How it all started for me

No, I did not wake up one morning and decide I was going to go Wal-Mart-less for the rest of my life.  Actually, the decision was more drawn out than I would like to admit.  I'd like to tell you that one day, I did some research, didn't like what they were doing, and stopped shopping there.  But there was more to it than that.

It started with the video "The Story of Stuff."  You can see the full video here (21 minutes).  I saw it at a money management class through a local community action program.  It made me stop and think about some of the purchases I was making--were they really necessary?  Where did they come from?  How were they made?  Where will they go when I'm done with them?  I began to re-evaluate some of the choices I was making daily, like using paper plates and paper towels, chemically based body products, and more. 

The more I thought about it, the more I realized a lot of what I was doing was because I had stopped thinking for myself and just bought into advertising.  I mean, I needed this stuff, right?  That's when I really started to consider planned and perceived obsolescence.  If you don't have time to watch the full video of "The Story of Stuff," please take three minutes and watch this part about obsolescence. 

All this time I thought I was an independent person, yet I was buying into exactly what advertisers wanted me to.  In my life, WalMart was the naughtiest one of them all.  I considered some of my recent purchases from there, and realized their quality was less than adequate.  They had gotten me!  Of course I had returned to purchase more (for example, a coffee maker--I bought two of the same kind within 6 months before I realized what I was doing).  After all, they were the cheapest, right?  In the case of the coffee maker, no.  I purchased 2 within 6 months for a total cost of $24 plus tax.  My current coffee maker, purchased at Target just after Christmas this year (and used much more often) cost me $20 plus tax, a savings of $4 (so far).  You don't have to guess where the other two coffee makers went, either.  They both broke.  In case you are doing the math, yes, there was another coffee maker in there, too.  I got it at JC Penney's.  It was a two-cup one with travel mugs and I didn't like it, so I gave it away through Freecycle.org, which I will write more about in future blogs.

It took almost a year from the time I first saw "The Story of Stuff" until I decided to live WalMart free.  Other things happened to me in the course of that time--experiences shopping at my local WalMart didn't help, either.  But it all started with a little lesson in planned obsolescence.