Here’s some stats on stuff I’ve bought over the last 3 years arranged in categories.
The biggest one, no surprise, is apparel which includes clothes, shoes, bags, jewelry, accessories, and so forth. Though, for me, it’s mostly clothes.
The rest of the categories seems small in comparison… But the next 2 biggest were personal care and home. I’ve defined personal care to include essentials such as toothpaste and soap but also non-essentials such as makeup. Home includes any home fixtures, home accessories, kitchen items, books, office supplies, garden items, and anything else related to the home aside from consumables, such as toilet paper, paper towels, and other household supplies. Somehow, I thought that home decor didn’t really belong in the same category as toilet scrubbers but I guess I could have combined everything and it wouldn’t have really made a difference.
Then, we have electronics. You’ll notice there are 2 numbers on the graph. This is because I didn’t buy that many electronic items but I bought a $530 laptop which skewed the results. So I wanted to show the difference. Every other category didn’t change the overall order of spend whether using item count or dollar spend but electronics were interestingly very different. Leisure includes hobbies, sports, and crafts. Other is everything else that didn’t fit nicely elsewhere.
I didn’t include food and gas here because that was a routine thing that didn’t seem interesting to track. It’s something I’m going to use up anyway and doesn’t really help me understand my journey to owning less. Did I mention I want to become a minimalist?
I also didn’t include anything that wasn’t a physical thing, such as experiences, services, or plane tickets. Come to think of it, I probably forgot a few travel souvenirs in this list as I’m not as diligent about tracking when I’m on vacation but I doubt that would change the results much.
Anyway… I can’t say I learned anything earth-shattering. I probably should spend less on clothes. But we knew that already, didn’t we?