Picture of games on a shop shelf

Why we keep buying more - Part 2: Managing expectations

In the run-up to Christmas, I was struck again by this thought: what are my or my family's expectations for Christmas? Should there be candles, decorations and a pile of presents? Do I buy something or not? Why we keep buying more - Part 2: Managing expectations -article will go through expectations and how to manage them. This explains a part why we buy more all the time, apart from the expendable consumables goods. Managing expectations helps with decluttering and organising your home. It is part of the communication that allows us to agree on our common expectations.

This article is part of the Why do we buy? -series of articles, which I want to take up as professional organizer that has M.Sc. in Business and Economics. I have been marketing and selling products and services for more than twenty years, so I have both a scientific and experiential background as a consumer and professional in consumption and purchasing behaviour. For the last few years I have also worked as a professional organiser with families with children.

Who writes here?

The blog is written by a marketing pro-turned-professional-organiser, a mother of three, Henna Paakinaho from Pirkanmaa, Finland. I have strong track record managing both home and demanding career in busy years. Through Ruuhkaton I help my clients to focus on their everyday life instead of unnecessary stuff. Nice to have you here!

Let's first consider expectations and how to manage them. At the end of the article there are tips for shaping expectations with children.

From the content, you can jump to the point you want.

Is the purchase in line with my expectations?

When I was a child, I expected to receive lots of presents at Christmas. Even then, gifts were opened quickly and then admired with devotion throughout the Christmas holidays. At some point, however, they became more like cupboard stuffing, later clutter and ballast.

It was obvious to me that gifts should be bought and given. Physical gifts of goods.

Now, as an adult, I understand that less (stuff) would have been more. But the era encouraged abundance, just as it still does. Our expectation is that we buy something daily, weekly and at least monthly, usually physical objects. This is so ingrained in our culture that we don't question it very often. It's only when the buying and the goods become household clutter.

What is certain is that if you buy more than you can comfortably fit in your home, you're bound to run into problems at some point. That's why in this article we'll focus on managing expectations.

Picture of games on a shop shelf

One in, one out technique keeps the status quo

Stop for a moment and think, what does the flow of goods mean to you on a day-to-day basis? Do you perhaps have a new item coming through the door every day or every week? I would argue that in most families with children, this happens weekly and the number of units coming in can be several at a time.

If you had a pair of gloves, a small car, a Lego puzzle, a school craft, a lottery prize, a pencil or a 10-year lasting bottle of turpentine coming in every week, you'd have 52 new units a year. If all of these came in every week, there would be 364 newcomers in a year. In ten years you would own over three thousand new items, in addition to the old ones.

It is clear that the flow out must be kept at the same intensity in order to maintain the status quo. But what if you have already built up a backlog of stuff and clutter, and the home doesn't really work now either? You'll have to declutter twice as hard, maybe even five times as much, to achieve the functionality you crave in your everyday life.

No need to feel guilty if you now realise you don't have the situation under control yet. No, because now we are just observing. When you realise what your expectations are, you can start to shape them.

The observations allow you to take responsibility and decide how you live your daily life. You can carry on as before, if it's OK with you and your family. If it's not, your observations will help you change your daily life.

Managing goods is a heavy job

This one important observation can save you more time than any household appliance or washing machine ever could. Stop the current of stuff in, or at least keep it to a minimum, and you'll save yourself a lot of decluttering work in the future.

This also has a direct impact on energy levels, as the constant maintenance and decluttering of goods consumes a huge amount of energy.

It's easy to agree, it seems logical! And it's easy until your child brings home a bag of autumn crafts from nursery school, your spouse clears out the computer bag of pencil (perfectly functional pens) or you get some really cute stuff (unsolicited!) as gifts from the online shop. In the evening hours, you might even click up a few more little purchases from the online shop to brighten up your grey everyday life. Ouch.

This is where managing your expectations will save you from this trouble.

What is expectation management?

Managing expectations means that we change the way we think about the way things are or the outcome of things. Expectations are thus set at a realistic level in advance of realisation, thus preventing disappointment caused by a mismatch between expectations and realism. Expectation management resets unrealistic expectations to the right level.

Communication is a big part of managing expectations. It's important to be clear and talk about things as they are. This is also the message from Shame researcher Brenen Brown .

By being clear and telling our desires directly, we are actually being kind in our relationships. For many, this idea is quite a lot to work on. However, wouldn't it be nicer for everyone to communicate our own needs and expectations before the amount of junk in the home makes us tantrum and rage at the rest of the family?

In the context of the flow of goods in the home, expectations can be expressed as:

"We can't have new goods now without similar goods leaving, because the goods and housework already takes up too much of our time and energy",

"We can't fit any more stuff in, because we want to fit into our own home",

"We're on a shopping strike so we don't have time to clear out our homes first. I can put your wish on the shopping list and we'll consider it next month." etc.

What difference does one pencil or fifteen make?

Continuing with the idea of pouring pencils from the bottom of a bag onto the table: for many of us, the primary idea is that there should, can or may be a lot of pens in the home, even several hundred. Then there is no need to buy them, and keeping pens is frugal.

But if we stop to think about it, logistically this makes no sense. Why house a ten-year supply of pens in your home to save you around €2 a year when you don't need to buy a new pen? Why can't the warehouse be in a shop? Wouldn't it be ecological to make pens available to others immediately?

But pens only take up a small space! Yes, as a single category. There may be hundreds or thousands of these individual categories, so that at worst these "little savings and straws" are already taking up several square metres of your home, your small storage and cupboard space. Out of your expensive living space.

15 Moomin dolls stacked in a row in two layers. Managing expectations helps you to prune and size up your home.

You might fill a third of your cupboards with this kind of stuff, so it does matter how many pens or X's you have. Note also that these stashes haunt your mind, because human as a species likes to take care of their possessions.

I won't give up working pens - and other limiting expectations

It's the same with toys. Make-up. Giveaways. Baking utensils. Tools. Not to mention clothes.

What if the expectation was that one or three would be enough? Anything over that would be a wasteful burden in your daily life. In the hobby categories you particularly love, the number could be higher, but not several dozen times higher.

What kind of buffer should you have to feel safe, to make your stock economically and space-wise reasonable? What kind of change would you accept today?

Expectation management helps with decluttering and organising your home, as it allows you to work on your beliefs.

Managing your own expectations about the amount of goods in your home

If you think about your own expectations, do you think one cup, plate, pen or pair of shoes per person is a good number? Is it too little? How about five or ten pieces? Should you buy new items every year, every month or every day? Or when they break? What do these items or quantities say about a person?

As we reflect on our own expectations, we suddenly realise how skewed our thinking is. Where do our expectations come from?

A hundred years ago, people owned relatively little. Clothes were even credited to family heirlooms. Dishes, shoes, vehicles, books and furniture were few and far between. Expectations were in line with this, a person could move with a suitcase.

But most of us want more, a bit of variety, security and comfort. Somewhere between that minimalism and the current overconsumption, there is a point where you have the comforts of home, but stuff doesn't control your life and your schedule. As a professional organizer, I try to help you find your own space that gets to look like you.

In the photo: trained professional organiser Henna Paakinaho from Pirkkala, Finland

If you need tailored organisational help in Pirkanmaa, Finland for your home, I'm happy to help. I am a trained professional organiser Henna Paakinaho and organise homes via my company The Flow of Home .

I offer free consultation and a satisfaction guarantee for my work. Call 044 324 9483 or send me a message henna@ruuhkaton.fi

You can start to manage your own expectations, for example through experimentation. Read our minimalism-experiment in the kitchen and on home hushing. From the blog of Ruuhkaton you'll find many articles to get you started with your experiments and I'll be happy to help you organise at your home if time is not on your side.

Active reflection on thought patterns really helps. Also look at when you get the impulse to buy: "Love the new shoes! I so need them!" when you already have 20 different options in your closet?

Where does this expectation come from? Could it be, frankly, a need for a sense of appreciation, a need for rest, a need for excitement and adventure, or something other than a clear need for new stuff? Boredom?

We spend more than 3 hours a day on household chores and that is in line with our expectations

I think one of the most interesting culturally-linked expectations we have is that we expect to spend many hours every day doing housework and household chores. It's such a norm for us that we don't question it. But some of us are symptomatic of doing too much, but we don't really understand what's wrong.

Finnish women do on average 3 hours 17 minutes of housework a day. The time spent by men is slightly less. So this is on top of the time spent working and with the family. And we wish we could do a lot of things, but there just doesn't seem to be enough time. Yet we do not readily question that this amount of domestic work, including the amount of material work, should and could be reduced or delegated.

What if our expectation was that 2.5 hours of daily housework would keep the house running? We would be stunned, perhaps even angry, when someone suggested we spend almost an extra hour of our precious time on such a task.

At worst, however, our stock of goods take hours a week from us. Hours that most of us could do without if only our stock levels were more moderate.

The more items of clothing, pairs of shoes or dishes that go through the home maintenance cycle, the more minutes are wasted when you consider that you could live comfortably with up to 90 % less.

Expectation management to help with overconsumption seasons

Christmas, birthdays or any kind of shopping season is always around the corner and weighs on the mind of the default organiser. Now that you've realised that your own expectations are malleable, it's time to start working on your children's expectations.

If you've been in the habit of buying a good from the shop every now and then, buying several toys as gifts or entering a lottery, and your household toys have never been decluttered, it's best to take baby steps.

Because children expect the same thing to continue, and naturally it feels bad to change what seems like a nice activity when the understanding of cause and effect is not yet at adult level. If, on the other hand, you are an experienced declutterer, you can tailor your expectation management to your current level.

What helps when you're ashamed of your home? The picture shows the hallway of my home, with shoes, clothes and a backpack scattered in vague places.

However, a sure sign is that if toys are flooding the floor and the family is tense, it's time to make a change.

Modify expectations with these techniques:

Expectations can be shaped by principles such as. Choose one to work on at a time:

One in, one out

Before making any new purchases or gifts to bring to your home, you need to weed out as many units from this category. If you can't bear to give anything up now, don't worry, wait and repeat practising. Decluttering is a skill among others, so it can be learned.

Learning requires patience, will, support, tools and an understanding that skills are worth learning. So learning to declutter must be a priority for the whole family.

During learning this principle, you can buy gifts such as experiences or give money, something intangible. Be persistent and give this experiment enough time.

The wish list and how to work on it

This is a good method, especially with children who are used to abundance, and it gets easier with practice. However, you need to be persistent and communicate often what this means.

For example, at Christmas, the Christmas toy magazine arrives and is even read together in devotion. EVERYTHING is wonderful and SUPER important to receive as a gift. The adult can admire with the child and look at the toys.

However, at one point you need to state that only a small proportion of wishes are fulfilled. You can be vague on this point, but say it out loud anyway. It may be annoying, but you can justify this on the basis of the size of the home, environmental responsibility or any other point that is important to you. It's good for children to learn how adults frame their consumption choices.

The next step is to make a long list. You can list everything children want as a present. Again, it is repeated that only a small part will be given and, if necessary, justify.

How many toys is too many? Small toys can be allocated a separate tin

In a week or two, a short list will be formed: you can already limit the number. If you buy yourself two gifts and a loved one buys one or x amount, the short list will be max 2x the amount of planned gifts, maybe even exactly the amount you plan to buy.

You can repeat this exercise until you have only the most important ones on the child's list. This may annoy and irritate them, but it's a lesson in boundaries. One can't fit an infinite number of toys into ones home and world.

From the short list, at least the most important wishes will be fulfilled. This method requires a lot of emotional work from both children and adults, but even these skills can be learned through repetition.

Delimitation of toys

Children's expectations of the number of toys available are directly proportional to the number allowed by adults.

You can limit the toys available to your child up to into four toy categories, because from the point of view of the quality of play, the quality of play increases when the child has fewer options.

Depending on the family, other toys can be left in the capsule for adult management or even decluttered if that suits your family.

However, I do not recommend removing toys without a consensual decluttering with the child in families with children over 1 year old.

Hushing the home before the rush season

The home hushing technique works great before the festive season, as it involves completely stripping a defined area to give the mind time to reset.

You can also do this in the children's room, again in collaboration with the children. Read the previous (Mieli ry) wrote an article about this technique on the blog.

After the hushing, your child can return the most important items and together you may be positively surprised by which items feel important. The rest can be decluttered or capsulated depending on your family's situation.

Using the shopping list

Managing expectations helps with decluttering and organising your home, but you usually need a concrete tool to practice it. I find the shopping list really effective and handy for shaping the minds of both adults and children.

The shopping list outsources all your wishes and their management. A wish cannot be fulfilled until it has been on the list for 30 days. This allows your mind to get involved, and you can see if the purchase is really a need or a desire. Because desires fade quickly, but the real need remains and lasts.

It's easy for children to grasp the concept of a shopping list and that all you are buying now is what's on the list. The exercise may not be fun, but at least you'll have some back-up with the list.

The purchase strike

A shopping ban is an extreme, but highly informative measure. If you want to monitor your own behaviour, expectations and patterns of behaviour, apply a shopping strike. You can limit it to a specific category, such as clothes, or limit it in time, for example to one month.

You may find that you have expectations and patterns of behaviour that you were not aware of. A shopping strike can also trigger a range of emotions that are worth stopping to wonder about.

Like a shopping list, a shopping ban is a good way to help children understand shopping and how to limit it in a concrete way.

Changing personal and family consumption expectations takes time and effort

If this expectation-shifting is making you sweat and you feel like there's nothing you can do to change your family's mindset, take a breath. If you want change, start.

Heart-shaped figure made of PlusPlus blocks

Start small somewhere. It could be a change in your own spending habits, starting a conversation, or trying a little hushing. We are all so new to this overconsumption doctrine that we can only experiment.

In a few years we will be wiser about what works for our daily lives and our homes. One thing is for sure, if you are already suffering from a cluttered daily life and continue with the same old flow of stuff, your home will accumulate even more clutter and things to manage.

To change your daily life, you need to tackle the root cause, one small step at a time.

Why we keep buying more - Part 2: Managing expectations

So why do we keep buying more and more? This article has looked at managing expectations and the amount of housework in their perspective.

Let me repeat: we buy more all the time if that is our expectation of how we should operate.

We model this behaviour for our children, and by following us, they learn to navigate as future consumers.

Our observations and their interpretations matter. If a home full of stuff is the norm for us and we tolerate piles, they inevitably shape our expectations and our family's expectations of what our home should be like.

If we can tolerate a lot of housework and chores, we expect to spend a lot of time on them. We don't question that it could be otherwise. A new generation will grow up with this assumption, following our example. The same happens if we buy more stuff instead of doing emotional labor, or because we can't find our previous stuff in the abundance of our home.

The professional organiser helps the customer to stop the flow of goods

Decluttering and goods work can be done alone or with the support of another. It's worth having at least a friend to help sometimes, as it usually makes the mental side of decluttering easier and an extra pair of hands is usually helpful, especially in a family with children.

You can also buy help from a professional organiser, especially if the job seems overwhelming or you don't quite understand why it's not working. I also address your expectations by asking what kind of everyday life do you want to live?

If you want a lighter workload and clarity, you'll have to rethink your own expectations. You can't buy or bring home stuff unless something else is removed.

Decluttering is hard work, so eventually you can choose to either constantly cut back before new purchases or cut out almost all purchases, freeing up a huge amount of energy for everything else in your life.

The good news is that we can still shape and manage expectations. There are a number of techniques for doing this from the point of view of managing the amount of goods in the home, such as those discussed above. You can choose to expect something different this year: a quieter home, a more serene daily life and less to manage.

As a professional organiser, I can sum up my advice to anyone looking for a new, more relaxed daily life: start with one technique and persevere. The most effective way to start is to stop the tide of incoming stuff. Just being aware of this and outlining your own aspirations is a huge step.

Good luck decluttering and reshaping your own purchasing expectations!

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