The Consumer Dilemma

So I was reading a post on Mothering.com. A mother was having difficulty with figuring out how to deal with one child taking another's Barbies. 1st a note: I have no issue with this mother, her parenting or choices but it certainly got me thinking about STUFF. So one daughter has new Barbies and the other has plenty of Barbies but they are old. One solution is to buy the girl with the old Barbies new ones. In an effort to be fair to our children we end up buying them more STUFF and are further sucked into the consumer ideaology and cycle of waste. I really haven't figured out a good way to combat this cycle but except I know I will be educating and educating my children as to why they can not have a certain things and they may be very resentful. Hopefully, I can show them that we can't have fun vacations and really enjoy time together more if we have less STUFF.