Great article and so much truth! Guilty as charged sometimes. However like to think I have pretty good handle on the tastes and needs of my nearest and dearest when considering gift choices and if in any doubt - Gift Vouchers RULE!

Recieved unwanted/unsuitable gifts - if they can't be exchanged or refunded can also be re-gifted - carefully.

Like the writer I occasionally get nostalgic over an earlier simpler lifestyle. Compared to contempory kids (and even my own in late 20s & 30s) my siblings and I had virtually nothing. We grew up in a fairly isolated rural setting and had our places in the running of things from very early age. However I would not swap my lovely wild, reckless and free childhood for all the technology, gadgetry, toys and sophisticated organised childhood development in the world.

Time for a bit of readjustment of values and needs vs wants. Could make for a happier healthier society!

HAPPY NEW YEAR to all

"Nothing is enough to someone for whom what is enough is little."

Thanks Karen for a refreshing and sensible article. If everyone made some moves towards your approach more good would be done for the environment that 50 more Green religous fests like CopenHagen and Mexico. We are a very blessed nation.

There probably wouldn't be a reader that didn't agree with the tone of this article by Karen.

As the comments to date suggest there is an underlying wish for a simpler life, less dictated to by advertising, competition between groups and even family members. Sadly, all of the accepted practices are now part of the 'norm' and would be even taught in business studies at institutions that have themselves succumbed to the new rules making our current way of life entrenched.

In ten years when things become even more crass and commercial, such courses will be modified to encompass all the new deteriorations since the ones we have identified today and another new 'norm' will emerge.

Sounds frightening. But I, like many others can remember a simpler life when what you owned was not judged as a standard for others to emulate, or vice versa.

As creative as I feel that I am, sometimes, a solution does not come easily to my thinking. One only has to think of our current banking situation with the aim of more, more and even more profit, return on funds employed, etc., to know how we are driven and how greed is rewarded.

I love your proverb Mikk, so true.

Wonderful post - my family have decided that enough stuff is enough, and we now seek to give each other experiences as gifts. My Mum and Dad got tickets to see West Side Story, and close up animal encounters at the Zoo. These are things they would never spend money on themselves for (and never really had the money when they were raising us to do so), but of course thoroughly enjoy!

Your readers might be interested in a recently produced report on this, titled (what else?) 'Enough is Enough', the proceedings from a conference on Steady State economics held in the UK in June this year:

http://steadystate.org/enough-is-enough