At some point, I realized I wasn’t buying things because I needed them.
I was buying them because I was tired.
Tired of thinking. Tired of planning. Tired of doing things the harder way.
So I started cutting things out—not as a challenge or a trend, but because they didn’t add anything to my life.
Turns out, I don’t miss much of it.
Store-Bought Bread
This was one of the first things to go.
Once you’ve eaten bread made at home—real ingredients, no preservatives—it’s hard to go back. Store bread feels like filler. It keeps, but it doesn’t nourish.
Making bread isn’t faster, but it’s better. And it reconnects you to something basic and human.
Sourdough is my favorite, and honesty its so easy. You just need flour and water, really no joke. Make some sourdough starter, after about 2-3 weeks this becomes your natural yeast. Add to water, more flour and a little salt, that’s it, you have bread! Once you make some you’ll never go back to that stuff they call “bread” at the store.
Soda and Sugary Drinks
We don’t keep soda in the house.
Not because it’s evil—but because it adds nothing. It’s empty calories, empty habit, empty cost.
We make things like kefir water instead. It’s cheaper, healthier, and actually does something for your body instead of fighting it.
Oh and did I mention its easy to make, kefir grains, water, sugar. That’s it. I like to call it healthy soda as its carbonated and after the kefir grains eat the sugar (its their fuel) you have a healthy fizzy probiotic water.
Disposable Tools and Cheap Junk
I stopped buying things designed to break.
Cheap tools. Plastic junk. “Good enough” products that need replacing every year.
Buying one solid tool and maintaining it beats replacing the same cheap thing over and over. Less clutter. Less frustration. Less waste. You also gain the capability that builds confidence to fix things and keep them working in good order without the hefty bill of someone else fixing them for you.
If you ever come across old tools, buy them, like my axe my dad gave me for instance, it was rusty. Needed a new handle but I rehabbed it and its by far still one of my favorites to swing, sometimes something old can be something new with a little elbow grease and love.
Convenience Food
Pre-made meals, packaged snacks, food you don’t recognize half the ingredients in.
They’re convenient, sure—but they’re also expensive and forgettable.
Cooking from scratch takes time, but it gives you control. Over cost. Over quality. Over what you’re feeding your family.
You can also control when you cook and how often by meal prepping or making dump meals for the crockpot. Sometimes we cook all day 1 day a week so we don’t have to cook all week, fast, just thaw and eat. Like fast convenience food, only its not shit, its real food you made!
Lawn Perfection
Perfect lawns cost time, money, chemicals, and stress. If you do care do it yourself. The lawncare business is screwing you, so is the fertilizer companies. I might fertilize my yard once in the spring. For many years companies have sold people on having to continually spread toxic chemicals on their lawn to keep them green. In a drought your grass is going to just go dormant and brown anyway, that’s natural. A healthy lawn that’s thick and lush wont need much. a healthy lawn is also one that has very few weeds. But it doesn’t need to be perfect. Its just grass.
Not only that overuse of pesticides and fertilizers are ruining your natural environment, lakes become green with the over use of fertilizers that cause much more severe algae blooms. and pesticides are often indiscriminate, they kill everything.
I’d rather have garden beds, berries, flowers, and space that’s actually useful. Nature doesn’t grow in straight lines—and that’s fine.
You also find that having well maintained garden beds, flower gardens and native plants attract beneficial animals and insects, in the long run its a much simpler outdoor life than most other traditional yards over time once they are established.
Constant Upgrades
New phone. New gadget. New version of the same thing.
Most upgrades don’t improve life. They just reset the learning curve and drain money.
If something works, I keep it.
What Replaced All That
I didn’t just stop buying things. I replaced them with:
- Skills
- Time
- Capability
- Confidence
- Fewer Bills
That trade was worth it.
Less Buying, More Living
Not buying something feels uncomfortable at first.
Then it feels normal.
Then it feels freeing.
You realize how much of what you were purchasing was just noise.
Why I Don’t Miss It
Because nothing on that list made me healthier, calmer, or more present.
What I gained instead did.
– Just a note from the yard.