The Psychology Behind Buying New Items

September 23, 2019September 21, 2019 / Yen-Van Tran / Leave a comment

09.23.2019

0600

The psychological triggers that cause consumerism is a powerful strategy that companies use to target shoppers. As humans, sometimes we make decisions that the heart justifies. When companies know what these heart triggers are, they are in an influential position to offer something your heart will say yes to. Buying decisions are as emotional as they are logical. By understanding why we tend to buy new items, will help in understanding how to curb that need and want.

To understand consumerism, we have to take a step back to understand how we are targeted by big corporations and what tactics they use to catch our attention.

WHAT ARE THE STRATEGIES OF MARKETING

There are a few strategies of marketing that are frequently used. There are many reasons why people purchase new items, but there are the Top 5 reasons why people tend to buy products.

To Belong or Be Relevant. We have an emotional need to want to feel like we belong to a bigger picture and to feel relevant. Some people buy brands when they see ‘cool’ people in the advertisements, because they want mimic them. People unconsciously associate a certain personality with the brand based upon the ads they see, and if this personality is appealing to them, they buy the brand thinking that this action will bring them closer to this personality.
To Be Right or Not Be Wrong. Some purchases are driven by pride. We want to be able to share positive recommendations with our peers that display our own wisdom in having made that choice in the first place. According to the Social Proof Theory, items become more appealing when they are desired by others. This lets people to sometimes buy products that they don’t need, just because of their perceived attractiveness.
To Fulfill One of the Four Basic Needs. These are the four states that humans are programmed to pursue, and these needs drive many of our decisions. Shopping can be a means to reach certain goals.
- Health: “I want to drop 10 pounds after the holidays.”
- Wealth: “I want to feel more energetic in leading our team and business.”
- Relationships: “I want to feel confident and ready to date again.”
- Spirituality/Happiness: “Love the skin you’re in everyday!”
To Have Security. To feel safe is an innate emotional need for us. Some people go shopping to escape from bad moods, bad days, a feeling of uneasiness, etc. Others buy brands to attract attention, such as a person who may buy expensive cars to improve their perceived status. Perhaps a person might buy certain clothes to appeal to the other sex.
For Memories and Loyalty. There’s an emotional attachment to our memories. The memories that we value the most, are the ones we will tend to draw from.

WHO THEY ARE TARGETING

People who make purchasing decisions rooted as much in emotional impulses as logical facts.
- Purchasing anything, is as emotional as it is logical.
Buyers who have egos.
- When making purchase decisions for themselves, buyers will naturally think about themselves and what they stand to gain by buying the product
Buyers who have a greater commitment to fleeting losses than to seek gains.
- Pointing out what a buyer stands to potentially gain from buying their product, and what they might miss out on, if they don’t.
Buyers who are naturally suspicious
- Selling experts always preach the importance of establishing a relationship of trust and credibility. If they can gain your trust, the sale is almost complete.
Buyers who respond psychologically to visual elements and stories.
- The logical side of buyers craves facts and figures, that’s why numbers (price, technical specifications, etc.) are featured so prominently in brochures.
Buyers who crave value
- Buyers are perked up by the prospect of somehow ‘winning’ the battle against the seller. By gaining as much value from the sale as much as possible, the buyer will feel that they walked away from the sale gaining more than what was presented.
Buyers who travel in packs
- Buyers have a herd mentality, when opting to move together in large groups. They will naturally be swayed by what a great number of their peers have done, as opposed to standing alone.

By understanding what triggers us as consumers into purchasing new items, it helps us recognize where we might be weak when it comes to buying anything. Self reflection is always a process, and it’s an ongoing journey to understand ourselves better. I have had to reflect on my own purchasing habits and tendencies, so I am no different than anyone else.

When I started to declutter my life, I really examined the products and items I no longer used, but I had not let go of. I don’t like to waste my money, and I doubt anyone else does either. As long as you understand what triggers you as a consumer, you can gain more control over your purchasing power and your spending habits.

Quick T-Shirt Pocket

September 11, 2018September 26, 2018 / Yen-Van Tran / Leave a comment

09.07.2018

0600

Materials:

One T-shirt (or two, but definitely at least one)

Tools:

Sewing machine
Sewing Kit

Living a Zero Waste life means that I create simple solutions for simple problems since I don’t want to go buy anything new or seek out another possession to take care of.

So I usually carry my phone around with me when I’m doing certain types of household tasks. These tasks don’t require a lot of vigorous movement, but I’m definitely moving around. A lot of the time it’s annoying to remember to carry the phone from one place to another when I’m running around the house and if my hands are dirty, I really don’t want to touch my phone. I needed a quick solution where I could carry the phone along with my keys without much hassle. I didn’t want to go out and buy a separate cell phone holder strap that would wrap around my arm. I have one for workouts, and that strap holds down my cell phone securely since I’m running. But I just needed a quick solution where I could carry around my phone and my keys easily for a few hours.

My quick solution was to see my t-shirt sleeve in half and create a pocket. my t-shirt sleeves are usually longer than I need them to be. This gave me the extra material to work with. I simply folded my sleeve in half and pinned the sleeve all the way around.

Depending on the width of your cell phone, measure that distance out on the top of the sleeve. Just make sure you divide the width of your phone in half and center the opening on the top of the sleeve.

For the other sleeve, I made the opening just about the same size since I knew I was going to use the other pocket for keys or my credit card.

Then just sew the sleeve from the front to the back or back to the front, making sure you still leave enough room for your cell phone. Then tie off the open thread ends.

If you put smaller items in the short pockets, they tend to fall towards the bottom of the sleeve. This can be annoying for some but for me it gives me a sense of security knowing my items won’t fall out. I just need to go fishing for my keys at the end of the day.

So there you have it. My quick and dirty solution to built in t-shirt pockets. I like to move the pockets towards the front of my body for easier access to my cell phone, but that’s simply more comfortable for me. I also will sometimes secure the t-shirt using a binder clip, that I’ll use to clip my t-shirt to my bra.

Rollup Christmas Tree

November 28, 2017November 15, 2018 / Yen-Van Tran / Leave a comment

11.28.2017

0600

Materials:

8 baseboards at 28″ long
15 pieces of 12″ long thin twine rope
Extra: Matches to melt the ends of the twine together so it doesn’t come apart over time)

Tools:

Miter Saw
Drill & Drill Bits (Need 1/8″ drill bit for all holes)

Measure each base board at appropriate length
Organize each baseboard to it’s general location on the tree formation and mark the corners of where you plan to make the 45° cuts. I made my marks for my 45° cuts on the bottom edges of my baseboard pieces so my baseboard lengths would stay consistent.
Using a Miter Saw, take each baseboard and cut each end of each baseboard at 45°
Starting with the top of the tree, mark off each of the holes for each piece.

Drill each hole to create openings
Using the twine pieces, start tying the pieces together. To keep each space consistent, I tied the knots towards the end of the rope and the same amount of twine end to melt later.

It’s a simple tree where the clean up is just rolling up the tree. When I put up the Christmas lights, I simple wrap them around the edges of the pieces. I usually go in one direction so that the lines are more evenly spaced. Same as my blog post Minimalist Christmas Tree, I hang my ornaments off of the lights. For the more fragile ornaments, I hang them from paperclips and then hang them from the cord.

This was created as an option to not use push pins on the wall, but it was an interesting take on a holiday tree as well. Give it a try if you’re interested, and you can even change out the material I used too.

Minimalist Christmas Tree

November 21, 2017November 15, 2018 / Yen-Van Tran / 5 Comments

11.21.2017

0600

Materials:

Christmas lights (Used a 25′-0″ length Christmas Light cord)
Ornaments
Paper clips (Used 14 for the tree + a few extra)

Tools:

Measuring Tape

Christmas is one of those holidays that comes with more decorating than the others. It’s not just the food that’s plentiful, but the decorations as well. Which means of course, that I was determined to minimize my decorations for this holiday.

My family has always used a fake tree so we always knew exactly how much mess to expect when decorating for this holiday. However, I wanted to figure out a way to simplify that. This lead to my Christmas tree design, made up of Christmas lights.

I wanted the base to be 36″ wide, simply because it was the width of a standard door. For a 25′-0″ cord I was using, it seemed like a good base point. I first plugged in my cord and measured out 36″ in the direction I wanted my tree to be located, and then 6″ up. At that point, I placed a pushpin. I then hooked a paperclip to my cord so that it would reach the pushpin. This 36″ length of the cord would create the bottom branch of the tree.

From there, I measured out 34″ of the next section of the cord and moved in the opposite direction of the bottom branch and measured 6″ up, where I placed the next push pin. I straightened my 34″ section of the cord and placed a paper clip onto it and hooked it onto that pushpin.

I repeated these steps, for each branch of the tree, where each time I subtracted two inches for each branch and measured six inches up to place the next push pin. The height of your tree will really depend on the width of your bottom branch. If you have a longer length of cord and you want the bottom branch to be wider, you can do just that. However, if you have a longer cord and you still start out at a 36″ wide bottom branch, your tree will be taller, which may look just as beautiful.

If you really want to test out how far your can push this design, link up two cords and see how tall you can make it. However, the longer the cord, the wider the base should be. The sequence for each branch will still be the same. The height of this tree ended up at about six feet high from the floor.

I hung my ornaments around each light and distributed them as needed. If you have trouble hanging the ornaments up, hang the lighter ornaments on the lights themselves and hang the heavier ornaments on the pushpins. If you have delicate or fragile ornaments, consider double looping them around a Christmas light or using a paperclip to hang them up by securing it to the branch (the way you secured the previous paper clips to the pushpins).

A lot of my ornaments are fairly light and I create ornaments from old keychains I’ve collected over the years. You can click on that blog post, Christmas Ornaments Hack and read about how I made them. It’s interesting when I stand back and look at the tree, because even the keychain pendants have a unique memories tied to them.

You can place a blanket in front of the tree to place presents on and it’ll still look like and regular Christmas Tree. I like to wrap my gifts in reusable fabric and reusable fabric bags and place them under the tree. I wrote about how to create a Zero Waste Christmas or an Eco-Friendly Christmas, in my other blog posts and you can check it out if you’d like any ideas.

Well there you have it, my minimalist Christmas tree. If this works for you that’s great! I hope this blog post inspires you or jogs up some ideas for you.

Eco-Friendly Christmas

October 15, 2017August 12, 2018 / Yen-Van Tran / 8 Comments

10.15.2017

0600

Having an Eco-friendly holiday isn’t as daunting as it sounds. It might sound complicated because the concept is different, but it’s actually pretty simple. So for each holiday there are basic aspects of the holiday celebration I like to check off: decorations, food and entertainment. I don’t always cover all three categories equally and majority of my focus will usually be on the food.

Decorations tend to be covered easily being that Christmas is such a huge holiday celebrated. Honestly, any type of decoration that is compostable or reusable is a good idea. Here are some ideas for zero waste holiday.

Decoration Ideas:
1. Seasonal
  1. Seasonal leaves, fruit, create a centerpiece suing branches and colorful seasonal leaves.
2. Christmas
  1. Use existing jars filled with some seasonal and colorful leaves to decorate the table
  2. Use branches and leaves from outside to decorate the table surface

Zero Waste Food
1. Consider using fresh fruits and vegetables as ingredients in your dishes. You can compost the skin or the non edible pieces after
2. Buy your ingredients from the bulk aisle or bulk bins
3. For ingredients that usually come in packaging, consider making your own homemade version or looking for it in paper, aluminum or glass packaging
4. Share recipes or give the gift of different types of dishes to one another

Gift ideas can be tricky for this holiday since it’s based around an iconic tree as well as what surrounds it on Christmas Day. However, here are a few ideas for zero waste gifts, you might want to consider. Check social media sites (Groupon, Living Social, Ticketmaster, etc.) for great deals for events and activities for family and friends during the holidays.

Gift Ideas:
1. Compostable Gifts
  1. Food, snacks, bulk candy wrapped in reusable packaging or compostable packaging
  2. Buy bulk foods and create a recipe kit for a gift
  3. Seasonal fruit, fruit basket gift
2. Gift of Goods and Products
  1. Consider checking out thrift stores to find a gift for the recipient
  2. If you want to give a new gift, look for gifts with no packaging or recyclable paper packaging
3. Gift of Experiences
  1. Sporting events ( football, soccer, tennis, gymnastics, baseball, etc.)
  2. Theme parks (check for local theme parks near you or near the recipient)
  3. Outdoor experiences (pedle boating, wind sailing, kayaking, rowboats, canoes, skydiving, zip lining, rock climbing, trampoline time, golfing, etc.)
  4. Gift card or money for food & drinks (breakfast, lunch, dinners, coffee, tea, desserts, wine bar, wine/beer tour)
  5. Gift card or money for activities (cooking classes, yoga, spin class, kickboxing, zip lining, etc.)
  6. Gift card/money for events (museums, concerts, festivals, fairs, movies)
  7. Gift card or money to treat yourself (spa, massage, facial)
4. Service Ideas (This will differ based on location, so check your local listings)
  1. Volunteer for a charity or organization that will help hand out food during the holidays
  2. Donate toys, clothes, coats, shoes to an organization that will help distribute them this season
  3. Volunteer your time in a hospital, care home, nursing home to those who may not have family near or at all

Gift Wrapping:
1. Reusable cloth gift bags with string to tie bows (if wanted)
2. Fabric sheets or bandanas to wrap and tie around gifts
3. For the larger gifts, I’ll use a pillowcase or really large bed sheets to wrap the gifts
4. For medium sized gifts, I’ll wrap the gift in an extra t-shirt.

Entertainment during the holidays can be daunting as well. Usually families have kids around or simply need entertainment playing while the day is happening.

Entertainment
1. Movies- if you are able to stream movies, there are a few great resources to stream holiday movies during this time. Check YouTube or other streaming media, they usually have full movies uploaded to watch.
2. Board Games – Ask your guest if they have any board games to play or would want to bring for the kids to share and play with
3. Card Games – these games are always fun because a deck of cards can be really versatile

I hope this outline helped to brainstorm ideas for you. This is an overall idea list and if you want to check out other holiday blog posts, check out these holiday blog posts from these websites:

Suburban Salt- How to Cure Olives for the Holidays
Little Sprouts Learning – Holiday Gifts Make Garden
Ever Change Productions – Christmas Gift Mason Jar Recipes
Curbside Overhaul – DIY- Reversible Holiday Sign With Scrap Wood
Pink Paperdoll – Decorate With Squash

Zero Waste Christmas

December 1, 2016August 12, 2018 / Yen-Van Tran / 3 Comments

12.01.2016
0800

My family has used a fake Christmas tree for the month of December since I was brought into this world. I’m not sure if we simply did not want to go get a fresh chopped down tree or if it was more that when my family came to the United States, buying a fake Christmas tree was just more convenient. Either way, I’ve never had a real Christmas tree, and as I got older, I understood the extra steps needed to take to keep a real tree in your home for a whole month.

After the Christmas, the sidewalks around my neighborhood had dead Christmas trees laying out on the sidewalks or street curbs for pickup. However, this was not always the proper way of discarding Christmas trees in accordance with each city’s municipal recycling center. (Check with your local city’s municipal recycling center for holiday recycling items) After seeing all of the trees laying out on the street curbs, I was thankful that my family used a fake tree after all these years. In fact, we never seemed to buy new holiday decorations either.

We use the same holiday decorations and the same tree that we’ve used for years. Unfortunately, there was a time when we had family staying with us (let’s just say that they’re not the brightest bulb in the family) who had decided to take it upon themselves to throw away all of my family’s Christmas ornaments and replace them with brand new ornaments. They didn’t comprehend the concept that ornaments hold sentimental value and also mark a point in time when it was brought into the home. They saw our nineteen years of old ornaments as ugly and had no value, so why show it off. All of my brother’s and my childhood ornaments were tossed out, that included ornaments from when my parents first came to the United States too. For years after that, we slowly built up our ornament collection again.

This was when I started making ornaments from my family’s sentimental items that included small memorabilia we had collected over the years. (My next post will give you instructions on how I make key chains into ornaments- it’s actually very simple). Our tree is now covered in memories of vacation trips, landmark life events, graduations, jobs and companies we were once a part of, and so much more.

For gifts, we actually don’t give gifts to one another as much anymore. Counting the birthdays, mother’s day and Tet (Vietnamese New Years) celebrations, Christmas is just a time for our family to get together, watch movies and indulge in delicious holiday food. During the year, the items that each family member may need usually gets purchased throughout the year. We don’t really ever save up a wish list and make it known for the holiday. So here are some of the gift ideas as well as some gift wrapping ideas that I’ll go through to give as gifts…

Gift ideas- Zero waste ideas
1. Experience ideas
  1. Sporting events ( football, soccer, tennis, gymnastics, baseball, etc.)
  2. Theme parks (Great America, Raging Waters, Six Flags, Disneyland, etc.)
  3. Outdoor experiences (pedle boating, wind sailing, kayaking, rowboats, canoes, skydiving, zip lining, rock climbing, trampoline time, golfing)
  4. Gift card/money for food / drinks (breakfast, lunch, dinners, coffee / tea, desserts, wine bar, wine/beer tour)
  5. Gift card/money for activities (cooking classes, yoga, spin class, kickboxing, zip lining)
  6. Gift card/money for events (museums, concerts, festivals, fairs, movies)
  7. Gift card/money to treat yourself (spa, massage, facial)
2. Food gift ideas
  1. Main dishes, side dishes, trade food/drink recipes
3. Fruit gift ideas
  1. Seasonal fruit, fruit basket gift
4. Zero waste shopping starter kits
  1. Cloth produce bags, shopping bags, reusable jars, water soluble crayons to write PLU codes onto the bags and jars
  2. Help tare the weight on all of the reusable items
5. Bulk bathroom gifts
  1. Soap bars, bulk soap, bulk bath salts, recipes for homemade makeup
6. Bulk kitchen gifts
  1. Bulk staple foods, bulk spices, combination of some bulk spices, create a meal kit from bulk items for a loved one
Wrapping Ideas
1. Reusable cloth gift bags with string to tie bows (if wanted)
2. Fabric sheets/bandanas to wrap and tuck around gifts
Service Ideas (This will differ based on location, so check your local listings)
1. Volunteer for a charity or organization that will help hand out food during the holidays
2. Donate toys, clothes, coats, shoes to an organization that will help distribute them this season
3. Volunteer your time in a hospital, care home, nursing home to those who may not have family near or at all

Here are links to some more Zero Waste Christmas ideas from other bloggers:

T-Shirt Quilt Process

September 28, 2016August 12, 2018 / Yen-Van Tran / Leave a comment

09.28.2016

0800

Materials:

Old Comforter you want to use as the backing for the quilt
Enough t-shirts to cover the back of the comforter easily
Sewing machine

Tools:

Sewing machine

Not everyone in my family is big on donating items as quickly as I do. I don’t mind that, so I wanted to come up with a solution that would satisfy the use of the items but still make more room in the closet. In this case, the clothing item were the cotton t-shirt collections my family had accumulated. My older brother has a small collection of printed shirts from years of working for different companies or they were from different social events. I have kept a small collection for my mother over the years from elementary school t-shirts, to college t-shirts. I kept these because they marked a point in my life history that was significant. It bothered me that my t-shirts were stuffed into a bag in my old closet, so I wanted to make good use of them.

For both collections, I decided to make a t-shirt quilt for each family member. My brother’s shirts filled up one quilt and by combining my t-shirts as well as some of my mom’s, I would be able to create a single quilt for her. I found my brother’s old comforter which had The Transformers print on it and used that as the backing for his. I used my old comforter which had The Wuzzles print on it, for my mom’s quilt.

A few examples of t-shirt quilts that I’ve come across, suggest to cut out perfect squares in which the logo or image is centered in the middle of the square. I didn’t want to use this method because I didn’t want to waste any t-shirt material. I didn’t see the point in having perfect squares when the images varied so much on where they were located on each shirt. Also, I knew I could overlap the rows and create a slightly thicker quilt by leaving the extra material in place.

I decided to make this process in bullet form since a formal post would be too long to read, so here it goes:

Cut off all of the sleeves and collars from each shirt. Put aside the shirt sleeves which have logos printed on them because you will include them in the quilt later on as gap fillers. Keep your scraps when you make this project because you never know when you may need the extra material to fill in gaps.
Lay out the rows to see how you want the over all tile pattern to sit on the quilt and move them around if necessary. (I wanted each color shirt to create a checkered pattern with their base color)
Gather the sets of t-shirt rows and placed them on the blanket in the order from the top of the quilt, to bottom of the quilt. (You can take a picture before you move the tiles from the final layout on the blanket too)
Start pinning the t-shirts together with the shirts all facing upright and face to face. During this time, you may notice that come of the “t-shirt trimming” might be crooked, but that’s fine because that’s why you have the filler pieces.
Sew the tiles together in each row of shirts so that the rows become one piece.
Lay each row on the blanket as you want them to look and start pinning the rows to the blanket. Use as many sewing pins as necessary and be careful, because you may get pricked by those. Keep in mind that these pins may come apart once you move the blanket to the sewing machine, so you may want to pin the fabric together and give extra room on the pin for movement error.
For the areas that I saw were lacking in t-shirt fabric, I added in the t-shirt fillers. This usually happed around the edge of the blanket.
In order for me to fit the comforter into the sewing machine, I rolled it up on one side and sewed it through like this: (you my want to unravel it due to the weight of the blanket and that it may pull against the sewing machine as you feed it through)
Keep sewing, patient and you’ll finish. I sewed these tiles across the blanket. I have seen some people sew in a grid pattern along the tile edges. Since my tiles don’t line up exactly to the row above, I decided to only sew my tiles across the blanket.

This is a process and it takes time. There were a number of times when my sewing machine stitching backed up and I ended with a clump of thread on the backside of my quilt or when my needle broke twice. Just keep going and you’ll end up with the final product in no time. It’s an interesting project and you can put a spin on it however you like. This is a completely customized project which makes the intent that much more meaningful. I really am happy about how the blankets turned out and I know that my family is too.

Zero Waste Gifts

August 17, 2016August 12, 2018 / Yen-Van Tran / 1 Comment

08.17.2016

0800

I enjoy talking to people about the benefits of living a zero waste life. I enjoy it even more when they are also interested in transitioning to a zero waste life. When I do talk about this change, I like to help people jump-start their momentum into the routine of zero waste grocery shopping, so I usually gift jars with handmade produce bags. This is the reason why I sew so many, so I can give them away.

Talking about the lifestyle and the transition is a lot for one conversation. There a lot of areas in life to tackle and to hope that a stranger will pick up on all of the details in one conversation is unreasonable. This is why my gift of the handmade produce bags and jars specifically pertain to the grocery shopping task. It’s much easier to help them jump start their zero waste life with examples of what I use than to list a bunch of tasks to do- all at once. Tackling each area and room is going to be a big enough task, this is my way of easing them into the bulk grocery shopping.

And some people will not transition completely for a long time. Some may only be able to bulk grocery shop with certain items and may have to produce trash. This maybe due to medical reasons, physical location or perhaps resources aren’t available. Either way, a small change is still a change. As long as each person continues to move forward with their transition, it’s a point for the win column.

If you want some other Zero Waste Gift Options to get conversations started, check these out: