Thursday, October 23, 2014

How restriction breeds variety

Yesterday I attended a seminar about marketing. An interesting thing the referee noted was that overproduction is directly conditioned by the consumer's need for a full range of products until closing time. In bakeries for example this leads to lots of bread left over. In this case it isn't that bad actually because bakers can reprocess dry bread to a kind of flour which, added to the regular ingredients, gives their bread a longer shelf life.

Let's take this one step further. In a grocery store we can buy almost anything imaginable. But often we find ourselves buying inventories just to have a variety of products at home too. As a consequence of this we need enormous storage space in our kitchens and from time to time we find expired food we didn't use at all. This is not only a waste of money but also adds to the tons of groceries that merchants throw away on a daily basis.

The minimalist approach here is to limit the need for being able to choose. If you live near a grocery shop try to buy only what you know you'll definitely need. It will be very satisfying to see that you really use everything that's in your kitchen. I just started cutting down on my tea selection. So now I only have three different kinds at home and I only buy a new one when I run out of another. At the moment I am out of black tea which seemed unimaginable some weeks ago. But it feels so good to look forward to drinking it again while enjoying my cacao tea that has been waiting on my shelf for months to be discovered. Cheers!

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