Part of living a minimalist life is choosing mindfully what comes into your life. Especially things. In other words, mindless consuming should be avoided. When the act of buying only makes you happy for that moment, then the happiness will disappear again and you will not have gained anything.

I am trying to avoid consuming things mindlessness and introducing this behaviour leads to a few inner struggles here and there. What do I do, if I have a thing, which lost its beauty to me? What if I want to replace this thing with something that would rather fit my eyes than the current thing I own, but the current thing is still functional and fulfils it purpose? In the past I would’ve just gone and bought the new thing, throwing the old one out. But trying to consume mindfully my mind is filled with thoughts about the actual need of a replacement versus the need as a feeling.

So the old thing is still functional, but lost its beauty to me. But what is functionality? One could say that the item is doing what expected in every use case that appears. Continuing that thought, isn’t me looking at it a use case as well? I am a visual person, I’ve always based my purchase decisions not only on the features an item offers, but also its aesthetics. Badly designed items are usually eliminated in my decision process. In conclusion, a good product design or the thing’s aesthetics are a functionality for me. So if something lost its beauty to me, it lost part of its functionality.

Does losing a part of its functionality justify replacing or getting rid of that item? In this case I would evaluate how much this affects me. The basic questions is; how large was the aesthetics part of the whole package of functionalities? If the beauty of an item was a large part of its functionality, then it might be time to chuck it. But in other cases where the item delivered a huge amount of (used) functionalities and beauty was only a small part, then it might be better to hold on to it as it still has a value in my life. In any case, if the missing beauty evokes negative feeling towards the item, it holds a negative value for me. An item that makes me feel bad will be replaced or thrown out.

If I decide to replace this item, I still want to avoid mindless purchases. Any new item in my life needs to be carefully chosen and evaluated. Since I plan to keep it for a long time, if I get it, it should last that long. Good quality items are therefore essential. To not notice later that the replacement item lost its design function as well, the purchase must be thought out and thoroughly planned. To conclude, it should be of high quality to last long, deliver the needed functions and show good product design.

Overall I want to avoid mindless purchasing. Going through this thought process will help me to make better purchase decisions in the long run.