 50 euros. I could have gotten something like this used, but the few suitable boxes were already quite damaged.

It’s sad because I once had such an index card box, but I gave it up after university. I don’t even know what happened to it. I will think more about the note-box system.

1 Year of Buying Nothing: July Report

The July report went okay. I was really proud of myself for resisting a temptation and not making an impulse purchase, even though it seemed like a good deal. I thought about it for more than a week, and in the end, I did go through with it, but very carefully. It’s about a new phone, where I swapped a flagship model for one that’s a few numbers smaller. I got more money for my 1-year-old phone than I paid for the new one. Why did I do this? Because the huge phone was just too much of a burden. With a smaller phone, it’s not as pleasant for typing and reading, but I’m trying to spend less time on my phone anyway. I tried to find a used model, but wasn’t successful. Apparently, small phones are quite in demand. Instead of carrying around 240 grams, I now only carry 140 grams (yes, you notice), and my pockets don’t bulge as much. My cost per use for the old phone is under 1 euro per day, which I think is fair.

We also bought an extension for our Rams shelf. Again, it was hard to find a used one. My preference was to downsize even more and need less storage, but in the end, we found a compromise. This is also a good example that the things we own not only have their own price but also ongoing costs. The Vitsoe 606 is fairly stable in value, so the cost per use is minimal.

Other than that, I’ve simplified a lot. Ended subscriptions. Looked at whether I could live with alternatives. I canceled Netflix since we barely used it anyway. I’ll also cancel my beloved Headspace, because Apple now offers meditation (though I really dislike the music they use). I’ve parted with old baggage, like consolidating all my domains to a cheaper host. A few more used vinyl records came into my life, which I’ll continue to indulge in as a luxury. But I’ve set a monthly limit for this so it doesn’t get out of hand.

A Year of Buying Nothing: June Report

Actually, I bought nothing except a few used vinyl records (some real bargains) and a bike bag. For the latter, I tried to find a used one, but I couldn’t agree on a price with any sellers on eBay. Some of them wanted to charge almost the price of a new bag for worn-out ones, without the very practical mounts that are available today. I got burned by the offers from Valkental and 2bag. Both do great marketing, but the Valkental bag lasted 5 minutes on the bike before the mount broke, and 2bag simply couldn’t deliver.

My “slip-up” from January and the synthesizer I bought in April are listed on eBay.

Not buying anything for 1 year – January report

The first month of 2022 is almost over. How did it go in terms of avoiding new purchases? This month went quite well, with two exceptions:

To protect our nearly 170-year-old wooden floor, I bought a mat (see photo below). I couldn’t find one secondhand.
The second item wasn’t supposed to be new, as I bought it used on eBay Kleinanzeigen. But it turned out to be brand new: an Oculus Quest 2. I had researched the VR headset on Amazon but didn’t buy it because of my anti-consumption vow, and when I found a used one nearby, I bought it. The seller had bought two and now needed money. But why on earth would I really need a VR headset?

I’m working on a new book project that will include a chapter on the metaverse and VR. I also wanted to try Horizon Workrooms for virtual meetings, maybe even in a classroom setting. However, I’ve realized that very few people I know own such a device, so virtual meetings will be challenging. Of my current 60 students, only one owns a headset—actually, it’s her partner’s. That’s already an interesting insight for the book, as it seems the network effect is not so easy to achieve here. Thanks to the headset, I also discovered that I still enjoy boxing after all these years, and I lose 100 calories every 10 minutes. But overall, it doesn’t feel good to have bought it.

However, I didn’t buy the Quest without selling something else. After barely using it for a few years, I sold my Ableton Push 2 on eBay (a piece of it is also visible in the photo). I sold it for the same price I paid for the Quest. I’ll probably sell the Quest after the book project is done. I sold my previous Quest for the same price I paid for it, so I hope this device won’t cost me any money in the end. The Ableton Push 2 cost me a lot of money since I only used it three times. So I paid about €200 per use. If I factor in the money I got back, it’s about €66 per use.

Other than that, I didn’t buy anything else this month, either new or used. To be honest, I had considered buying a Network Attached Storage (NAS), and although I could easily justify that I needed it for my work, I decided against it and stuck with my low-cost Open Media Vault solution using a Raspberry Pi. It’s not a particularly beautiful solution since all the parts are exposed, but it’s a low-maintenance option. Digital gadgets pose a challenge to my goal. Maybe I’ll write an article about that too.

The total result: €25.41 spent in January.