A review by bluejayreads
The Year of Less: How I Stopped Shopping, Gave Away My Belongings, and Discovered Life is Worth More Than Anything You Can Buy in a Store by Cait Flanders

emotional inspiring reflective slow-paced

3.75

My library did categorize this book as both self-help and memoir, but I guess I didn't realize exactly how much more memoir it was than self-help. Yeah, Cait did talk about the how and why, but it was more about her personal journey through that year than anything. 

The no-buy experiment is apparently the fourth-ish such dramatic thing she's done, previous ones involving quitting drinking (she was an alcoholic), losing 30 pounds, and paying off $30,000 in credit card debt. She establishes at the beginning that she did the no-buy challenge because after doing all of that, she still wasn't saving as much money as she wanted to be and she still wasn't feeling fulfilled. 

If you're just in it for the how and why, that's all in the very beginning. Cait talks about why she decided to challenge herself to do the no-buy year, the rules she set for herself, her goals, and why she decided to declutter her apartment at the same time. From there, it's mostly memoir, with Cait managing the ups and downs of life while not buying things that weren't on her approved buying list. 

In the end, it mostly boiled down to Cait realizing that she couldn't buy meaning and happiness, much of the stuff she already owned was stuff she bought for the person she thought she should be and not for the person she actually was, and she used shopping like she used to use alcohol to make herself feel better when she didn't want to deal with difficult emotions. 

I think this type of experiment was a lot easier for her than it would be for a lot of people. Cait was single for almost the entirety of this year, living alone, working remotely for a financial startup, and making a TON of money (she doesn't provide numbers, but she had a day job and did freelance work and partway through the book she realizes just the money she made from her freelance work would cover all of her basic living expenses). In order for me to do something similar, I'd have to get my husband on board with the no-buy idea and decluttering, either get our roommate on board with decluttering or get her to clarify what stuff in the apartment is hers and what isn't, and do all of that while working an exhausting 40+ hours a week at a warehouse. 

That's not to say this book is worthless or that it wasn't good, because there are some useful parts and I did enjoy reading it. It was just extremely personal and way more memoir than I expected. 
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