Everything Once Was Time
If you can get past the accusatory title, this essay provides an entirely new (to me) way of looking at purchases. Every object is your time.
They state it perfectly: “Stuff I didn’t particularly love. Stuff with no serious meaning to it. Stuff I didn’t care about. Stuff that, if you had secretly tossed, I wouldn’t even realize went missing … Standing in front of all my stuff, it hit me that all of it used to be money, and all of that used to be time.”
Whoa.
I mean, it’s absolutely true. Every object you hold represents the money spent on the object. The book is $22.99. That $22.99 can take the form of paper bills or it can take the form of the book, but in either case, it is $22.99. But what is money except a tangible version of your time and effort? 8 hours of work = x amount. So when you spend money on an object, you are also spending a representation of your time.
I don’t buy a lot of things that I don’t use up pretty much immediately (food, toiletries, etc). The exception would be books, and I feel okay about the books I buy. Or the fact that I buy books. If I buy clothing, I try to make it as timeless as possible. Zero articles of clothing that mark a moment. We wear out things before we replace them. But sure, there are things that we’ve collected through the years that feel like clutter, but I don’t really have an “appetite for novelty” or a “fear of missing out,” though I assume many people do.
I also wouldn’t say that my lack of purchases comes from values. As I said, the thought above blew my mind. I just have a lack of desire for new things. Unless they’re books. I like familiar things, not new things. So that is not a value system; that is just a fact of my personality. And it’s not better or worse. Though it probably does inadvertently save me money.
1 comment
I like this. Though it’s a bit scary when you don’t have new money coming in in retirement! lol
This is very timely though. Last night I was putting away laundry, and noticed a new bra I’d bought. I consciously thought, “I like having new things.” Both because I’m hopeful I will love them and wear them a lot, and perhaps because as a child we rarely got anything new. These days, I do wear favourite things until they fall to bits, and I have a winter uniform I am very comfortable with. But there’s something about a new piece of clothing. Experiences, well, they too are money that was time. Now I’m feeling guilty about major expenditure that we’ve committed to. And maintenance that will cost the previous work of an entire year. Ouch.