There’s a well-read New York Times article by American author Ann Patchett titled ‘My Year of No Shopping’ in which she explains the process of not buying clothing, electronics or gifts for a whole year. She used beauty products she found under her sink, gave books as presents and only bought new essentials once she’d run out of what she had.
She made the decision to stop shopping after a meeting with a friend who was wearing a gorgeous coat, when asked about the coat the friend replied nonchalantly ‘I bought it at the end of my no-shopping year.’
I wish I could say I was half as disciplined as Patchett, or that my no-shopping inspiration was as glamourous as hers. I gave up buying clothes, shoes and accessories for a year, but still bought gifts, beauty products and books.
It all started halfway through January 2018 when I realised I hadn’t bought any clothes so far that year - and I had an ambitious savings goal to reach by 2019. Using spending tracker Money Dashboard which categorises your purchases, I looked down the list of things I was spending money on; food, appearance, bills, entertainment, holidays etc., and decided clothing would be easiest sub-category to eliminate completely.
The Disclaimer
It’s important to note three things; first of all, like Patchett, I have been a Christian since childhood and so am very used to giving things up or fasting for designated periods; not just during lent but at other times of the year too – a month of vegetarianism here, a social media hiatus there, a season without a drop of caffeine and so on.
Second, I abhor in-store shopping and avoid it at all costs – you will not catch me rifling through the sales racks in the basement of Oxford Street Topshop nor fingering the fabric at Cos in Knightsbridge, neither high nor low end entices me if I shop it’s online, so walking past shops isn’t a temptation for me.
Third, the ability to decide to stop shopping for a year is indicative of my privilege. It’s a luxury to have so many things to wear that you can just not buy anything at all for a whole year, and still have adequate items in reserve to wear to all different kinds of occasions.
How I Did It
What surprised me the most about not shopping for a year was how easy it was.
To provide some context, I was mainly an event-specific shopper – the type of person who has a friend’s birthday party coming up and so buys something new the week before to wear to it, often without really looking at what she has already. I rarely browsed online for fun, choosing instead to buy pieces for specific occasions on the horizon; typically ordering three outfits online, wearing one and keeping the others for the next occasion. I bought online from ASOS mainly, sometimes Missguided or Zara, making roughly an order a month for a few new items.
The first step in making not shopping a reality was to organise what I already had. For me, wardrobe clear outs and trips to the charity shop were an almost monthly occurrence, but in 2018 I got serious about making sure I knew exactly what was where. I split all my folded clothes into work, going out, occasion wear and holiday wear in different sections of my wardrobe, so that it was easy to find what I needed fast.
I’d estimate that I got rid of about 30% of my clothes in 2018, when you’re spending more time looking in your wardrobe for something to wear, you notice the pieces you keep skipping past and those are the items that serve you no longer. I thanked them for their service, Marie Kondo style, and let them go so they could spark joy for someone else.
Once I’d made the decision not to shop, dressing got so much easier. Stressing over what to wear on an evening out with friends that weekend – including the next day delivery panic buy, manic run round the shops after work and expensive impulse purchase after seeing an Instagram ad – were a thing of the past.
I would stand in front of my wardrobe look at everything in the going out section, sometimes I’d take all those items out of the wardrobe and put the options on the bed, and then filter by what suited the occasion, what fit my body at that time of the month, and (more often than I’d like to admit) what that group of friends hadn’t seen in a while, select something, try it on and hang it up ready for the occasion.
Limiting your options is an unnatural and daunting concept, but it’s actually very freeing. If there are only 20 possible dresses to choose from, instead of the billion in all the shops in all the world, then the decision-making process is a billion times easier.
It’s like Obama said; ‘You’ll see I wear only gray or blue suits. I’m trying to pare down decisions. I don’t want to make decisions about what I’m eating or wearing. Because I have too many other decisions to make.’ And he makes much more important decisions than I do.
However, it wasn’t all plain sailing, of course there were times, especially later in the year, when I looked at those same old piles of clothes and thought; ‘Lord, do I really have to wear these tired old outfits again?!’ I looked at people wearing new trends - like those leopard print slip skirts everyone sashayed around in this summer and longed to feel one against my legs! But it just motivated me to dig deeper in my own closet and see if I had anything similar, and what did I find? Plenty of slip dresses, printed maxi skirts and even a zebra print wrap dress, so I sashayed in those instead, and felt just fine.
Then there’s the paranoia; I was convinced people were noticing that I wasn’t wearing anything new and that someone would pull me aside and ask if I was ok, and the irrational thought kept popping into my head that if I kept wearing the same clothes they would start to unravel, my shoe leather would give way, and I’d have to start patching up the holes with a sewing kit. No such thing happened.
I did however develop a few coping mechanisms for when the going got tough.
I rearranged my clothes all the time
I’m obsessed with Instagram accounts like @thehomeedit and follow more professional closet organisers than I’d like to admit, but I never have enough space at home to execute their elaborate systems – there are always clothes in my wardrobe that are hidden. So I made sure I reshuffled the sections and brought new items to the front so it felt like I had new options to choose from.
I found new ways of styling outfits
My Google search history contains a whole lot of ‘how to style a brown slip dress’-like queries because I’d find a piece a wanted to wear but want to make it look different. I ended up learning a lot about styling in 2018 (I realised I didn’t even know the basics), putting T-Shirts under dresses, wearing all one colour head to toe and mixing textures I would never have put together, to make old pieces look fresh and on-trend when really I’d bought them in 2015.
I made shopping wish lists
Towards the end of the year I made a list of the clothes and shoes I wanted to buy in 2019. Just browsing the sites and making that list alleviated some of the longing I’d had for something new.
I bought other things
Sometimes it’s the thrill of a new purchase that we’re missing, and I found that buying a new beauty blender, house plant or notebook gave much the same feeling as buying new clothes
The Lessons
So what did I learn by not shopping for a year? Other than people will look at you like you have two heads when they find out, there are some life lessons I’ll take with me.
Treat your wardrobe like a shop
Shopping your own wardrobe sounds like a gimmick but it’s actually a really smart concept. Organise your clothes as you would see them in a shop, jeans folded together, everything out on display, grouped by categories such as workwear and casual. Line shoes up so you can see them, when winter came last year I rooted around and found two pairs of boots I’d completely forgotten I had. We get so used to wearing the same 40% of our wardrobe all the time partly through habit and partly because we can’t see everything we have.
You will not die if you don’t buy a new outfit
I remember feeling anxious if I didn’t have a new dress when I went out at the weekend, worrying that I would have to wear something old and feel self-conscious the whole night, refusing to take pictures with friends in case someone posted it on Instagram and people noticed I had worn the same outfit in a previous picture on my feed. When you have no choice but to wear the same clothes, you soon lose all that anxiety – also, unless your famous literally no one cares how many times you wear the same dress, they don’t even remember it.
Change your hair, no one will notice your dress
On a related note, if you change everything around the dress; your hair, nails, lipstick, earrings, shoes, bag, or even one of these, everyone will be so bedazzled by that new thing that no one will care that you’ve worn the same floral wrap dress 30 times that year.
Not shopping will save you a load of money (duh!)
I did some digging and found out that I spent £726 on ASOS alone 2017. That’s not including any other sites or anything I bought in store. Obscene.
And The Exceptions
Two main exceptions to the no shopping rule occurred in 2018. The first was when I was asked to be a bridesmaid for a close friend and so all the bridesmaids and I bought two dresses; one for the traditional Nigerian ceremony and another for the church wedding.
The other exception is that brands sent me some gifts of clothes over the year, which I accepted, they were: a pair of leggings, a top, a leather jacket, a pair of trainers, a hoodie and a dress from Superdry, two bags and a purse fromManu Atelier, and a pair of trainers from Nike. These were very welcome additions to my wardrobe, and since the reason to give up shopping was to save money not to deny myself new things, I didn’t feel too guilty.
The Outcome
Not shopping for a year has changed the way I see clothes forever. I value those items that saw me through a year of wear without giving up on me, I treasure those shoes that refused to make me look bad as a pulled them on for the hundredth time, I look at prospective new purchases and think; are you worth a spot in my wardrobe? Which section would you fit in? Would you last a year?
I put time aside in my calendar on January 1st 2019 to shop, a three-hour slot. I’d made a list of everything I wanted to buy in the notes section of my phone in mid-December, I’d downloaded the ASOS, Net-A-Porter and Boohoo apps and added the items I wanted to the virtual carts at the end of December. But when the calendar alert popped up on New Year’s Day – I no longer had any desire to shop, I put my phone down and got back to my Netflix show instead.
I bought my first clothes in a year the very next day, January 2nd – three long dresses (I’d learned the importance of a ‘done-in-one’ piece that doesn’t need to be put with anything else), two jumpers (a basic I kept reaching for but didn’t have enough of over the year) a coat (I wore the same three coats all year and they all look exactly the same) and a pair of Gucci trainers, which I can find no justification for, but love.