Yes really, no shopping at all for a year. Could you do that? The challenge involves only being able to buy items if they fall in the category of "health and safety"- that is, you can only buy food and basic necessities – nothing else!

The only way you'd be able to get that "new" cd or piece of jewellery or furniture would be through barter- you'd have to find something you could swap for it!

Well, what a challenge! And there is a group of people who call themselves "Compacters" who have been doing this since 2005 in San Francisco and they now have over 8000 followers all over the world!

It looks like this bunch are so worried about the effect of modern consumerism, resulting in such a huge amount of waste, effecting the environment, that they woke up with such a consumer hangover that they decided to go cold turkey! No shopping for a year. Nadda! Nix!

As I was reading the article about this here, I couldn't help but chuckle as it mentions an "underwear clause", meaning that they can buy new underwear- it's an essential necessity to them! Ha! I’d have to agree. They also give themselves one day a year where they can go spend what they want to stock up- I wonder if they tend to overspend on that day, hmmm?

What really interested me in that article was how they tended towards bartering or trading to get what they needed as they went about their day to day lives- just like the bartering I am doing here to get offices.

So I take my hat off to them for not buying a single thing (except food and underwear) for a whole year- I don't think I could go without some things... it might be worth an experiment some day... but not today

Telana