Buy Nothing Day/Week/Month/Year 2025

The last Friday of November has arrived once again. It's the day advertisers shout even louder and brasher than usual, imploring us to, “Buy! More! Now! Hurry!”

And what is that right beside it? Why, it is  Buy Nothing Day, and it is whispering rather than shouting, “How about taking a break from it all?”.

I hear those whispers on this, and every day. 

Not because of what this day is against, but because of what it is for: a whole 24 hours set aside to remember that we already have enough, that our worth is not measured in things, and that true wealth lives in the moments we choose to leave unfilled.

Buy Nothing Day is less a protest and more a quiet celebration—an annual pause to enjoy what we have, to notice the beauty of an uncluttered space or an unhurried morning, to feel the lightness that comes when the urge to acquire softens into the peace of appreciating.

It is a day to walk outside and let the wind and sunshine be the only things that brush against us.

A day to cook from the pantry and discover we have everything we need to make beautiful, nourishing foods.

A day to mend, to borrow, to create, to give away, to simply be.

The hermit-poet Ryōkan wrote:
“If you want to be happy,
there is no need to go running about.
Just sit like a solitary cloud
and let the world come to you.”
We can choose to sit like that cloud.

No running.

No grasping.
No buying.

It’s an intentional moment of doing nothing commercial—so that life, real life, can come to you.

This year, whether you observe it for one day, one week, a whole month, or weave its spirit through the entire year, know that every moment you choose presence over purchasing is a small act of kindness: to the earth, to others, to your future self, to the quiet heart that already knows enough is a feast.

So light a candle, drink tea from your favorite old mug, listen to the rain or the silence or the laughter in the next room. 

Let the ads flash and the doors open early somewhere else. Here, in this moment, we are already where we want to be.

Let’s celebrate Buy Nothing Day together on Friday, my fabulous frugal friends.

May your cup, and life, stay sufficiently full.

These Apples Are Wild and Free Just Like Me

I found more wild domestic apples. They were conveniently in my back yard. Why have I never seen them before?

I should explain. We live rurally, and the lot our rental home is on is just over two acres. Since we moved in here in 2014, what used to be an old farmer’s field has really shrubbed up. 

Deer, coyotes, and ring-necked pheasants hide back there, so why not a smallish apple tree?

I looked out my window recently and finally noticed the yellow apple tree way down by the forest edge. 

I put on my boots, grabbed a pack, and went down to pick to my heart’s content.

Since then I have been enjoying them daily, and wondering to my amazement,

“Oh little apple tree—what makes your apples taste so sweet and delicious?”

Maybe it is because you are free, choosing to live in the wild, just like me. How you arrived here, I know not, but you are so welcome.

Maybe I love thee because I picked your natural fruit with my own two hands.

Or perhaps because you gave me ten dollars worth of apples for just a bit of effort in the sunshine.

It could be because you not only survived and fruited out during a months-long drought this past summer, but thrived and produced a most tasty and appreciated food for all.

Or, it could be because you are a yellow-skinned variety of Malus domestica, which is rare in my experience.

So many possibilities.

I’m thinking it just might be the waft of sweet apple nose candy that greets me cheerfully every time I go out to the garage to grab a couple from your storage box for breakfast in the morning.

I guess it is a combination of all those things, and one more I almost forgot: You asked nothing of me.

No fertilizer, no pruning, no spraying, no permission.

You just stood there at the edge of the field, year after year, doing your apple thing while the rest of us rushed past with grocery lists and worries.

And when I finally looked up long enough to see you, you were already holding out your branches like you’d been waiting for me to catch on.

So thank you, little wild-yellow apple tree, for the sweetest lesson I’ve tasted for a while:

Sometimes the best things in life aren’t planned. They’re just there, waiting quietly, until we’re slow enough (and lucky enough) to walk far enough into our own backyard to discover them.

I’ll leave the ladder in the garage.

You seem to be doing fine on your own.