10 Lessons from my no-buy year

In 2021, when I was getting ready for a move, I made an inventory of everything I owned. Then, in early 2022, I began tracking every time I wore an item. I wanted to understand which pieces were providing the best value. My makeshift spreadsheet grew — I became an excel aficionado and built pivot tables and graphs to help me understand which colours and styles I gravitated towards. I used the data I collected to come up with new ways of wearing my favourite pieces, and to make decisions on what I wanted to keep and what to part ways with.

This isn’t easy to say, but I have over 300 items of clothing, including accessories, bags and shoes but excluding formalwear. 304 to be exact. Embarrassingly, there are 66 items I have not worn a single time since I began tracking. So in May of 2022, I decided I would not buy clothing for at least a year.

I have cheated twice: I bought a part of pants at a thrift store in Paris in August, and I bought ski clothes for a trip in February because I had nothing weather appropriate. I also received a handbag from my partner’s sister for Christmas, and my dad bought me a skirt. Oh, and my partner surprised me with a new pair of Hoka sneakers because the ones I was wearing were in truly terrible shape.

Now, I’d like to share some of what I’ve learned about myself, and the ways that I have benefited from going through this process.

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1. I’ll start with the most obvious benefit: I have saved a lot of money.
2. The first few months were easy and exciting, then I hit a rut at around the 7 month mark. I struggled to feel inspired by what I saw in my closet, so I decided to put most of my clothing into storage containers for a couple of months. Now, I shop my own closet around once every two weeks.
3. I have gotten more creative and taken more risks: I have made an effort to wear pieces I don’t normally gravitate towards. I’ve fallen in love with pieces I’d all but forgotten about. Some of my experiments have been less successful than others, but this process has helped me make decisions on which items to keep and what to part ways with when I move again in a couple of months.
4. In the past, I would often get lazy and buy something new for special events, or when I wasn’t feeling inspired. I now know that realistically, baring my first ski trip in over a decade, I have clothing to suit any imaginable occasion. When I start shopping again, I will avoid single occasion shopping and focus on pieces that fit into my wardrobe in as many ways as possible.
5. I wear my black clothing disproportionally often. Just over 20% of the clothes I own are black, but I wear these items almost 30% of the time. Same goes for white, which makes up under 10% of my closet but around 15% of my wears. Also, I seem to really love purple!
6. I love collecting vintage pieces, but I don’t wear them as much as I’d like. 15% of my closet is vintage (over 20 years old), but I only wear these pieces around 7% of the time.
7. I’ve seen beautiful pieces online and in person. I have felt sad when an item I loved sells out, but overall, it’s been fine. I will confess that I feel significant FOMO over a pair of high heeled green croc embossed Paris Texas boots that are on sale at SSENSE. There is one pair left in my size, and I am praying they are still available when my no-buy year is over.
8. A little bit of tailoring is a wonderful cure. Items that I hadn’t worn in years feel fresh again, and I love that I have given some of the clothing I inherited from my mother a new life.
9. Cleaning out my closet gives me a similar thrill to buying new things. I’ve sold, donated, gifted, or recycled a good number of pieces. I always feel recharged after I do, and the high lasts longer than the post-purchase bliss I used to feel.
10. I have a much better sense of my personal style now. I am less tempted by trends, and I have been able to find inspiration in all sorts of places and make things work with what I already own. I know that when I start shopping again, I will be able to make much more conscious choices.

All in all, I have really loved this adventure. I am definitely buying those green Paris Texas boots first thing in the morning on May 11, but after that, I will wait until there is an item that inspires me the way that pair of shoes does. And then I’ll sleep on it. And then I probably won’t buy it at all.

Submitted March 24, 2023 at 01:37PM by Bibotebobot https://ift.tt/03Z8z4l