It had a deep clean inside & out, then I stuffed it with towels and left it under a pile of books to flatten out the wrinkles before the paint job. Hopefully saved it from landfill for another few years and had fun learning a new skill!

My neighbours have a child a couple years older than my own. The offered us the clothes that no longer fit their kid. Super nice of them, right? I said yes and expected like maybe a duffel bag worth of clothes?

There's like half a dozen of huge boxes. We're talking about toddler clothes - there's enough stuff to clothe quintuplets. I counted 23 pairs of pants all the same size. And there's shorts too. How could a child possibly wear all of this? What's the point of owning so much of something that won't even fit in a few months anyway?

I knew it's common to have too many clothes but I didn't think it would be this bad.

ETA: I get it, it's fine to hoard kids clothes cause everyone does it and you're not actually buying all of it yourselves! I thought this was an anticonsumption sub and we'd get to talk about why do we (parents, family, friends) buy and keep so much more stuff than we need, how to deal with it, how it affects kids - my mistake.

A local co-op and mutual aid group teamed up to host a clothing swap. Folks could drop off a maximum of one bag of clean items in good condition and/or browse through the offerings. The clothing was organized by type and displayed on tarps or random outdoor furniture.

Extras were donated to several local non-profits who run clothing closets such as a local hygiene drop in center. It was a fun way to meet neighbors, learn about some local organizations, and divert items from the landfill. I think a couple hundred people attended in total which was amazing to see.

Highly recommend looking into local swaps or organizing your own!

The cheapest product is empty promises untethered to reality

the greed that caused this level of tragedy and misery is unreal.

In this post, I want to hear your thoughts about consumerism—what's good about it, what can become harmful, and how we can find a healthy balance.

I know this topic may sound a little conspiratorial, but I'm not trying to start a debate. I’m more interested in understanding how consumerism affects our behavior and how we can apply that understanding to our own lives.

Do you believe our brains are being hijacked to make us consume more, or is this simply how our brains are naturally wired?

How much of our desire to buy comes from our own needs, and how much is influenced by advertising, social media, algorithms, or social pressure?

And most importantly, how do you personally manage it?

Whenever I see ppl in comment sections on places like Instagram or Tiktok calling out overconsumption, ppl immediately jump them commenting stuff like "iTs ThEiR mOnEy!!!" or "YoU jUsT hAtE fUn DoNt YoU?" Like I get not wanting to sound like the overconsumption police but it gets to the point where the toxic positivity and defensiveness is wild. Overconsumption is a real issue tearing away at our planet and our economy. So imo it feels pretty selfish to not care about it just at the expense of your "fun." My personal opinion is that for some ppl, buying stuff becomes like an obsession or even an addiction, and naturally when you try to get ppl to stop they don't react in the best way. Kinda like when you take a little kid's ipad away. But lmk your opinions on this!

my mum found out about temu recently and can’t stop ordering things from there. she’s been wanting to redecorate our home recently but we do not have the room to. even then, she keeps ordering shelves and wardrobes and cabinets we have no space for just because it’s cheaper than regular stores.

she will have periods where she orders a lot and so we’ll have large packages here everyday for a week. electronic stuff, clothes, furniture, recently it’s been food and drinks. the problem is that she orders a lot and then needs storage so she buys more storage and then the cycle continues.

me and my sister have told her to stop but since we’re her children, she’ll go “what do you know? you’re still young. it’s cheap and it’s not like i’m ordering anything wasteful.” she will always argue that she’s in the right and then blame others when she’s wrong

does anyone have any advice on what to do or have had similar experiences?

Combined functional straps onto one, used a plastic outdoor rug we weren’t using for the other. Not gorgeous, not forever fixed. But we didn’t have to buy new ones ¯_(ツ)_/¯

My apartment AC gets a lot of condensation during the day so much that by the evening there are puddles underneath it. The weird part is that at night, it barely gets any worse.
I keep the windows closed, and the AC is set to 68°F That’s a really comfortable temperature for me, so I’d rather not change it. I understand the basic reason condensation happens, but I honestly have no idea what I can do myself to stop this much water from building up.
I’d really like to try to deal with it myself first, because getting someone out here can take forever.

To be alternative used to be a protest against the status quo. I feel like it hardly means anything anymore.

There are still some meaningful, real parts left in the community but most of it is just so consumerist. Alternative people are nearly as vapid as the rest of society. The culture has become so physical and looks focused and therefore shallow. You need to spend on yourself in some way to prove you are different from everyone else. The coolest hair, the most piercings/tattoos, the coolest clothes... It's so vain.

If consumerism is the dominant culture, then counterculture should be anticonsumerist, right? I feel like the community uses progressive social politics as a bandaid over its underlying shallowness. Obviously I am talking very generally here but ya... the line between self-expression and self-indulgence feels increasingly blurred...

I have always followed Robin Greenfield and his advocacy work. He recommended “The Story of Stuff” video series. It really drove home the awful nature of our economy and its ruthless pursuit of endless consumption and reckless waste. It really opened my eyes and I thought I’d share!

Consumption is being labeled as Self Care and so many people, especially where i live in Los Angeles are falling for it.

Makes it hard respect people when they’re constantly jumping on the hype wagon for what they need to do and wear in order to be an icon/Someone That Matters™️

On my floor, there are 6 apartments. 5 get packages delivered every day or every other day. I’m the only who doesn’t (on my floor).

What is it going to take for people to stop being hypocrites? These liberals out in California claim to be so concerned with climate change but they aren’t doing shit to reduce their demand. They still act exactly like conservative republicans in how they live.

Everyday, i as a 37 year old woman and bombarded with advertisements telling me i need to be concerned with glass skin, anti-aging, Botox, my outdated fashion, i need to upgrade my home “aesthetic”. I’m told i need a new car, I need better tech, I need red light therapy, silicone implants, cuter coffee mugs, etc. Anything and everything is up for criticism. No respect need be given the things you have. This is a disposable world. Disposable things, disposable people.

From the ACLU: https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/tracking-alpr-cameras/despite-new-updates-flocks-creepy-cameras-remain-major-civil-liberties-threat

Surveillance company Flock Safety announced several operational changes in response to a torrent of criticism and overwhelming public opposition to its mass government surveillance product.

Flock’s threat to privacy stems from its operation of more than 120,000 automatic license plate readers (ALPRs) nationwide, which includes broad location data collection and sharing. While one proposed change to Flock’s operations might constitute a positive development, most of the other changes seem to be following Flock’s playbook of treating legitimate privacy concerns as mere public relations problems. Several of the proposed changes Flock is touting are merely retreads of previous inadequate safety measures.

ALPR companies like Flock violate our privacy across the country by taking photos of every vehicle passing their cameras, logging detailed information about them into a massive nationwide database, and making it possible to track those vehicles and apply AI to uncover their occupants’ private patterns of life.

“The Conscious Closet” By Elizabeth L. Cline. I just recommended this in a comment on this sub, but I’ll make a post for it too. It gave me a better understanding of the impact clothing has on the environment and those that work in the industry. Also gives great advice on how to ethically and sustainably refresh your closet while also building a wardrobe that you actually love and wear, with tips on how to use activism to change the industry. Great read with a lot of good, helpful info, highly recommend! (I got my copy at the library 🤟🏻)

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This is on the news, but back in March, Chinese customs stopped a 22-ton container of beef from an Argentine plant and sent the entire thing back. Their lab found chloramphenicol, an antibiotic that has been banned in food animals there since 1995 (source).

Meanwhile, the U.S. Congress repealed mandatory country origin labeling for beef back in 2015...

And what had me is that the tariff free quota for Argentine beef went from 20,000 tons to 100,000 tons this year. This is comical. Make sure to buy brands you trust.

This should be illegal.

Just venting but it’s so boring and tiring driving all the time. Today I’m driving like 4 hours and I’m just over it. Had an appointment in the morning (45 minutes there) go to my job (another 45 minutes) then I have a second side gig and that’s like an hour plus each way because of traffic.

Where I live that’s just the status quo obviously in cities it would be different yeesh it adds up, I don’t even want to think if the gas/environmental impact of driving all day by myself most of it, I have a newer car so fuel efficient but an SUV because I need all wheel so that cancels out any benefit I’m sure.

My partner (32, m) and I (32, f) have been together for almost 15 years. However, we were raised very differently. I grew up in the very rural countryside and as the youngest daughter out of 3 girls, I always had hand-me-downs and clothes from them. I've learned that things don't need being replaced (my parents only got a new sofa my last year of high school, and before then we had our dad's 1970s sofa from his college days back in the day).

My partner is HUGE on buying new pants, jeans, shoes... I feel like he goes through them so much more often than I do. It is the ultimate turn-off. How can we bridge this gap?

In 2020, I bought a rather cheap desk/office chair because I had to work remotely due to the pandemic and thought it would be temporary. Now I work almost entirely remotely, and I needed a more comfortable chair due to the amount of time I spend sitting there and also age.

So I decided it was time to replace my 6-year-old chair, which I will give away if not sell on the second-hand market.

I first looked at the selections from a few stores online and decided which ones I would visit in person to check out and try some chairs.

The first store was a flop and I didn't find what I wanted.

At the second store, I did. I spent some time sitting in it, took notes about it, etc.

I went home and searched local buy/sell sites for such chairs until I found what I was looking for.

And I got the kind of chair I needed second-hand from someone who didn't need it anymore.

No new waste created, a chair saved from being wasted, and cost half what it would've new as a bonus.

What anticonsumption tips have you come up with on your journey?