Buying Things is Spending Time You’ll Never Get Back

When you choose to buy something, you're not just spending the money, you're spending time, your most valuable non-renewable resource. It takes time to decide what to buy, time to buy it, time to unpack it, try it on, set it up, learn how to use it, etc. Then, it takes more time to clean it, maintain it, organize it, repair it, and one day get rid of it. That must be what Thoreau was talking about in Walden: “The cost of a thing is the amount of ... life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or...