The Happiness Project: Or, Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun

can’t love lots of cars,” he answered.
    It’s easy to make the mistake of thinking that if you have something you love or there’s something you want, you’ll be happier with more.
    BUY NEEDFUL THINGS.
    When I began to pay attention to people’s relationship to money, I recognized two different approaches to buying: “underbuying” and “overbuying.” I’m an underbuyer.
    As an underbuyer, I delay making purchases or buy as little as possible. I buy saline solution, which I use twice a day, one little bottle at a time. I scramble to buy items like a winter coat or a bathing suit after the point at which I need them. I’m suspicious of buying things with very specific uses—suit bags, hand cream, hair conditioner, rain boots, Kleenex (why not just use toilet paper to blow your nose?). I often consider buying an item, then decide, “I’ll get this some other time” or “Maybe we don’t really need this.” As an underbuyer, I often feel stressed because I don’t have the things I need. I make a lot of late-night runs to the drugstore. I’m surrounded with things that are shabby, don’t really work, or aren’t exactly suitable.
    I gaze in wonder at the antics of my overbuyer friends. Overbuyers often lay in huge supplies of slow-use items like shampoo or cough medicine. They buy things like tools or high-tech gadgets with the thought “This will probably come in handy someday.” They make a lot of purchases before they go on a trip or celebrate a holiday. They throw things away—milk, medicine, even cans of soup—because they’ve hit their expiration date. They buy items with the thought “This will make a great gift!” without having a recipient in mind. Like me, overbuyers feel stressed. They’re oppressed by the number of errands they feel obliged to do and by the clutter and waste often created by their overbuying.
    After I posted about these two approaches, many underbuyers and overbuyers posted comments. People had no trouble recognizing themselves in my descriptions.
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    I tend to be an overbuyer because underbuying makes me feel stressed and disorganized. I like it when my girls have more than enough pairs of tights, when we have a two-week supply of paper towels on hand, when I have a full bottle of shampoo at the ready should I run out. Running out of tissues or milk or diapers makes me feel like a poor excuse for a mother. I love that feeling of coming home from Costco and putting everything away and feeling fully stocked.
     
    I’m an underbuyer, and those 15-year-old L.L. Bean pajamas were just fine until the day all of the elastic fell out, all at once…
     
    I’m a huge underbuyer and used to feel very proud of myself because of it. That was until I realized it was more of an obsession than a choice. I rarely have backup supplies like toothpaste or soap. I usually leave buying the backups until just hours before I’m about to run out. I used to be a performer so I think that’s where I got my frugal training. But now it’s hard to break this pattern. However, I’m happy to say that I recently let myself buy 6 rolls of paper towels instead of the 2 pack I usually get and also 3 new facecloths. And all of sudden I felt incredibly wealthy. I was surprised at how giddy I became with such simple things.
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    I knew that I’d be happier if I made a mindful effort to thwart my underbuying impulse and instead worked to buy what I needed. For instance, I ended my just-in-time policy for restocking toilet paper. One of my Secrets of Adulthood is “Keep a roll of toilet paper tucked away someplace,” so we never actually ran out, but we teetered on the dreary brink.
    I mentioned this problem to Jamie. “We’re like Walmart,” he said. “We keep all our capital working for us instead of sitting on a lot of inventory.”
    “Well,” I said, “now we’re going to invest in some redundant supply.” Moderation is pleasant to the wise, but toilet paper was something I wanted to keep on hand. This kind of little annoyance puts a surprisingly big drag on happiness. As Samuel Johnson remarked, “To live in perpetual want of little things is a state, not indeed of torture, but of constant vexation.”
    Another thing that I really needed was white T-shirts, because I wear them practically every day. I enjoy shopping only when I’m with my mother, so I waited to buy my T-shirts until my mother was visiting from Kansas City. I wanted T-shirts that were soft, stretchy, not