Six Easy Pieces

I read about this interesting, thoroughly modern anti-consumerism movement and had to share this, as it chimes so much with what I'm feeling: People are blindly consuming more and more stuff with no intrinsic value and more and more people are making, marketing and selling rubbish. It has all got to stop right now. The main points:"...This self-imposed exercise in frugality was prompted by a Web challenge called Six Items or Less (sixitemsorless.com). The premise was to go an entire month wearing only six items already found in your closet (not counting shoes, underwear or accessories).
"...This “six items” experiment was conceived by two friends, Heidi Hackemer, 31, a strategic business director at the New York advertising agency BBH, and Tamsin Davies, 34, the head of innovation at Fallon London.
"...Motives include a way to trim back on spending, an outright rejection of fashion, and a concern that the mass production and global transportation of increasingly cheap clothing was damaging the environment.
"...An even stricter program, the Great American Apparel Diet, has attracted pledges by more than 150 women and two men to abstain from buying for an entire year.
"...These self-deniers of fashion are representative, in perhaps a notable way, of a broader reckoning of consumers’ spending habits. As the economy begins to improve, shoppers of every income appear to be wrestling with the same questions: Is it safe to go back to our old, pre-recession ways? Or should we?"
Sally Bjornsen, the founder of the Great American Apparel Diet(thegreatamericanappareldiet.com), said: “I was sick and tired of consumerism."
(Source: Eric Wilson, The New York Times)