Week one: The rules

I want to break free from my past choices and from the norm of American society. Mindless consumerism has left me feeling like a failure and trapped. I want a life not a catalogue of possessions and updates. I want my family to have security, resources, and experiences as apposed to debt, bills, and stress. We are not too deep in to turn this around; I can make better choices and save money.

I will not buy anything new for 2014, but there are a few exceptions:

1) Food
2) Uniforms and shoes for my boys in August. My boys get one pair of shoes a year and a pair of sandals in the summer. I will look in three resale stores first before I buy anything new though.
3) Hygienic and household cleaning products. I do hope to make some of these myself this year, especially counter spray and window/ mirror cleaner.
4) DIY materials, after I have looked in three resell places first and waited a month to purchase it.

Penalty Box: Anything clothing or DIY item I buy new, even after a month of waiting and looking at three resell stores, will be taxes at 100% with the money going into a savings account to spend on experiences not material possessions. 

After typing that, I feel sad. I want so badly to be able to pop in IKEA and but some little something for the house, or go to the Container Store and ELFA something. There are so many things I want to do this year to the house, but all these desires have left me with 10,000.00 in debt and a really empty social life.

I know that if I want to have a better quality of life and more choices I need to stop being a consumer and start living my life. I want to get emails from friends, not advertisement. I want community not consumerism. So, these are the rules, and I will be back next week to update on how my life has changed one week into this project and how I feel now that I can't hide my feelings with shopping. My greatest fear is that without this coping mechanism, I will overindulge with some other area of my life, but that is part of this journey.