My Buy Nothing baby changed my relationship with consumption

Buy Nothing communities, neighborhood lending libraries, economic boycotts, and being intentional with where our money goes

When I was pregnant with Baby K (now almost 10 months old), I was already an active member of our local Buy Nothing community, so I started accumulating things I knew we’d need — baby clothes, a bathtub, changing table, wipe dispensers, etc. By the time Baby K arrived, we had collected almost everything we needed through family hand-me-downs and from the community. I jokingly call Baby K our Buy Nothing baby, but what started as a cheap and practical way to gather essentials morphed into a meaningful shift in how I think about ownership, consumption, and community.

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A Neighborhood Where Stuff Flows Freely Between Homes

Buy Nothing is its own unique subculture, one even highlighted in The New York Times. I’ve seen plenty of eyebrow-raising items offered up for free (and claimed!): a half-eaten sushi roll, an aphid-infested broccoli crown (“it doesn’t work for our family, but maybe it does for yours”), and used period underwear. More often, though, it’s stuff that people don’t want anymore, but someone could use — lots of baby clothes, pantry goods, furniture, toys, etc.

Aside from those more common goods exchanged, I’ve also received some more unusual things — lamb’s ear (the plant) from a neighbor’s yard, aquatic plants for our fish tank, just to name a few. Another neighbor lent me pumpkin carving tools for an evening (really, who needs to own these year-round?). And last year, another neighbor organized our Buy Nothing group to send out over 4,000 Get Out the Vote postcards, of which I proudly wrote and mailed a few hundred.

I’ve also gifted a steady stream of baby goods, household items, and food, including leftover hot dogs and buns, unused pantry goods, too-spicy frozen foods, and an invitation to stop by with a mug for hot cocoa I left on the porch. Abundant garden harvests also get shared on Buy Nothing, including the parsley and mint that grow uncontrollably in our garden, buckets-ful of ginkgo fruit, and even a few shovels of composting worms.

As my participation in the Buy Nothing community started in 2020 during lockdown and continued over the last 5 years, I started to see my home as just a node in an interconnected network of homes. When I’m done with something I’ve received from Buy Nothing, I happily send it back into the community.

Flow of goods through homes in the neighborhood

Collectively, the homes in our neighborhood already have so much stuff. What makes the most sense for a lot of things — baby stuff especially! — is for stuff to flow between those nodes as needed, rather than everyone buying new stuff when the need arises.

For all the praises I sing of Buy Nothing groups, they are certainly not without their flaws. Here are just a few:

• Facebook’s feed creates and reinforces a scarcity mindset — posts show up suddenly, and people scramble to claim things they might need (because who knows when something like that will be posted again).

• The addictive nature — I found myself scrolling and refreshing more than necessary, caught up in the dopamine loop of “free stuff.”

• Its existence inside Facebook’s ecosystem — many people I know are only on Facebook at this point for neighborhood Buy Nothing groups.

• Strict rules — Buy Nothing groups do have rules, and admins can choose how intensely they want to enforce them. As I write this, there is pretty intense active Facebook drama in a neighboring Buy Nothing group, with people being banned without warning.

These negatives historically haven’t deterred me from my Facebook and Buy Nothing usage, but this year, as I’ve really wanted to be more intentional about my attention, screen time, and app usage, I started to think through alternatives and complements to the existing Buy Nothing system.

And if we treat some items as community resources, why stop at one-off gifts via Buy Nothing? How could we make borrowing and sharing even easier, giving more people access to rarely-used items?

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Community Lending Libraries

Just a few blocks from our home is the Berkeley Tool Lending Library (connected to the Public Library). Need a drill bit, a weed whacker, or a ladder? You can borrow one for the week. In the pandemic, they expanded their offerings to kitchen appliances, and I’ve borrowed a popcorn air popper for a block party as well as a bread machine to experiment with low-effort, high-reward bread baking.

What would it look like to extend this idea further? As I looked in our storage space at all the stuff that I wanted to hold onto in case we needed it (a baby sleeping bag for camping, infant life vest, travel high chair, etc), I wanted a system to loan these things out to people who needed them.

Take folding tables — does every household in a neighborhood really need to own one? If just a handful were available to borrow, it could serve the whole community while saving space and money.

There are certainly items in my home I wouldn’t feel comfortable lending out freely, but there are many sturdy and infrequently used items that I’m happy to lend out and wouldn’t be devastated if they were returned with a little wear and tear. In some cases, I don’t even really mind if they don’t ever make their way back.

With these items in mind, I created the Berkeley Community Lending Library and shared it to a few neighborhood groups. Within a few weeks, we have over 60 items people are willing to share with neighbors, including:

• Seasonal equipment: kids’ snow gear, skis, snowshoes, beach umbrellas and tents, river rafts

• Event supplies: folding tables, drink dispensers, projector and screen

• Travel gear: travel stroller, SlumberPod, luggage

• Tools: shop vac, long duster, moving dolly

Having a central view of all the things accessible to us (that we never have to buy) is incredible!

While loaning out your stuff to essentially strangers might feel unfamiliar, I believe this particular community lending library works because it builds on the implicit level of trust that exists from Buy Nothing groups.

If you’re part of a community — a neighborhood, workplace, school, or apartment building — that would benefit from this as well, here is a lightweight spreadsheet that anyone can copy and use to start their own lending library. No fancy software (yet), just a simple way to track what’s available and who’s borrowing what.

👉 Community Lending Library Template

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Beyond Boycotts: Everyday Economic Choices

To be honest, my original motivation around Buy Nothing was more aligned with getting free stuff and quickly decluttering than shifting my own relationship with consumption. I know people have been advocating for “shopping local” and boycotting companies for a long while, but the message never really hit home for me. My upbringing as a child of immigrants led to an innate mindset of always trying to find a deal, to see how much I could get for my money.

But in the past year, I’ve started to be a lot more intentional about where my money goes — especially as major corporations cut back on DEI initiatives. Buying something I love at a craft fair means I get to support that artist directly. Buying from a local corner store means that I can help its continued existence despite the convenience of Amazon’s same-day shipping (how does this work??).

I’ve hit “Buy Now” on Amazon more times than I can count and just made an Amazon order yesterday for something I couldn’t find locally. While a full boycott may be most effective or feel best for some people, I am trying not to hold myself to such a binary standard.…modern life is complex after all.

Right now, it feels like more people than ever are rethinking their relationship with stuff. What happens if we all make small shifts — borrowing before buying, choosing local over Amazon, and pausing before we hit ‘Buy Now’? The way we consume is already shifting. Where will it go from here?

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I briefly considered paywalling the second half of this post, because templates/assets feel like something concrete that can justify payment. But paywalling something that helps people consume less and share more just felt wrong.

I’ve opted to publish everything free for now, but am thinking through what set of things I could include just for paid subscribers — possibly coaching content and tools, self-paced worksheets, etc. But in the meantime, if you’ve been enjoying Tech and Tea, consider upgrading to a paid subscription!