Daily Dose of English 161
Buying Stuff
Daily Dose of English 161
Intermediate
Hey, everyone. My name is Ben and you're listening to a Daily Dose of English. This is a short, simple podcast that you can listen to every day to improve your English. You can find the transcripts for all episodes and more on benslanguagelab.com. I'm glad you can make it today. In this episode, we're gonna be talking about buying stuff. I wanted to call this episode buying shit, but that's a little more casual and I don't think it'd fly as well on YouTube, but yeah, let's think about it as just buying shit. So first, you can use the word shit just to mean stuff. It usually means something that's a little bit negative, but that's not necessarily true. You can even see it in phrases like, the shit, like this is the shit, is actually a really good thing, very positive. But if someone says, I just have so much shit to do. It's usually like small things like cleaning a window and organizing the silverware drawer or whatever. There's a lot of random things to do around the house. But it's a great word. Because it also has tons and tons of other meanings. But today we're talking about just buying shit. Because everybody buys stuff. It's something that we all do. But I don't know, I think it's interesting and I wanna talk a little bit about it and about how I buy stuff now and what I've learned in my years of buying shit. So let's jump into it. So there's definitely a need to buy things. That is how our society works. We exchange money for things that we need instead of trying to go to like bartering just because it's more effective, it's more efficient, right? Money just works. I'm not trying to say that you shouldn't buy things, you shouldn't use money, that's ridiculous. It is... Actually, just yesterday I watched the movie Lady Bird. Great movie if you're looking for a movie to watch. But in it, Timothee Chalamet's character is like a young 17-year-old that's like, I don't like to use money, you know? I don't think money's a good way for us to go. Which is hilarious, because it's Timothee Chalamet. But also, Like you can find usually teenagers like that that are like, oh, I'm so over society, it's so like not my thing, you know? That's not what I'm trying to say. What I do wanna say is sort of about my change and how I buy things and what I try to do and look for and what I've learned in the past of buying shit. Because honestly, a lot of my experiences with buying things have not been great. and especially buying things online in recent years have just gotten worse and worse. Right, I used to feel like I could relatively confidently buy something that looked like it was fairly high quality and it would end up being pretty good and worth it. But I just see so often that things that people buy, things that I would buy would just be bad things. They would just not be useful, they would break or something like that. And so I've, and this is more in the past, what, like five years, give or take. And so I've really tried to become more thoughtful about what I buy, not only because I don't need that much stuff, right? Buying stuff is often a, it's not an addiction, but people can be addicted to shopping, but it's more of like a way to do something to fill a void that you maybe don't need to do. And so a great example is seeing an ad for something that looks interesting or unique, and you go, ooh, I want that. And you buy it, you get it, you look at it, and then you put it away in the closet and you never look at it again. That's a relatively common thing, and that's what I'm really trying to avoid. There's been plenty of things that I've bought like that, spent even hundreds of dollars sometimes, and been like, that was a dumb choice. I wish I could take that back, that was not smart. And that feeling made me sort of initially start to become more, try to become more aware of what I was buying so that I would not feel like that and actually try to really think through a purchase and use that purchase because I just don't like having a ton of stuff. I've never been that attached to things that I don't use. My grandma's the opposite. When she moved, I helped her move. And I had to bring stuff out of her closet and I was like, oh, can we just get rid of this? And she's like, no, I haven't used that in 30 years. Don't I want it. I don't want to get rid of it. It's like well, you don't have to use it in 30 years What do you need it for? Like it's either garbage or if it's like interesting to look at then put it out Instead of putting it deep in the closet put it on a shelf or somewhere interesting at least But stuff that is purely just like for storage just doesn't make sense to me I There was a couple things that I left in New York when I moved away during when COVID hit. And I went back and a lot of the stuff I thought was, I liked it. I thought it was really cool. But then I was like, well, I haven't needed this in the six months where I didn't even remember that it existed. So I don't really need it. and I ended up giving most of that stuff to somebody who actually did want to use it, which gives that thing another life and it makes it more, I don't know, it makes it a better thing in my opinion. Things that have a use are better things. Things that don't have a purpose are forgotten about and sad, which, I mean, they're not real things, so it's not actually sad, but I think you know what I'm trying to say. But the other more common thing, especially nowadays, is buying stuff that is actually garbage or really poor quality, because that is so, so easy to do nowadays, especially because companies are tricking you into thinking something is not garbage, and then it arrives and it's just cheap. I've been really careful not to do that more recently, but I'm sure there's something that I got that I was like, well, dammit, this is just garbage. What was something? Hmm. I'm looking at the stuff that's on my desk, but that's mostly stuff that I use. I'm sure there was some things that break or whatever, but I have a story from a coworker who didn't have a scale. Actually, I don't have a scale either, but he wanted to get a scale so he could weigh himself, and he got a very cheap one online, and it came, he stepped on it, and it just shattered. He didn't even put all of his weight on it. He just put a foot on it, and it just broke. It just shattered. Like, that's a piece of garbage. You bought, with real money, a piece of garbage that just goes right into the bin. The same exact thing happens all the time, especially with the rise of things like Temu and Shane, I think is the clothing company that just tears down. And this pattern of consumerism has been going on for quite a while. And it is really not great because it costs more money if you have to rebuy something every five months because they just break. And it's also just makes a ton of waste. Right, now in the US at least, the average garment, so a piece of clothing is worn like seven times before it's thrown away. And that is insane to me. I wear my shirts for years before they like have a hole in them or something. And then even if I do wanna get rid of a shirt that still works, which, I don't, does that happen? Do I? No, I have gotten rid of some shirts. I, and if it's still a functional shirt, I try to donate it somewhere so that at least it might get a second life. Although there's so much donated clothes now in the US that a lot of it just gets thrown into the garbage anyways because it's just so, so much. But at least trying to donate it is, I guess, better than throwing it away. Although, here in Mexico, that is not as easy. There is not really a culture of donations and stuff, which is a little too bad, because I really like secondhand stores, thrift shops, and that sort of thing, because you can not only find good deals on stuff, but you can also find really interesting stuff that has more character. So a really common secondhand store in the U.S. is called Goodwill. And Goodwill always has like weird stuff, because it's like from people's houses. You get books that have a little bit of use on them, that are cheap and strange. It's like an edition of a book from 2001, and it's like a little beat up, but it's a book, it works, right? Or you get a, you can buy board games there that sometimes have a piece or two missing, which is sort of annoying, but also then you like replace that piece with something from your house and you get like this interesting board game for a third of the price. Or clothes there almost always are a little bit weirder. Like you can find totally normal clothes, but you get like a little bit of character in the clothes. Something that you can't find in a department store where everything looks identical. And so I, yeah, I guess that's sort of a summary of how I try to buy things. I try to buy things that are of good quality so they don't have to buy anything else again, even if it's gonna cost me more money. I like to buy things that are used, although I'm not really able to do that now, sadly. But I also just like to really ask myself if it's something that I need or if it's something that I just want right now. And then if it's something that I want, I try to do a little bit of extra work to get it, either more research or if there's sort of a DIY way where I can maybe build part of it myself or make it an interesting project or something, because I feel like that process of thinking about it really makes me more aware of what I buy instead of just going, yep, that's the one, and then snapping it off. or whatever. But anyways, that's all the time that I have for today. Thank you so much for listening to this episode. I hope that you enjoyed it. And if you have a second, write me down in the comments what you like to do when trying to buy stuff. And I'll see you again tomorrow for another episode. Bye.
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