Emotional Spending and Purging Before Moving

I am going to move for the 15th  time since I came to the US in 1998. I came with only two suite cases; one of them is still sitting in my basement. And I will use it to store clothing or beddings for this move. When I was a student, moving was easy, all my belongings can fit into a car. Since getting my Ph.D. and earning more, my life has been Americanized, and fortunately, I also have the problem of over-abundance–too many clothes, too many dry goods in the pantry, too much-wet food in the fridge, as all middle-class American families do. 

Besides changes, another big problem accompanying over-abundance is that we are confronted with all the stuff we have accumulated over time and must decide to move them with us or discard it. This sounds all too familiar if you ever heard of movements among young people such as minimalism, no shopping experiments, etc.  To sustain modern life, we cannot all together stope shopping and buying, the question is how much of our shopping is compulsive, imitative, or consolative, i..e, emotional.     

Long-distant moving accompanying career change is an exciting and stressful event. Although I have done it many times as I said above, it is still stressful. And, I am doing it all over and all by myself again. This is time to study me–observe my own consumption and purchasing habit: to uncover what shopping is driven by need and what is purely emotional. And, more important, how do I deal with my stress.

My memory is short-lived. I can only trace back two of my most recent big move: from the US to Hk in 2013 and moving back to the US in 2017

Emotional buying before interstate or international move

This time I deal with stress accompanying interstate move by shopping live plants and fixed up my century-old house.

Doing physical work either recreational or practical is very effect to combat over-thinking—the cause of all our emotional troubles.

Since early May, I started to collect one or two plants after visiting Trader Joe’s. Over two months, I have 14 small to medium-sized plant pots sitting on the three window sills of my kitchen and dining areas.   Not only just buying plants, but I also started to watch youtube videos on how to keep these plants alive and thrive. I learned many new ingredients in potting mixes: perlite, lava rock, moss, etc., and that some plants become dormant in summer while others in winter, during which time one should water them less and do not fertilize them.  Aha, that’s exactly how I killed my orchids last summer and my money tree in the winter, fertilizing them at the wrong time.   Despite I grew up as a rice farmer’s daughter who actively helped around rice paddies, gardening is a new world to me.

I am also doing lots of stuff I would not have done if I were in my home country. Painting walls is a piece of cake. I even tuck-pointed masonary foundation wall in the basement, tuck-pointed garage brick wall, painted steel fire escapes, and I am yet to paint concrete patio, get rid of grass in between pavement, and try to get someone to help with front yard landscaping. Finally, all old windows are replaced. I had been overwhelmed by the cost associated with it these years. It turned out replacing windows is not as expensive as I have been dreaded for as efficient market has found a most cost-effective way to do it. Materials are shipped from China. Finally molding and customization is done at major port cities in the North America.

Well, I am not to convey what I learned in the new plant hobby or manual house maintenance oday, but rather to uncover the motives underneath it. Doing physical work either recreational or practical is very effect to combat over-thinking—the cause of all our emotional troubles.

I took up gardening because I am stressed because of my upcoming inter-state move, from Missouri to Colorado. Having a hobby anchors me somewhat. Obviously, this is not the right hobby at this time because I will have to move these plants with me in one or two months. However, every time I take a new plant home, it gives me a boost of dopamine—something to be excited about in place of the uneasiness accompanying upcoming big changes. I will take them with me in my car when I move; just no more trips to Trader Joe’s; otherwise, I cannot trust myself not to take more plants home.  

My last move, from Hong Kong back to the US, is only five years ago. At that time, I developed the hobby of stopping for t-shirts at the Japanese fashion store Uniqlo in the shopping mall right next to my workplace. A newly acquired T-shirt also induces a release of dopamine from the amygdala, which temporarily relieves anxiety. These t-shirts are all basics. Although I bought too many of them, they are still my favorite in summer.

 What did I do when I moved from the US to Hong Kong? Again it was shopping at the Ross-Dress For Less—–many bed sheets to prepare my apartment as Airbnb. In the end, I didn’t do Airbnb. The seven or eight sets of sheets still sit in the drawers underneath the bed in my spare room. Although it was an international move, I knew that space is very scarce and costly, I did not take many of my belongings to HK, only a love seat, piano, and some clothing.  The majority of my furniture stayed at the apartment and rented it out as a furnished unit. Moving and packing were not a big deal.

A third effective way to combat stress is to let go of excesses in our middle-class life and make our living space more spacious—–Purging

purging before moving back to the US from HK

Living in HK is like living in Manhattan. Space is very limited and expensive. Most schools do not have their own playground. Often several schools share one.  In the city center, a rooftop may be used as a place for physical education classes. My flat is not an exception. I live by myself in a roughly 500 square feet flat, and from the windows, I can see what TV shows the neighbors in the flats of the next high-rise building were watching.  Spoiled by spacious living in the Midwest in the US, I felt somewhat constricted. Although I only took a portion of my stuff from St Louis to HK, my stuff piled in the extra room designated for Philipino domestic helper. Miraculously, I did not purchase a single piece of clothing in three and half years. There is no room for new clothing. Besides, the crowdedness of shopping malls squeezed out all my shopping appetite. Moreover, during a period of six months after I knew I was moving to the US in August, I donated half of my wardrobe to the salvation army store near my workplace.  Like shopping, discarding things can be addictive too. Deducting instead of adding can also induce a release of dopamine and thus the pleasure that comes with it. Only at the end of purging did I switch to shopping at Uniqlo to cure my anxiety induced by the upcoming move.

Purging before moving to Denver

Now fast-forwarding to this month, as the time of relocating to  Denver is near, my anxiety level escalates. I knew I cannot acquire more plants to cure it because more plants will create a problem–too many to carry in the car with me.  I got to switch my fun activity–biking to a Trader Joe’s store to shop for plants–running or cycling in the beautiful nearby forest park! It worked. It has been three weeks since I shopped at Trader Joe’s. 

It is time to go through household items category by category.  I have already put two traders Joe’s paper bags with unwanted clothing and shoes. Next, I need to go through books, kitchen utensils, power tools, and kitchen gadgets. Oh my god, I purchased three utility carts from Ikea and one plant shelf at the end of last year mainly out of stress. Now they are crowding my kitchen and pantry. No wonder my kitchen is always a mess no matter how hard I tried. Now it is time to disassemble them and put them away. After the utility cart is put away into a box, my kitchen looks so much cleaner and more spacious.

There are still many grains/lentils, and nuts in the pantry, and frozen pork in the freezer. Since I started my Costco membership, my pantry and freezer have always been full–so overabundant that i got seasonal tenants—moths come and fly about in the house once the weather is warming up. They eat up my food and my woolen clothing too.  Why didn’t I practice what I preach to students–inventory management: restock only if inventory level/food reserves in the pantry are low.    except for a few minimalism practitioners,  most of us do not have any idea how much stuff we own.  Over-abundance has blinded our eyes and cluttered our memory. For example, before weekly grocery shopping do you check your fridge to see what items need to be replenished, and what does not?  If you were like me, it is highly likely that you do not.   We rely on our memory.   This is probably one of the major causes of food waste.  You can apply the same reasoning to other categories such as clothing, books, kitchen utensils, household cleaning products, etc..