I think I would have a hard time with this

I saw this story today. I think it is an interesting concept.
I think I would have a hard time actually doing it.

Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune
MINNEAPOLIS – Karen Heimdahl used to be part of the throngs that crowd Twin Cities-area malls at Christmastime. But this time, bound by the Compact -- a growing social movement in which members vow to buy nothing new for a year -- she hit used-book stores and consignment shops. For Christmas 2006, her husband received gadgets from Best Buy. This Christmas, he unwrapped a hand-powered coffee grinder that Karen scoured eight antique stores to find.
“Buying new is so much easier,” she lamented.
The American economy depends on consumers willing to buy the latest in fashions, furnishings and flat-screen TVs. Indeed, in the weeks after Sept. 11, 2001, shopping was cast as a patriotic duty, a way to help prevent the economy from tipping into a recession.
But the Compact, started by a group of San Francisco friends as a rebellion against what they see as gluttonous consumerism and its thoughtless destruction of the environment, turns that notion on its head.

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The Compact, named after the creed made by the revolutionaries who sailed here on the Mayflower, started in 2004 with a San Francisco dinner party. The conversation had turned to the downsides of recycling, and the group agreed to a revolutionary idea of its own: to buy nothing new, aside from a small list of exceptions that includes medicine, underwear and cleaning products. They could buy food without restrictions, including eating out.
Officially the Compact has grown from 10 friends around the dinner table to more than 8,700 members of online users groups today. Founding member John Perry figures thousands more are living the Compact life offline, though it's hard to track exact numbers of members and success rates.

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It was fall of 2006 and Heimdahl was counseling a growing number of Minnesotans having trouble paying their mortgage and credit-card debt when she read about the Compact in the news.
“For a while I had been feeling fed up about the consumer nature of our society,” said the 31-year-old financial counselor for Lutheran Social Service. “I think part of it is what I do for my job, too, seeing a lot of people have debt ... and not having anything to account for it.”
Still, she didn't sign up right away. “My first thought was 'Well, I don't need to do that, I don't buy much stuff anyway.' But then I realized that was an excuse.”
On April 8, 2007, she and her husband were sitting at their desks in their Waconia, Minn., home. Without a triggering event or much thought of how this would change her life, she signed up for the Compact group online. Although her husband, Andy, was just feet away, she didn't mention her new commitment until later that day. She worried about his reaction, knowing he viewed the Compact as extreme. But he surprised her. “He was actually very supportive.”
“I wasn't sure she was going to be able to follow through,” said Andy, 33. “In this consumer-driven society it seemed like a nearly impossible task.”
It hasn't been easy. The week after she signed up, she picked up a box of candles for her father's birthday party. Driving to the party with her sister, she confessed her sin, which her sister brushed off. It was months before Heimdahl set foot in a big-box store again.
“Every three months is when I tend to have a cheat,” she says. After the candles was the gift certificate she bought for a new motorcycle windshield for her husband. She didn't actually buy the item for him, but with the gift certificate, “the intent was there.”


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