One thing most people don’t need is more stuff.

While there are, of course, many members of our society in desperate need of basic items, but those of us fortunate to have a middle class lifestyle generally have more than we need already.

I’ll save a diatribe on luxury goods for another day – stuff, you see, is a category all of its own.

It’s not a new pair of shoes or the latest gadget. It’s those miscellaneous items you don’t know what to do with but which you can’t bring yourself to throw out because they’re still in good condition or you hope they might be useful someday.

I have a whole box of miscellaneous wires.

I have a plastic lizard I’ve had since I was 10.

I have old protest signs, tchotchkes from miscellaneous events and many, many things that I’m not quite sure where they even came from.

There might be things I need, but I don’t need more stuff.

And yet…

I’ll be out and about town and I’ll see something that makes me think of someone. Wouldn’t they enjoy that? I think. Wouldn’t that be a nice gift? And then I get distracted. In a bout of temporary insanity, I mysteriously transform into the consumer capitalism wants me to be, and all I can think about is how I should really spend money on this random, ultimately worthless item that isn’t worth the tree needed for its packaging.

So I try to have an intervention with myself. Is it really something the person needs? Perhaps they would be glad to receive a gift, but in a year, would they find it in a dusty corner and find themselves straining to remember where it came from?

Nobody needs that.

But rather than just walk away, my new strategy is this: I tell people what I don’t get them.

I’ll see something amazing that my niece would love – a person-sized dinosaur, perhaps – and I’ll text my sister. I didn’t just buy this for you!

Sometimes I’ll take a picture.

And ultimately, this accomplishes everything it needs to – the person knows you were thinking about them, you mutually enjoyed the item’s existence, and then you moved on. No space or money wasted. It’s very environmental.

I like giving practical gifts, sure, but stuff?

Who needs it.

I have a very distinct memory of being taught in grade school that one ought to properly close a letter with the claim, “sincerely.”

I went with the term for awhile but ultimate dropped it because every time I finished a letter I thought to myself, “Really? Did I really mean everything sincerely?”

For sixth grade that felt like a high bar.

Of course, checking your sincerity is ultimately for the best – if you are not sincere about the contents of your letter, that ought to call in to question your whole purpose in writing it.

But, having something of a penchant for hyperbole, I also found myself overly concerned with little details. If I sincerely wrote “I will always remember…” then decades later suffered from dementia, would that negate the whole sincerity of the letter I had innocently penned as a child?

I found this very concerning.

So perhaps you can understand why I stopped using the term. My intentions were sincere, but, I suppose, I didn’t feel comfortable holding myself to that sincerity indefinitely.

Years later, I noticed I had slipped into a seemingly casual replacement: thanks.

Particularly in the workplace this expression seemed apt. I was often asking people to do things and I was, generally speaking, sincerely thankful for their attention to the matter. And I am, have no doubt, all in favor of thanking people.

But this closing, too, came to wear on me.

I started signing off with “thanks” on most correspondence. Not only when I had something to be thankful for, but when those I was writing to probably ought to be thanking me, or when thanks, frankly, had nothing to do with it.

Not only did this make the “thanks,” seem shallow, the habit began to strike me as one of those things that would today make some click-bait list of things women ought to stop doing in the work place.

That is to say, I said thanks as a way of diminishing myself.

While women, of course, can do whatever they damn well please in the workplace and beyond, I did find myself drifting from thanks as my go-to sign-off. Thanks should be reserved, I decided, for times when I am particularly thankful for something.

For the last many years, I have settled on “best,” as my general sign-off. I like that it is positive, yet appropriately vague.

When I am feeling particularly meaningful, I upgrade this to, “all the best.”

I’m not really sure what it means to wish someone all the best, but I imagine sending someone all the best things in existence. Rainbows and puppy dogs, perhaps. Whatever you’re into.

I can’t commit to my sincerity, and I’m skeptical of my thankfulness, but I feel confident that whoever you are I wish you the best – however you define that for yourself.