Consumerism isn’t all about owning stuff — it’s about consuming.

This month one of my favorite bands is releasing a cool anthology of all their singles and a short documentary film. I want to watch it, and I want it to be legal. But they’re releasing it only on DVD. And I am trying to minimize the stuff I own, so I don’t want to buy any DVDs.

I simply don’t want to own too many things.

How many times have you watched the films you own on DVD? I bet, no more than once. So why would you need to clutter your home with things you’ll only use once?

The same goes with books — most books I have read I will never go back to, and even if I do, I prefer to have them in a public library. It can be digital or real, but the key point is — it’s time to stop just owning things, and start appreciating them.

Consumerism doesn’t have to be all about owning stuff. Why don’t we just consume? Just use the stuff we need and then return it back for the others to use. It’s better to pay a couple of bucks for a cinema ticket and really feel the story, than to buy expensive audio and video equipment and loads of disks and end up with some technical problem.

Owning stuff has a lot of downsides. You need to maintain, to repair and take care of it; if you are moving to some other place, you have to think what you’re gonna do with all the things you own. Storing is a problem too: some people have whole rooms filled with stuff they’ll never use again. But they can’t throw them away, and it’s too complicated to give each piece away. So they end up with a room of useless stuff that is tying them back.

filed under: point of view