Wow! I read all 23 pages in this thread in one go. Such a shame some members who posted no longer are here, I would have liked to hear more from FrugalSquirrel (spelling?) too.
I have been really struggling with this lately. I think I've gotten over the first step, denial! And am now pondering what action to take with regards to my own personal habits. The proliferation of Polyvore, (with links to buy the items and prices), personal style blogs, and chictopia offering "prizes" if you get enough chic points or whatever...I find it slightly repugnant now. It not only encourages mass consumption but enables it too. To the point where you can go from seeing an item to buying it in just a few seconds! No windowshopping and contemplating required. And I'm not crazy or a hypocrite, I freely admit that I used to buy things because I saw a lot of other people having it, but now that I'm slightly older I think I am mostly immune to it although I do stumble here and there.
I think sometime back I fell into that vacuum of accumulating "stuff" to while away time or get my mind off whatever problems I was having and one day I realized my room was filled! I mean, literally of just "stuff." I could barely walk around in it. There was an Oprah episode (I can't stand her but I couldn't help watch this episode) about "hoarders." And an Intervention episode about a woman who is a compulsive shopper. They actually really frightened me, because it made me think am I like that? Which was good, because it made me reflect and think about how much I accumulate things. And now I feel like I have really changed the way I think about why I buy things and the difference between wanting and needing (which doesn't make me perfect, just that I have noticed a huge difference in my habits before and after). I started out small with toiletries, trying to scale back on all the different lotions and potions to fix everything and ended up with 1 bottle of castile soap for almost everything
And it made me realize maybe I can keep going with bigger things (clothing, food etc.) I still have a lot of thinking to do and action to take, but I find my life just that little bit easier.
I guess I don't really have anything new to add, but everyone made such great points so thank you for all the enlightening discussion
