Using Through

Field Notes No I.

09/04/2026

We all have propensities, and mine has been to stay put, finding my comfort through repetition and familiarity. 

Ten years ago, my then-boyfriend, now husband lent me his courage to leave our hometown in pursuit of growing into ourselves in San Francisco. After building a home, community, and careers around what interests us, the same is true again as we move to NYC—I can’t say I’d be so bold on my own.

Which has me thinking about the styles of living we’re prone to, and the circumstances that reinforce or shake us out of them.

As we’ve prepared for this move—loosely over the last couple of years and intensely over the last six months—I put my usual ways under interrogation. In conversation with my propensity to stay put, I decided it would be best to stop accumulating and start using through and shedding. In part to honor what I already own, but also to test my ability to be content and work with what’s in front of me.

This was around the same time I stopped giving facials to pursue the next version of TRS. I went cold credit card and quit buying clothes. I had always toyed with the idea, but never found enough reason. This abstinence showed me just how much accumulation had become part of my routine—searching for the next thing that might make me feel more myself, all while throwing on the same handful of oversized T-shirts every day.

I had never considered my shopping habits a problem, and yet. Browsing, collecting, hunting in person and online was a way I called in what’s next, whether persona or season. The innocent desire for self-expression, meeting the mounting reality of excess.

I felt annoyed with my consumeristic ways as I sorted through it all: give away, sell, donate, use. Touching all of your belongings is so confronting. Oh, the resources spent, just to decide something is, in fact, too tight and always has been. Get real. 

This act spilled into my medicine cabinet and pantry. Everywhere, I found myself asking, “Do I really want to pack this and see it on the other side?” And with a sharp pang, I realized I’d owned this half-used bottle of lotion for over a year and that unopened mustard for more.

Yikes. Is my attention so jammed that I can’t use what is perfectly good and mine before moving on? Not so much a concern of cleanliness, but of overindulgence. How embarrassingly Western.

Facing my accumulative propensities, I gave myself six months to use through what I own. Eating things in the pantry I had absolved myself of noticing. Why was this so hard to do before? It’s here, and it’s perfectly good.

I kept telling myself, “Don’t be weird, just eat it.” I would choose one thing I’d been letting sit, then prepare fresh ingredients around it. Reaching far back into the pantry, honoring the pasta shells that didn’t deserve to be ignored like that. 

The dopamine snowballed. Using enough products to lubricate a family, I was on a roll. Every shower became an everything shower; baths a stew of oils and herbs and salts. Each morning I slicked my hair back with a cocktail of odds and ends. My scent rotating by the day, I worked my way through.

Every other day, another bottle recycled. Consuming, as a way of honoring.

I am writing this ten days out from the move. Clothes sorted, bottles down to their end, eating the last of my pantry staples for breakfast. And I am different. 

I’ve taken to the mantra “Break it down, break it all down.” This life, in this home, with these things, and these circumstances. I’m in the final stage of that process, each day cracking me open for a new reason.

Despite my desire to be nonchalant about it all, I’m still borrowing boldness from those near to me and who have done this before. I’m moving lighter and with intention, bringing who I am and what I own rather than starting over.

Breaking down, like digestion, the act of consuming to transform, in pursuit of continuing on and making room for what comes next.