Have you ever tried to go a period of time, be it a week, month or year, without buying anything new except for food and toiletries. It is a very interesting experiment. I have given both thought and practice on this and have found that when we consume less, it gives us the opportunity to appreciate more the items that we already have.
One of the real epiphanies for me in this regard was the day I needed to eat lunch and I looked in the refrigerator and cupboard and decided “we didn’t have anything to eat”. Have you ever done that? Then in a moment I looked again and I thought to myself, there is a enough food in the house here that if we were a family in the (fill in the blank) I could eat for a whole year. What is wrong with me?
I enjoy shopping, but I never thought I was a slave to it. However, when we think of the slogan about recycling many times we forget the first two- Reduce, Reuse and then Recycle. Giving thanks for what we have been given already, allows us to register on an emotional and spiritual level that we have in fact, been given enough. Take some time and decide to stop shopping for 2 weeks to start, and feel the effects. While doing this practice give thanks for all the things that you already have.