Dogged Blog

Saying goodbye to 'recreational' shopping for good

I used to be a recreational shopper.

I've never cared about the latest electronic toys and I drive a 1998 car, but I love to buy new clothes and shoes and bags, new dog beds and collars and jackets, every spring and fall. Mostly fall, because I love colder weather and also -- you can wear more clothes.

But I read Overdressed: The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion by Elizabeth Cline a few months ago, and went cold turkey on recreational shopping. That doesn't mean I didn't buy anything at all; it means I didn't read catalogs and look for things to buy. A few times I realized I had a need for something, researched it a bit, then made a rational purchase. No impulse buying.

Before I read this book, I would have claimed that I didn't buy "cheap plastic crap from China," but of course, I did -- well, cheap crappy clothes and accessories from China, anyway. So in addition to becoming a "need only" shopper, I stopped buying cheap, disposable "fast fashion" clothes and accessories. (Ask my friend Dawn about the pain it's given me to give up my Charming Charlie cheap purse addicition.)

Now I'm taking it even further. I'm going to increase the amount of property I have fenced so my dogs and I can enjoy off-leash walks in the woods. I gave up almost all other discretionary spending to afford the materials and labor for that project.

So all my catalogs go straight into the recycling bin, unread. I am very carefully cleaning and mending my existing clothing, so it will last longer. I never flip around online shopping sites without a clear and specific -- and necessary -- purchase in mind.

And what I'm learning is that recreational shopping is a pretty lousy way to entertain yourself. I have absolutely no intention of returning to that activity even after I've paid for the fence.

Because "shopping" is not a hobby and it's not recreation. Our insatiable desire for new things is being fueled by the way the retail industry has blurred the former spring and fall seasons and turned them into a  year-round cycle of introducing new fashions, followed by a few email reminders, then putting those things on sale, then on clearance, followed by the next round of "new" fashions, all within a few weeks.

They either hook you with the shiny new, or suck you in with the big savings. And nowhere in that dizzying kaleidoscopic retail experience are the questions of quality and need ever raised.

None of us needs new shoes every year, let alone ten times a year. My dogs couldn't care less if they're wearing last year's collars and sleeping in last year's beds. If a sweater looked good on me in 2009 it will look good on me in 2013, regardless of whether or not it's in a color that the fashion industry has declared "out."

Currently I'm buying nothing that isn't essential, but when the fence is paid off, I fully intend to leave some room in my budget for buying things that aren't strict necessities. I'm lucky enough to be able to afford to do that, and I'd like to do what I can for the economy, too. But when I do, I'll be looking to purchase a few quality items that I expect to last years, not endless pieces of trash I'll be getting rid of within a single season.

I like the way this feels.

 

Yet another predictable ode to autumn

I realize that waxing rhapsodic about fall is the most hideous of cliches, but I just can't help it.

It's not, contrary to widespread belief, that we don't have fall in Northern California, where I'm from. Autumn in the Wine Country or the foothills of the Sierras are both spectacular. I don't mean New England or Up North spectacular, but beautiful. Trust me on this.

No, it's when fall happens in California that's the problem.

Our warmest months are not in July or August, they're in September and early October. Just when I'm absolutely positively done with summer, when I'm ready to wear my snuggliest sweaters and boots and warm coats, that's when our temperatures start to climb.

Here in Michigan, we barely get through Labor Day weekend before we get at least a few days of people walking around saying, "Sure feels like fall!" Today is only Sept. 12, and the light has been different for days now. We have a low of 41 in the forecast for tomorrow. I haven't yet seen one leaf change color, but there's a golden quality to the air that takes my breath away.

This works a little bit in reverse in spring; in Northern California, where we can be well into spring when the Midwest is just getting settled for mid-winter. But anything that shortens summer is fine with me (although I know a whole lot of Michiganders who would disagree!).

Photo: My front yard last fall.

A California dog mom in Michigan: Getting our fence on for fall

Unleash the hounds, we're fencing the lower 40!

Okay, our "lower 40" is more like the lower 2, but the point is, I took a deep breath, crunched many painful numbers, talked to my landlady and some fence experts, and made the decision to invest in fencing off another big chunk of the property.

It was a tough decision for two reasons. One, the lay of the land makes it hard to fence, thanks to a very pretty but inconvenient gully dividing the currently fenced portion of my lot and the remaining acres. Two, I'm renting, and investing money into a rental property feels an awful lot like flushing the money down the toilet.

I also am on a crusade to wipe out the last bit of my personal debt and to re-build the savings I lost during the collapose of the economy and my mother's last year of life.

Despite all that, my longing to walk my dogs off-leash in the woods this winter was so strong I decided to see if there was some way I could economize enough to build the fence. I trimmed some fat in my budget, took a couple of extra small contracts to boost the income a tiny bit, and worked out a plan to buy the fencing materials this month, pay the fence guys next month, and buy the automatic gate opener and have it installed in November. (I can just work the gate manually until then. It won't kill me!)

This way, I get the fence without incurring any debt, and am able to pay for it out of my latte, new clothes, and pedicure budget -- in other words, out of my trimmed fat.

For those who roll their eyes and wonder why my dogs aren't trained to come when called, they are. But I have sighthounds, and I'm sure if they were your dogs, they'd be so perfectly reliable on their recalls that you could call them off a stampeding herd of deer with a single word. I, however, don't choose to put my dogs' life at risk in a land of hunters and fast drivers to prove what an awesome trainer I am. So please, save me the lecture. I've heard it all before.

So consider yourselves warned: Come October, you'll be inundated with YouTube video of my dogs racing around the autumnal woods of Michigan! We can't wait!