Book Review: The Year of Less

I enjoy learning what others are reading via Goodreads updates. A friend highlighted this book as one she wanted to read. It sounded intriguing. Cait Flanders is the author of The Year of Less: How I Stopped Shopping, Gave Away My Belongings, and Discovered Life is Worth More Than Anything You Can Buy in a Store. As if to emphasize less, the title is all in lower-case lettering. Of course, the length of the subtitle is more. Crazy!

This book (part self-help, part memoir) is a fascinating tale of paring away inessentials and analyzing what drives us to buy when we don't need and cling when we should release. Since my goal is to pare down my belongings, I thought this book might provide insight and motivation. Flanders explains how emotionally fraught our purchase patterns are. Some people (myself included) overeat when they avoid feelings, some people binge watch movies (myself included), and some use retail therapy. For years, Flanders used alcohol, food, and pointless spending to assuage feelings of insufficiency. After success in getting sober and losing weight, she addressed the money/belongings issue.

As her bio on the back cover proclaims, she is "a former binge consumer turned mindful consumer of everything. Through personal stories, she writes about what happens when money, minimalism, and mindfulness cross paths." Her writing is fluid and easy to follow. She provides expert insight into her addictions. (Her biological father should be strung up for his role.) Her self-examination and her willingness to sit in the pain causing those behaviors endear her to the reader. 

Although I am not a binge shopper, I am often lured into purchases under the guise of saving money. My frugality isn't economical when I buy what I do not need. Hopefully, by reading this and other minimalism books, I will get a handle on the excess in my life and strip down to a more meager existence. In some ways, I have no choice. If we move after our youngest graduates, we will not be seeking a home along the scale of what we now maintain. 

Indeed, we would not have selected this house if we weren't meeting family needs by taking residence. Previously, we lived in a two-bedroom bungalow in DeKalb, Illinois. Our oldest son's room wasn't big enough when our middle son came along, so Trevor's crib was in the dining room. Now, after years of filling the extra space we have, I am tasked with going back to a bare-bones existence. We shall see if reading books helps me face this challenge. It is easier to read about minimalism than to implement it. Thankfully, I will have my husband to hold me accountable.😇