I'll admit it: sometimes I feel a strange compulsion to buy "stuff."

Luckily I'm able to fight off the urge most of the time, but the "shopping equals pleasure" part of my brain was on high gear while I was on vacation earlier this month.

New hairbrush. New lipgloss (Burt's Bees, my favorite!) New DVDs. New lotion. New earrings...and then the guilt of skimming all the money for all that stuff off my debit card account instead of saving it for Aden's college fund.

But there seems to be a reason for my compulsion, and any psychologist would tell you it goes back to my childhood.

When I was a kid I was, like most of my peers, a product of hyper-capitalist consumption that came to a head in the late 80s and early 90s.

I watched Bobbie's World and Pinky and the Brain after school every day, 12-minute segments interrupted by advertisements for fruit snacks, Nike sneakers, and the ultimate Lego sets. 

I went to the store with my parents and begged for the newest Barbie Doll or Goosebumps novel and was rewarded for my perfect grades with a dinner at Pizza Hut.

But my perspective has changed over the years.

I see most people around me consumed by consumption, like I was when I was younger. Since the recession has hit, people have even come to think that shopping more will save our country from our trillions of dollars in debt, home foreclosures, and unemployment rates that are, if you count people who have stopped looking for work, well over 10 percent.

What's most infuriating to me isn't that my parents didn't realize that the "stuff" being sold to us didn't really matter, but that companies have mastered getting people to think they need to work and work to buy more and more stuff.

But you don't.

You don't need the newest iPhone, or 50 pairs of shoes, or 30 canvas bags from the supermarket because they're advertised as "eco-friendly." In fact, the majority of the world's population that lives on less than $2 a day is proof that we are a culture of excess.

And the most ironic thing is, despite all of our stuff, we seem to be pretty miserable for it.

In terms of your own personal balance, feeling that you have to buy all that stuff can cause you stress. This is the topic of a recent blog by Postconsumers, an organization that encourages people to find happiness not in the stressful continual attainment of more money for more "stuff," but in living a simpler, more fulfilling life by valuing the things that really matter to you.

They write:

We think the first and most important step is to start to identify things that make you feel satisfied and then increase the time and priority you give them in your life. Once you begin to do that, you'll start to find that many of the key things that stress you out (even if those things aren't related to money or consumerism) seem less important. And as those things begin to seem less important, you'll find yourself giving them not only less priority but also less time.

And from a "green" point of view, buying more stuff means industry needs to continually create it. The production of more stuff isn't just at a monetary cost to you, but there's more fuel burned to melt the plastic, create the packaging, and ship whatever it is to the store where you're admiring it.

Since my son was born, finding the road to a happy life has become increasingly important to me, because I want him to know what the road looks like when he's young.

My boyfriend and I sometimes joke that Aden's going to hate us when he's older because we don't have cable TV like all the other kids, and we won't let him get the newest, coolest computer-in-your-brain device, which we aptly call the "Brainchip 3."

Some would argue that buying stuff really isn't that bad because it helps the economy, creates jobs, and provides people with what they "need."

My argument though, is that it's better in all respects to make a concerted effort to do more with less. For example, take the family in England who has recently gained attention for going almost trash-free for an entire year. The family recycled much of what they bought and more than a year later, they've only thrown away about two ounces a week of trash. That's the equivalent of three tablespoons of sugar!

Similar to that family, I've made a concerted effort to live more simply and buy less stuff, although sometimes I've come up short. Last week I wrote a "Green Parenting" column on how the sweeping landscape and slower pace out West made me realize that I want to strive for more balance and appreciation for the simple things in life. Realizing this and buying all that stuff I didn't really need made me feel even more guilty.

So while I'm not saying you should stop buying stuff altogether, I think we would all be happier if we worked less, bought less stuff, and spent more time with the people we love and doing the things we enjoy instead of trying to find happiness in material things.