This Minimalist Bought Everything on Black Friday

How I'm Kickstarting a Season of Presence with a Shopping Ban

Some years, on Black Friday, I sit at home and enjoy my coffee and don’t open my e-mails. I then ignore my e-mails again on Saturday and Sunday and Monday until finally, I delete them all on Tuesday and go about my life, pretending that a weird shopping holiday didn’t just happen the day after we’re supposed to be grateful for everything we have.

This year, well… that didn’t happen. Going into November, as I sat with the list of things my family needed (and, in a few cases, wanted), I decided to take a bit of a different approach: I bought everything on the list.

I bought the next-size-shoes and leggings-without-holes and the last of the Christmas presents and even the art project fillings for Easter baskets! I bought groceries (like, lots of groceries…food is the under-rated Black Friday deal, y’all) and shampoo and moisturizer and even play dough and because none of these things managed to be from the same business, we are now waiting on… gulp, 13 packages.

In case you’re worried I’ve gone off my rocker— I didn’t go trampling elderly shoppers in a Black Friday stampede. I still didn’t even leave my couch (turns out all my favorite small and sustainable businesses are online), and, as always, if it wasn’t a heck-yes, it was a hard no. But I was tired— so tired I even wrote about it— of having to wade through the pre-sale and sale price and post-sale price and promo codes to get the things my family legitimately needed. And I picked this week as the time when I’d finally had enough. So now, armed with the knowledge that we have everything we could possibly need for the next few months… I’m starting a three month shopping ban.

Why now? It’s not that I necessarily believe retailers when they tell me that Black Friday was the ‘best deal of the year!’ In fact, one retailer offered 25% off on Black Friday, calling it “the best deal you’ll see all weekend!”… only to offer 30% off for Cyber Monday, which was, conveniently, technically not that weekend. Sneaky little suckers. And TikTok is ripe with videos about the Black Friday ‘scam’ that is nothing but ‘Black Friday Deals’ stickers slapped over full-priced items.

But, whether or not it I was truly taking advantage of the ‘best deal of the year’— I got all of our needs (and yes, the last of my loved ones’ Christmas lists) out of the way so I can lean in, fully, to this season of work and family.

Seasonal transitions are a natural time to ‘take stock’ and reflect on personal and family rhythms. As I’ve been working to be more present in whatever task is on hand, I’ve noticed myself repeatedly distracted by anxiety around managing the influx of ‘stuff’— made more complicated by the fact that it’s not trinkets or plastic junk, but incredibly practical things that my family with rapidly-growing children actually need: Next size-shoes and leggings, new mittens for the frigid winter season, puzzles and art supplies for the kiddo who acts more like a preschooler than a toddler every day. Shampoo bars before we run out, and, oh yeah, is it time to replace our toothbrushes?

It’s an enormously time-consuming and, for me, emotionally exhausting task to manage all the things for all the people, all the time.

Of course, this isn’t true for everybody: Some people are only responsible for themselves and their cat who doesn’t like to wear clothes and certainly never outgrows them. If that’s you, maybe this overwhelm doesn’t resonate with you, and that’s okay.

Or maybe you’re a seasoned pro at managing the schedules and clothing needs for your entire Cheaper By the Dozen-style crew, and you’re can’t understand how somebody could possibly take an hour descending into a panic-spiral about something as truly inconsequential as which brand of socks your one year old will actually wear. I would say that this panic spiral is because my one-year old has developed an unfortunate habit of shrieking “ouchiieeee” and hurling all forms of toe-coverings down the steps— but if I’m being honest, I probably would have been a little panic-spiraly anyway.

Or maybe you’re a seasoned pro at managing the schedules and clothing needs for your entire Cheaper By the Dozen-style crew, and you’re can’t understand how somebody could possibly take an hour descending into a panic-spiral about something as truly inconsequential as which brand of socks your one year old will actually wear. I am not that seasoned pro.

I operate best when my decisions are mostly on auto-pilot, ranging from what makeup to buy (I’ve worn the same brand since I was a broke college student rationing it out for special occasions) to what clothes to put on in the morning. In fact, I’ve been rocking the exact. same. look with only tiny brand variations since I was old enough to buy my own clothes.

Don't believe me? Exhibit A: Freshman year in high school. Exhibit B: Shimmying across trees while 36 weeks pregnant with my first child well over a decade later. Still rocking the jeans and v-neck tee look (and, apparently, the hair tie on the right wrist), because some things never change.

If you’ve been running in minimalism or simplicity circles for any amount of time, this probably doesn’t come as a surprise to you. Humans can only handle so many decisions in a day… and when you’re making as many as 35,000 decisions in a day, not having to decide what to wear or what brand of dish detergent to buy is, quite simply, one less thing to contribute to decision fatigue.

But despite having the same basic decisions on autopilot— I was still feeling myself become easily overwhelmed with the frequency of these decisions.

Managing the toothpaste and next-size-shoes and presents for kiddo’s birthday parties is part of giant list of tasks that are generally summed up as ‘invisible labor’: The un-paid, generally un-acknowledged things that need to happen to keep a household functioning. In heterosexual relationships, these tasks fall disproportionately on women— adding up to several hours of paying bills, scheduling appointments, or coordinating soccer schedules every week.

All of these tasks have a few components to them— conception, planning, and execution. In the case of meeting all the material needs for a family, conception might be knowing that your toddler just hit a growth spurt and will need new shoes soon. It’s also knowing what brand of shoes aren’t too ‘ouchy’ and what color is their favorite… which might require you to check their capsule wardrobe for the next season to make sure that the shoe color won’t clash with every single outfit they own. Planning might involve measuring their feet— did they grow half a size or a full size?— checking the website for sales, price-shopping with similar retailers or trying out promo codes, and fretting about the cost of shipping. Executing, or actually clicking ‘purchase’ and handing your kid their new shoes when they arrive, is only one fraction of the labor that went into this single purchase. Now imagine that labor multiplied by the hundreds of items (ranging from dish detergent to winter mittens) that need ‘dealt with’ in a typical home.

No wonder we’re exhausted.

So here’s what the shopping ban is accomplishing:

I am free to stop stressing out about the next-size-shoe-and-leggings and warm-clothes-for-a-REAL-winter issue (I suspect I am a little bit irrationally concerned about having enough warm things to make it through the winter. I blame this on growing up somewhere where the whole entire world was cancelled at the first hint of a stray snowflake).

I’m removing the need to check my ‘promotional’ e-mail tab to make sure I’m not missing a sale for something I know we will need eventually. (I’ve even written before about how things are basically ‘on sale’ all the time anyway— but the ‘LAST CHANCE’ e-mails are still, by design, anxiety provoking— particularly, for me, in the stir-crazy winter months).

I don’t have to panic spiral about whether or not we will need/use/wear something because, well, I’m not allowed to buy it anyway.

THE RULES

The rules are pretty standard: I can buy food and basic hygiene products, if I happen to have mis-calculated and run out. Experiences, such as restaurants and travel, are also fine. I can replace anything that breaks, if it’s something we truly need (such as a dryer— because dryers= best thing ever and also it’s too cold for a clothesline and I would say there’s no way Jose that our dryer will break because it was literally just repaired, but it’s somehow once again on its last leg anyway sooo maybe keep sending my dryer positive thoughts??).

I’m not going to go searching out books, but if I happen to stumble upon a bookstore in the wild (or, you know, my internet decides to take me to https://bookshop.org/ on its own volition), it is what it is. I’m also going to make an exception for the Whimsical Dough Valentine’s Day play dough shop when it opens, because my girls are currently play dough obsessed and, let’s be real, I’m not mad about getting to build monkeys out of orange flour concoctions either. But everything else is completely off limits.

I’m not asking my partner to do the shopping ban with me, but he’s also not allowed to buy anything on my behalf— and since I’m the de facto shopper for our entire household, he’d better hope he doesn’t run out of socks before March.

Not My First Shopping Ban Rodeo

I’ve done a handful of shopping bans before— often to hit a mental ‘reset’ button or reach a financial milestone. And I’m perhaps in the tiny minority of the population who thoroughly enjoys them.

What do I think will change?

Of course, getting the mail will become incredibly boring… like, nothing but a stray piece of junk mail every few days boring. But more importantly— along with some resets to my relationship with my phone, which I’ll talk more about next week— I’m hoping that any temptation to interrupt being really and truly present with my family with the ever-expanding list of mental tasks like ‘add toothpaste to the Grove order!’ and ‘check to see if the girls’ sweatshirts are back in stock!’ will be quieted.

But my previous shopping bans haven’t lasted quite this long, so I’m excited to see how I feel once I hit the two- and three-month marks.

Have you ever done a shopping ban? How did you feel about it? Are you interested in hearing more about my experience, or joining in? I have allll the questions, and I’d love to hear from you!