Confronting Your Online Order History is the New SelfCare
it’s been said
that if you stand in the middle of your
home and take a look around
everything you see used to be money
i learned this the hard way as an
engineer in washington dc
with a six-figure salary and a credit
score in the 700s
on paper i was a success but inside
i was a mess uncertain and underwhelmed
at 35 i decided to move into my parents
basement
and take an adulting break i plan to use
this year-long
intermission as a way to save some money
find my purpose maybe even find a new
job that allowed me to make more of a
difference
as the end of my adulting break
approached
my favorite design blog featured marie
condo’s best seller
the life-changing magic of tidying up
i fell in love with marie’s konmari
method and its radical
self-carriness it’s the anti-baby step
approach
to a clutter-free home so it’s as
charming
as it is progressively uncomfortable
i’ve always loved interior design
planning things
and putting things in order so as soon
as i finished that book
i ran to my closet and started to ask
myself
what did and did not spark joy
what was left was six bags ready to go
to donation
and three hundred dollars worth of
clothes that were brand new
with tags that did not spark joy
now i’m no stranger to an annual purge
but this time around
i asked myself why why did i have
so many extra things what was really
going on here
what was the lesson my clutter had to
teach me
i continued to tidy well beyond clothing
making thousands of decisions about
everything in my home through a lens of
joy
i let go of old notes from grad school
home goods that never quite worked even
sentimental items
everything from photos to furniture that
represented
past seasons of my life i was determined
to be an
extension of a home that i honored
the beautiful thing about the konmari
method is it gives you permission to
keep
whatever you want to as long as it
sparks joy
the challenging thing about the konmari
method is it gives you permission to
keep
whatever you want to as long as it
sparks joy
i let go of a lot of things but i
confidently kept
58 pairs of shoes and every last one of
them
sparks joy now i didn’t understand why i
love these shoes so much
until i found a note that i wrote my mom
in elementary school
describing a favorite experience
everything about this experience
revolved around shopping
and the mall three different stores the
quest to find the perfect shoes
in that moment my clutter spoke up
i was emotionally stuck and no amount of
cyclical purging
was going to get me out i was stuck
under
mindless purchases unhealthy habits
unfinished business and unfulfilled
career aspirations recycled
year after year i use the act of
acquiring more
as a way to bury the guilt anxiety and
shame
associated with my inability to achieve
true joy and happiness in major areas of
my life
all that from looking at my closets
retail played a significant role in my
childhood
but as an adult i use the comfort and
ease of online shopping
as a way to check out and ignore deeper
issues
which is probably why when i reached the
end of my tithing event
i still felt like there was work to be
done
i had found a place for absolutely
everything in my home
but i realized that
i don’t know i needed to shift my time
energy and resources
that i used to organize my home to other
areas of my life
that needed some attention i made it a
game
how many aspects of my life could i
declutter
i started to let go again i let go
of my life in the dc metro area and my
parents basement
to move to chicago and explore a new
city
i let go of 14 years in corporate
america
so that i could start my own small
business as a professional home
organizer
and certified kunmari consultant helping
others
to let go of stuff to live a truly
abundant life
i even let go of 30 pounds which i kind
of gained back during quarantine
but i’m in the process of losing again
i carefully examined my relationship
with how i consumed
absolutely everything social media
junk mail even the amount of water that
i drank
every day but there was more
30 000 more
consumer debt that had accumulated over
more than 10 years
of mindless purchases and living beyond
my means
it was the dark cloud that shaded every
milestone i’d had
since the very first day i chose to pay
over time
versus pay balance in full
which is what led me to go to a place
where no one has ever willingly gone
before
my amazon order history
after decluttering with clients for more
than a thousand hours
i’d seen a lot of miscellaneous items
purchased online
i was leaving my client’s apartment one
day and i walked past her front desk
manager
she stopped me and mentioned that there
were some clients or
tenants who probably needed my help
she based this off of the fact that they
received a large number of amazon boxes
through the mail room each and every day
which is why i renamed miscellaneous
clutter
amazon.com amazon.com clutter
is an ever expanding catalog of readily
accessible
retail therapy the good news is when you
declutter
you uncover sticky habits and
opportunities for improvement
through self-awareness so i could
confront
my financial clutter just like i
confronted the clothes in my closet
really feeling the weight of those
purchases in my life
so i could redefine what enough meant
for me
the engineer in me was geeking out about
this idea of looking through
spreadsheets of amazon data
so i isolated my purchases from 2010 to
2020
and i excluded things like gifts that i
purchased for others
groceries business expenses and returns
what was left was 721
items totaling eighteen thousand
one hundred and seventy one dollars
so that’s about eighteen hundred dollars
in spending
per year on amazon the average amazon
prime member
spends about 1400 a year on the platform
so not a great time to be above average
but i continued to check out those
individual purchases
and i noticed that most of them were
under 20 dollars
and represented promises i had made
myself and
never kept the true cost of trial and
error
and phases of my life that define who i
am
today there was my mini trampoline
moment
i bought that thing brand new used it
once
and then sold it in a yard sale i guess
bouncer sizing really wasn’t my thing
then there was the quest to find the
perfect headphones
the revolving door products that
represented my five-year natural hair
care journey
and my budding cross stitch hobby
i continued to look at those frequent
purchases
and i noticed that over the past 10
years most of my spending was in
home goods shoe care skin care
and my dog carbon i was actually pretty
surprised by
how accurately my order history
reflected my
interests and values but there was
definitely some room to tighten up my
savings
so that my spending could more
comfortably fit into my vision
of financial independence i was also
super curious about how many of those
721 items still remained in my home
till this day after 10 years of shopping
four of which were spent adopting this
clutter-free lifestyle
there were 337 items left
that still sparked joy which meant that
i had let go
of a little over 50 percent of
everything that i purchased on amazon
over the past 10 years with a thank you
to end the season of those items in my
life
it took me 18 hours to complete this
analysis
but it will influence every purchase i
make moving forward
and that’s the power of radical
self-care looking at your order history
isn’t as exciting as maybe taking a
bubble bath
or buying yourself some flowers but
there are
rewards on the other side if you just
get a little messy learn and then
let go ultimately the money is spent
i can’t go back in time and change that
i made what i thought was the best
decision for those items
based on the knowledge and the resources
that i had
on at that time i let go of everything
that didn’t serve me
and i held on to the lesson that my
clutter taught me
because looking at my purchases allows
me to make more mindful choices
and not dwell in the past or try to
predict
the future use of something someday
the clutter in your order history has
something to tell you
are you listening i challenge you to
get a little uncomfortable in order to
take care of yourself
and your budget by looking at your
shopping behaviors on your favorite
platform
we all have the opportunity to shop
mindful
making values-driven decisions based on
what we need what we can afford and what
can fit
in our beautiful homes and lives each
and every time we click
place your order thank you