Dropping Shopping - Not Buying It, Judith Levine : People.com

Description

It's not as if she were ever what you'd call a material girl. An author living in Brooklyn and Vermont with partner Paul Cillo, Judith Levine owns a 25-year-old TV, and her idea of a splurge is fancy socks. Still, in December 2003, after realizing she'd plunked down $1,001 on holiday gifts, maxed out her Visa and was "tapping the ATM like an Iraqi guerrilla pulling crude from the pipeline," she decided to undergo "an X-treme trial of nonconsumption"—a year of purchasing only bare necessities. The goal? To determine, says Levine, 53, "whether it's possible to have a life and an identity without buying a lot of stuff." In her new book, Not Buying It: My Year Without Shopping , Levine reveals what it was like to turn her back on consumer culture.

ONE WOMAN'S STAPLES ARE ANOTHER'S CONDIMENTS Levine and Cillo, 53, a consultant and an indifferent shopper from way back, agreed that prepared food, movies and gym memberships were nonessential; public transportation, internet access and local papers were musts. But there were gray areas. "Our friends would say things like, ' Olives, Judith? Are olives really a necessity?'" (The olives stayed.)

KNOWLEDGE IS POWER "I hadn't read the latest books or seen movies," she says. "At times it was excruciating; I felt bored and antsy and sort of stupid."

SO MUCH FOR A SOCIAL LIFE Since eating out was forbidden, "we were sort of a drag," Levine says. Once, they agreed to meet pals at a Chinese restaurant and just watched them eat. "They were irked."

IT'S NOT EASY BEING GREEN "People buy a new electronic thing every 15 minutes, then throw it out," Levine says. "We have to think of the afterlives of our possessions." Still, keeping one mascara tube for a year had its downside. ...

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