Shopping Ban Rules, and My Overshopping History

 [Trigger warning: disordered eating]

Shopping Ban Rules:

  - No new clothes or accessories (unless something essential wears out beyond repair, or an unexpected black tie event happens)

  - No new magazines, books or e-books (normally I wouldn't ban book buying as the acquisition of knowledge is a great thing, but from where I sit, I can see my thirty unread books. I also have a local library and a handful of free community book swaps - as much as I like to support authors, I can really save some money here)

  - No new cosmetics - replacing used items only (confession! I have slipped up on this once so far during my current ban - a lipstick I'd had my eye on for ages was reduced to half price over Halloween and I just couldn't resist... Could do better!)

  - No housewares unless NEEDED, e.g. a replacement. 

  - Gifts are allowed

  - "Experiential" purchases, e.g. eating out, are allowed

  -      After much thought, I've decided on one tweak to my rules for this year. I recently read The Buy Nothing, Get Everything Plan, and in their no-shopping rules the authors suggest allowing purchases that "support arts, culture and the humanities", including artists, scholars and musicians. Normally this would include authors, but I can't afford to keep on buying more books. However, last year's ban breaks included an open studios visit where I met the lovely Hannah Willow, and a sculpture from Iris Compiet, so I've decided that supporting artists is important enough to me for me to make this an exception.

How I Got Here

I started my first serious attempt at a shopping ban in May 2019. My son was seven months old; I was newly engaged and knee-deep in wedding plans. On maternity leave but with my maternity allowance finished, I was also broke.

Let me note here that I am aware of my privileged position. My partner was working full time, I was able to take maternity leave and stay at home to raise our child. Some remaining vestige of common sense had stopped me from continuing my credit card application, so, unlike many people who become overshoppers, I had avoided running into debt.

Nonetheless, the first month of the ban was perhaps the most difficult. I wanted. I browsed. I longed. I scrolled. I chafed at the boundaries I had put on myself. My journal filled with lists - what I wanted to buy, what I could ask for for my birthday, what my wardrobe still needed to be "complete".

At this early juncture, my goals were still appearance-focused - I wanted this break from shopping to help me clarify my 'signature style', to allow my own true likes and dislikes to emerge from wherever they were buried. I also wanted to end the comparison game that was eroding my self-esteem - as far as I could tell, every woman, everywhere, was better dressed, happier in her skin, had better hair. Friends and strangers were equally scrutinised; I Facebook-stalked frenemies and teenage nemeses alike. 

I wanted to learn how to feel okay about just being me. But first I had to relearn who the heck I was.

I was not a born shopaholic. I was raised in a rural village in the nineties by a mother who still grew her own vegetables and sourced her cough remedies from the herb garden. Our TV had no channels; I grew up barefoot in the dirt on a diet of VHS eighties cartoons, outdoors in all weather, eating elderberries, nettles and beech nuts. My clothes were second-hand, my toys from boot sales and charity shops.

Introverted, bookish, with no understanding of fashions and fads, by the time I hit secondary school it was clear that I wasn't going to fit in. At fourteen I was bullied badly enough that my mum pulled me out of school. 

In my early teens I started crash dieting and obsessively counting calories. My relationship with food and weight came to define the better part of a decade as I starved, binged, purged, exercised until I fainted, took diet pills and laxatives, and generally made my own life a misery.

When I discovered Goth culture it became an obsession, an outlet - I started work at eighteen, and every paycheque went on Sisters of Mercy CDs, vampire novels, a slew of black clothing. Saving up my pocket money to buy a new outfit as a birthday treat morphed and grew into a collection of avidly maintained wish lists and lavish shopping sprees to Camden Market. 

I got a job in a charity shop, and the floor of my room soon disappeared under mountains of stuff. My books overflowed the shelves and then the desk. They were piled in every corner, collecting mug marks and dust. They were in crates under the bed, and when I moved house in my early twenties I found I had multiple copies of the same book - I had so many I couldn't keep track, let alone keep up with reading them all.

I had so many clothes it was almost impossible to get into my room. I had three wardrobes, all full to bursting, and eventually I started to colonize the spare room and the hallway as well. I never wore the same outfit twice, and was regularly up to forty minutes late for work because I wouldn't leave the house until my hair and make-up were perfect and I had taken a good enough 'outfit of the day' photo for my blog. 

In my mind I was living the dream, but I wasn't saving any money and I was utterly fixated on the way I looked, crafting the perfect Goth image. 

My blog became quite popular - it got me a regular slot writing for an American alternative magazine, gifts and freebies, a decent amount of ad revenue, an interview with a nice lady from the Guardian, and a few very nice people coming up and asking for photos when I was out and about at gigs. I posted daily, sometimes as many as four times a day, and maintained a Facebook page, Twitter, Lookbook (remember Lookbook?!), YouTube channel, Pinterest and Tumblr connected to the blog as well. 

When my fascination with all things Goth started to wane, I felt confused and guilty. So much time, effort and money had gone into building this very public persona. The Goth subculture, its emphasis on individuality and self-expression, had given me a place of belonging and something to focus on. For a good few years afterwards I stumbled from label to label (via self-loathing, a tidal wave of Tumblr and ill-advised white girl dreadlocks), trying to find a new niche where I fit. 

By the time I met my future fiance, aged twenty-five, four years after I eventually quit my career as a Goth blogger, I had decided that being as conventionally attractive as possible was the main goal (no sense of identity + long-term relationship break-up + WAY too much social media = bizarre headspace and a skewed perception of what "everyone else" is expecting of you) and to such an end I had amassed a VAST new wardrobe, an array of cosmetic products to doctor every flaw, and appointments - bookings made, deposits paid - for a raft of varyingly intrusive cosmetic procedures (none of which I went through with, much to my relief now). 

I considered myself recovered from my disordered eating, but with hindsight I can see that my confidence had been damaged by the way I'd treated and talked to myself during those years, some of the situations I'd stayed in beyond all reason, and by the unrealistic standards I'd been setting. (I'm happy to say that this is much improved by now, particularly over the past couple of years when I have drastically cut myself some slack with a great deal of support from my partner.)

Pregnancy and motherhood came as a further shock to my self-image. Make-up and thoughtful choices of outfit fell by the wayside. I was curvier than I had ever been, with new stretchmarks and unrecognizable boobs. New glasses, hormonal acne and an awkwardly grown out bob haircut meant that I barely knew the person in the mirror. Most of my clothes didn't fit any more.

So I turned to the only solution I knew. I went shopping. By January 2019 I was spending hundreds of pounds on my tablet most nights while feeding the baby. I'd tried to stop, or at least to slow down, but it wasn't until I was almost out of money that I managed to apply the brakes. I didn't get a buzz from shopping any more, just a sense of panic, guilt and anxiety, and I knew it was time to (try to) go cold turkey.

It's still a work in progress (see my confession re: lipstick, above), but now at least I am solvent. I had to leave all gadgets outside the bedroom for the first few months, but the improvements are vast. I just want to see if I can continue to do better - to break once and for all my association between spending money, and feeling a sense of identity, of self-worth. 

I am not what I buy.