Anticonsumption

I went outside to test if my dog cared about the noise with and without headphones to mute noise, and just looking at the sky its coated in smoke from the fireworks. I can't enjoy the fireworks I see in the distance because all I can think about it the smell and ecological problems it causes. An entire third of a continent said fuck you to the atmosphere. My dad, a conservative gen x old fart told me off saying I'm being to pessimistic. WELL WHEN I GOTTA LIVE IN YOUR MESS IM MAD BRO. rant over thanks for listening to my TED talk.

Discovered these existed only recently and now it's so much easier to keep everything clean. Basically its a curtain that has a fabric inner liner that clips in. This means that it can be taken off and washed instead of thrown out and replaced like those plastic/vinyl liners that can never stay clean. Beyond that, no chemical smell and the better air flow means the water in the shower dries faster.

Things like cloth diapers and such that would produce less waste, that's what I'm looking for! I know having a newborn will create a need for more things, but I want to get the least amount of more things as possible lol. Thanks!

I've noticed specific items that we have WAY more of than we used to, and items that are made in greater quantities than they have ever been since the 90s-early 2000s. It's become the norm now to buy this stuff regularly or semi-regularly, when it used to be that we only bought them a couple of times a decade or once/twice in a lifetime. Some of them include:

1. CLOTHING! Probably the number one. It used to be that both of my parents' wardrobes fit in one tiny closet and dresser. Mine fit into one dresser. Now, everyone buys clothing even more than seasonally. We used to only have one nice suit/dress for weddings/funerals, one or two dress shoes, then one or two work or casual shoes, and that was it. I remember moving my wardrobe in one duffel and one cardboard box around 2005.

2. Cosmetics/skincare. Most people really only had access to what was available at Walmart or Shopko MAYBE Sally Beauty Supply if you had one locally. And there weren't nearly as many products or lines. You had a cleanser, a moisturizer, acne treatment (if you needed it), MAYBE a sunscreen, and one set of very basic cosmetics that could fit into one makeup bag.

3. Kitchen gadgets: There are now specialty gadgets for everything. There are fancy ice molds and cutters for specific fruits or vegetables. For most of my life, we had one set of pots/pans, knives, utensils, and that was about it. And they were older, probably from the 70s or 80s.

4. Decor: We honestly just didn't have "decor" as a category for most of my life. A lot of our "decor" consisted of antiques from someone's barn that my parents thought looked cool. We had a couple of framed pictures and the odd 20-year-old knick-knack, but that was about it. Now we have whole stores dedicated to junky "decor."

What other categories have you noticed?

This is a bit random but I was wondering what people in this sub reddit do for careers.

With the way to modern economy and capitalist society works seems like a lot of modern jobs are designed to sell a product at its core - marketing ,sales , business development etc

So k was wondering what people do here for a career

Or if people seem to think it’s impossible to avoid!

I’m not shopping for anything at the moment but when I do use the internet to research things I need to buy I’m overflowed with Temu suggestions. Amazon can be bad with this too but it’s not even close to the amount of Temu products and links I see when searching for just about anything. Even if what I’m searching isn’t related to a specific product I’ll have several Temu links pop up. I can’t think of an example off the top of my head but I’m sure some of you have experienced this too.

So is there anything I can do to block Temu from my search results? I am willing to switch search engines if there’s something better available, I’m not very knowledgeable about this kind of stuff. I just find the Temu results aggravating, I figured many of you would feel the same and may have ways to avoid seeing them

Probably 6 or 7 years old and my roommate and I were going back and forth on whether we wanted to try a repair shop or just toss it and buy a new vacuum.

We were a little worried the price of the repair would end up not being worth it. The repair ended up being cheap as hell compared to a new vacuum and only taking like two days and the vacuum works perfectly again.

Just wanted to share this because I was really excited about it! I'm definitely going to look into having other appliances repaired like this in the future instead of tossing them.

I watch a YouTube channel called Living the Skye Life, and on an episode I watched yesterday they were working on their boat mooring. They had to replace a year old chain that was rusting already, he bought the wrong kind of galvanized chain for salt water and it was a good deal at the time. Wife mentions, "buy cheap, buy twice*...so true. Not that we can all buy the very best of things we need, but a good reminder for when we're trying to decide between 2 items and maybe should go with the one that is a few more $$ so hopefully won't have to replace any time in the future.

And people need to be reminded of this and we are clearly the ones to do it. With the absolute devastation of the Constitution, our most powerful voice lies in our spending or lack thereof.

I am as guilty as anyone in random Amazon and Temu and Domino's and etc purchases. No more.

And we need to be vocal about not spending and share it on r/frugal and r/latestagecapitalism and r/zerowaste and anywhere else and make sure representatives know WE ARE DONE WITH DISCRETIONARY SPENDING until we start observing the Constitution in areas like free speech and separation of church and state.

No new anything unless something broke that we need to live.

I don't think enough progressives will go for this to make a difference and that just pisses me off.