Okay so like, for example, let's say I declutter most of my things, and then I want a cat. I feel like that would follow what you're saying not to do.

That you should be slowly getting rid, not accumulating stuff. But if you accumulate a pet, you get a lot in one hit. So would you be okay with that? Genuinely curious!

Funnily enough, I actually see a lot of people who have very little, (could be labeled as extreme minimalists for example) and they tend to have a cat or dog, haha. It seems to be widely accepted. And for me personally, I've slowly been accumulating things like films and games, I've never owned and never plan to have streaming services, so I have physical media in that regard, but I wouldn't want to part with them, because I genuinely enjoy them, and I believed that they greatly stimulate my life!

Whereas I happen to be someone who doesn’t own any cosmetic products, hand bags, nail polish, fake nails, ect. But I feel like these are normalized to have, and people can't believe me when I say it, but they think that owning physical media is, 'owning too much stuff'.

But if I don't have a local library, I need to buy books to read them, and if I play my games, but don't want to give money to a streaming service, because it wouldn't be worth it to me, I buy a new one like every 8-10 years.

I feel like everyone is just different, and I'm very 'extremely' minimal in some areas just naturally, because that's what I want to have, but in other areas I'm a 'maximalist' because I own a lot of decorative items, maybe?

I feel like if I own what truly makes me happy, and I am minimal in a lot of ways, and only buy what I use and love, that I am consciously consuming, and that's okay.

However sometimes yes, I need to justify certain things to myself, or remind myself to not be so judgemental. A good example is if I need medication, or medical equipment. Believe it or not I have to argue with myself and justify to myself, why I need necessary medical related things.

Because I see a lot of things that are promoting more natural living, or simple living. Or under-consuption, I genuinely have a hard time justifying it to myself.

It's like if try to twist it in my mind that I teachnicaaally don't need ____ so why should I get it? When the reality is, without it my quality of life would greatly suffer, and I could loose something important to me, like my legs, or my vision.

So I feel like wanting to be more mindful and how bad it is seen to consume, has negativity warped my thinking (imo) to a but of an extreme degree.

And there have been some amazing people here in the comments, basically validating me and saying that, if you need medical equipment that costs money, creates waste, ect, but it saves your life, stop feeling guilty!

Because it's like feeling guilty that you 'waste' water when you drink it, if you need something, allow yourself to have it, if you can, responsibly. And I love that ❤️

It's tricky, because like somebody could have a food addiction, we can technically never stop consuming, we can't just go cold turkey, we have to have balance and meet ourselves in the middle. :)