Buy Nothing Day

At my high school we did a “Buy Nothing Day” all 4 years I was there. However, I didn’t think of it in the same context as I do after reading the topic for this post. I feel like Buy Nothing Day was advertised as “you don’t need to buy peoples friendship.” Now that I read about over consumption and consumerism it makes more sense, I think. When you think about Buy Nothing Day as I did before, it seems useless because really, if I want to buy a friend something, I will and that doesn’t mean I'm buying their friendship. Actually I don’t think I ever really participated. But now that I look at it in terms of buying useless things daily, spending my family’s money and the cultural and natural affect on the environment it seems a lot more appealing. I would love to see how much money I could save in a day if I didn’t buy anything at all. Commercialism and consumerism really does take over so much of our lives these days when you really think about all the things you buy, all the advertisements that you see, and ways society convinces you to buy into different things. I think this year I’ll try to actually buy nothing. Maybe it will open my eyes to the wonderful new world of saving money! ...maybe.

-Emily