We want things we don’t need. As result we buy things we don’t need. It’s called The Diderot effect (famous French philosopher). Denis Diderot spend his entire life in poverty and only when he was 52 years old he got money from Catherine the Great (the Empress of Russian Empire) for sale of his library (he was co-founder and writer of Encyclopedia). From this point things gone wrong.

Shortly after sale of his encyclopedia library he decided to buy a new robe. Robe was so beautiful that he felts that other his possessions does not match the beauty of robe. He bought more items to upgrade possessions: replaced old rug, bought decorative sculptures, kitchen table, mirror, chair, etc. This became known as the Diderot effect.

New possessions create feeling of need to obtain more new possessions. We consider it’s normal to fall into consumption spiral. Why? Because we want to feel ourselves better placed in life. Better quality and more possessions create this feeling. There’s nothing wrong with upgrading your possessions but wrong starts when we fall in trap of marketing genius.

I regularly upgrade what I own. But I try to buy multipurpose items to eliminate potential clutter. In order to buy less items I font watch adds (purchased YouTube Premium), I scroll any video that I feel like add, I don’t buy items buy two and get one free, etc. But I buy quite a lot of clothes (I know it does not go in line with what I wrote before) but only secondhand and I sell everything that I don’t wear.

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