Consuming “Less”

My wife and I have a goal to consume less this year. We are really trying not to buy a lot of things and also know that the kids only play with their new toys for a few days before cycling to the next thing. It’s wasteful to keep buying new things both from a financial standpoint and an environmental standpoint.

We have been really good for most of the year. When our kids ask us to buy new things, we say we will put it on their wishlist and they can potentially get a few items off of there for birthdays and different big events. Most of the other time, we don’t get anything.

Since we took a trip and it was really memorable, I gave into consumerism a bit. My 6 year old daughter E wanted to go to see Sanrio characters at the mall. It was after an indoor playground sessions there and since we were already there, I said why not just window shop. I told both her and my 4 year old son C that we weren’t buying anything. They understood and I’m we went.

E and C saw so many things they wanted. I of course reminded them we weren’t going to get anything. We were doing great and about to leave the store when I walked down the last row of shelves and saw a toy car. It had a weird handle sticking out of the top of it and indicated to everyone to push the handle down. My curiosity caused me to put the car on the ground and push the handle. It zoomed off so far and so fast that I was shocked!

C saw the whole ordeal and his eyes got real big. He wanted it so badly and I had said we couldn’t buy anything. He knew that and said he just wanted to play with it a bit. Honestly, it was so cool that I ended up saying we would buy it. E wanted something also so I let her pick one thing that was fairly cheap since the push car wasn’t too expensive. I thought the car was around $7 and said she could get something around that price.

E wandered around the store and bought a storage box for $8. I got some pomade for $15. After checking out, it didn’t occur to me that something wasn’t as expensive as marked because the total came up to about $26. After walking out of the store, I was thinking that the push car would be such a cool gift to bring back to my 1 year old son L that we should go back and get one. On the walk back to the store, I thought that E would feel left out and said she could get one too.

We ended up grabbing two more push cars and when we checked out, I saw the price tag said $4. That was great and when the cashier rung it up, the total was about $2. I thought something was wrong and the scanner missed the second push car. Apparently it didn’t and each push car was about $1. I was shocked and was really happy for a deal!

I hoped the push car would be a good toy for the kids when we all got back. They could zoom it around and even get some extra steps in chasing it around the house. I even took the push cars when visiting my brother and after we played Sloth in a Hurry for a long time, the kids wanted to watch a movie.

My brother and I were sitting far away from the living room with one of the push cars. I sent it flying towards him and we spent a good 20 minutes playing with the push car while my kids had movie time. He commented that if we had these kinds of toys when we were kids, it would be way more fun. I definitely agreed and it was just a great moment where the weight of adulthood wasn’t there. We were two kids again playing with each other in the living room we grew up in many many years ago.