“A Well Crafted Legacy is seeing what is missing that can change the world and then creating it!”

Tara Button wrote a message on the magic of curating with thought and intention in a publication called Money, Savings, and Debt from Simplify Magazine.

As a recovering impulse shopper, she made a life-changing decision after receiving a cooking pot as a gift. In her article, she says it this way.

“I think I always expected that when I “grew up” I would just naturally become less impulsive with money. Like there might be a magical night class that happens in our sleep when we’re on the cusp of having to “really be an adult.” I never got access to those night classes, but something magical did happen to me when I was 30 that changed my spending habits forever.”

Then she was given a cooking pot.

“It was a beautiful, lifetime-guaranteed Le Creuset casserole pot—the kind of thing you pass down to your grandchildren. As I started to use it and appreciate it, I was overcome with the feeling that I wanted everything I bought from now on to be like this—to have the potential to be a permanent fixture in my life.”

How many of us buy, discard and maybe even buy again? Well if we want A Well Crafted Life and Legacy, we must be able to do what Tara did with the cooking pot. Value quality, utilize it and appreciate it, and an important part of this process is that value is recognized when used, not just owned.

This awareness of value happens with precious gifts like Tara’s cooking pot, hand crochet throws from your Grandmother or heartwarming relationships that journey with us in all seasons of life. We curate more than items, just as Tara did with her gift. She received priceless knowledge that a throwaway lifestyle is not what she wanted for her future. Her story goes on to tell us what action followed the change in her heart about throwaways.

So I went looking for a shop that only stocked the longest-lasting things in the world. When I found out that such a thing didn’t exist, I was so surprised and so sure that it was something the world needed, I created this shop myself. The creation of my business, BuyMeOnce, and my new philosophy on how to buy came hand in hand. The more I researched long-lasting products, the more obvious the benefits of long-term buying became. You save money in the long term; you’re more likely to pick things you really like; you’re more likely to take care of them; and it’s better for the environment.

Tara’s change of perspective and then taking action on the change is what crafting a legacy is about every day. She was changed, looked for what would work with her in her change, and when she did not find it, she created it. She was converted from an impulse buyer to a curator of lasting, useful and intentional possessions.

And the automatic response to this kind of conversion is to want to help others have the opportunity to know and be a part of the change we experience. A Well Crafted Life and Legacy is when we give to others of our experiences to help them make “every experience, a learning experience. And that is what Tara did next.

In the book I’ve now written on the subject, A Life Less Throwaway, I call my buying philosophy mindful curation. It is the opposite of mindless buying, and like an art curator, you pick each individual piece that you want to bring into the space but you also have in mind what you want the whole collection to mean when it’s put together.

You can find the book here.

Until next time, remember, we craft our legacy daily, do it as it becometh you.