Merry Christmas! Some Ideas for the New Year

My dear readers - friends, family, and the one or two strangers who have found this little corner of the net - thank you for checking in on my weekly ramblings this last couple of months. I have enjoyed sharing with you some of my thoughts and lessons from my previous shopping ban attempt, as well as staying accountable in my current attempt. I'm intending to take a couple of weeks' break from blogging for the festive season, but before I go I want to give you a few tips that I have gleaned from this process.

Tried and Tested Tips

If you have read this far and relate to much of what I have said, I strongly feel you should consider doing a shopping ban of your own - it's a challenge everyone can learn something from. If, however, you really can't face that, another experiment you could try, perhaps in the New Year, is to pick a category of your belongings - books, clothing or make-up, for example - and try not to buy any more until something in that category actually needs replacing. You may be surprised by how much more you have than you actually need. For example, I was amazed to discover at the end of my first year that I had only worn out a single pair of socks, and still had more than ten remaining bottles of body lotion! (It's now a year and seven months since I last bought: socks (or any kind of hosiery), handbags, scarves,  knickers, perfume, eyeshadow, nail varnish, stationery, furniture, DVDs, CDs, collectable figurines of any kind, yarn, jewellery or tech. Have I run out of any of these things? Not even close.)

Here are a few of the most important things I have learned in the year-and-a-bit since I started trying to quit shopping:

1. Browsing leads to spending. 

Don't make it easy for them to keep you hooked. Put down your phone. My life became so much better when I stopped feeling obligated to compare EVERY dress on ASOS.

2. You don't lose anything by not buying something.

3. There isn't One True Garment that will reveal and encapsulate your identity.

4. You can't shop your way to a sense of self.

In fact, overshopping was part of what eroded my sense of self in the first place. 

5. Use and value what you already have.

6. At the end of your life, you won't wish you'd spent more time shopping.

7. Express yourself through your actions, not your purchases.

8. Take inventory.

Counting your stuff is not the most fun way to spend time, but it's harder to convince yourself you really need another t-shirt if you know you already have 63 t-shirts. (Yes, actual number. Have I not mentioned I have an overshopping problem?)

9. Consider your priorities.

What are you giving up if you keep spending your money on unnecessary trinkets? A house deposit? That trip you've always wanted to take? Your security or peace of mind? What if you saved that money instead?

10. Don't broadcast everything.

A private life is a happy life. I used to pour myself into social media in the name of authenticity and then always felt I had to live up to the image I was creating. Your choices become limited when you feel you should be promoting or explaining them to an audience. Deciding to be more mysterious was one of my best decisions to date.

11. Let go of perfect.

I learned during wedding planning that perfection is a tyrant. Embrace 'good enough' and be liberated. My hair, my skin, my smile, my wardrobe - not perfect, but good enough, and that makes me happy every day. If you let go of perfect, you only have to meet your own standards - not society's, not Instagram's. (If your own standards still feel too high, can you try to see yourself how your friends and loved ones see you? Beyond facial features and body shape, true beauty is in the way you light up, the way you talk, smile, laugh, move.)

And Lastly

This week's accountability - well, a mixed bag to report. I did have to shell out on a new pair of shoes - as I've mentioned before, I often suffer with plantar fasciitis, and this week it's flared up badly. After watching me hobble around in agony for a few days, Dai insisted it was time to replace the battered pink Reeboks I've been wearing for the last two and a half years. So I've ordered these amazing cork shoes with a "foot mattress" insole from sustainable, ethical company Po-Zu. I hadn't actually bought shoes in over two years (!) which I guess is pretty good going. I did resent replacing the Reeboks as they haven't actually disintegrated yet, but they have seen better days, and I can't keep up with my toddler when every step feels like walking on needles!

Unfortunately, I had a weird few days over the weekend when I didn't like what I saw in the mirror, and by Tuesday I was once again convinced I needed a total change of wardrobe. I felt sick of budgeting and thinking about money and 'stuff' all the time. I bought the Spud some lovely pyjamas, dressing gown, dinosaur t-shirt and a toy car (no regrets there, also not a ban break) and then I bought myself a cardigan from The Ragged Priest (in the sale) and a new book (Embrace Your Weird by my woman crush Felicia Day, can't imagine why that spoke to me at the time). So that's a third strike - time to start my day count from the beginning, I guess!

I should note that my little spree coincided with a) a heavy bout of Pinterest use - must quit, it clearly is the devil, and b) menstruation. I suspect a few of my shopping binges have coincided with that particular joyful time of the month - not sure yet how to guard against Shark Week Brain and its demand for extreme makeovers. Anyone have any suggestions? I must admit, I do sometimes let eco-guilt (or mum guilt) get in the way of actually taking the time to enjoy my clothes and appearance and then I end up feeling rough and frumpy... Perhaps this is something I can work on. I struggle to convince myself that it isn't selfish (or a sign of sinister corporate/patriarchal brainwashing) to want to feel good about the way I present myself. 

Have a wonderful, imperfect, being-"safe"-in-weird-pandemic-times Christmas, and I'll see you in the New Year.

How Extinction Rebellion Stole Christmas

As Christmas approached in the first year of the shopping ban, my newfound frugality and burgeoning environmental awareness were twisting me in knots as I tried to think of ways to participate in this orgy of gift-giving without decimating my savings or trashing the planet more than I could help.

Not too long before, I'd heard some rumblings about this radical environmentalist group called Extinction Rebellion who were protesting in London, bringing city streets to a standstill, arguing against Fashion Week, and otherwise generally making a nuisance of themselves. I was intrigued. All this passion, chaos and rage seemed to have boiled up very suddenly out of nowhere - what was going on?

I'd had vague positive feelings about Greenpeace for a long time, but by and large was convinced that all that environmental stuff was pretty radical and woo-woo, the province of earnest, slightly scary hemp-smelling people with hairy armpits. But XR was not only huge but encompassing all kinds of people, grandmothers and businessmen and schoolchildren. I decided to look them up.

Game changer.

With my sleeping child in my arms, I watched an XR video entitled The Truth. At first I was just interested. Then I was shocked. Then I felt the bottom drop out of my stomach. As the girl with the punky haircut explained feedback loops and melting permafrost and food shortages and rising sea levels, I gripped my tablet in numb hands.

Does everyone know about this? Why isn't everyone panicking? What have we done? Oh, holy shit...

The full scale of the climate emergency caught me off guard and unsuspecting, a sucker punch to my sense of security and stability. I'm not ashamed to say, I wept. I'd brought a child into a world with a very uncertain future, and I felt powerless to protect him.

Let me loop back from existential dread to Christmas shopping (two things that go nicely hand in hand, I often find). After learning about the climate emergency, I found I had no more urge to buy joke presents, or anything really that people might not want or wouldn't use. The first year of the ban I was just a ball of stress - eco anxiety plus wanting to find the best possible gifts plus money being a little tight equalled worry from October onwards.

Some of my friends arranged a Secret Santa using a wishlist app. Enthusiastically, I filled my list with books, bath bombs and charity gifts - only to discover that the theme for the event was "dirty/inappropriate". I felt deeply humourless and a bit of a wally but just could not bring myself to buy a plastic penis of any description having just watched XR's video about, basically, the end being nigh (in the end I plumped for a book of howlingly bad self-published erotica and, okay, a penis-shaped lipstick. Apparently there's a gap in the market for sustainable or zero-waste erotic gifts...). I kept picturing every hen party inflatable penis sticking up from landfill - outliving us. What a legacy for the human race! (Told you - humourless.)

For everyone else, I considered crafting gifts, and whilst this is something I've got more confident about recently (this year I've given a knitted hat, handmade candles, body scrubs, elderflower cordial and blackberry liqueur), in 2019 I was still wrapped up (pun intended) in consumer culture and I was worried I would seem stingy or thoughtless.

Instead I decided I would support small local businesses. This turned out to be a bit of a bust - in my small town I only knew of a few local craftspeople, and I quickly discovered that doing my entire Christmas shop with them would leave me all but bankrupt. Eventually, cross and frustrated, I did my shopping exactly as I normally would, except I shopped in my hometown instead of travelling to a big city mall or market (and minus the "one for you, one for me" mathematics I have been known to apply in years previous!).

This year I was better prepared. I shopped mostly online (pandemic!), but I chose items from small businesses in the UK and favoured companies using sustainable materials and processes. It all sounds a bit "worthy", I know, but I don't in good faith want to keep pouring my family's resources into environmental destruction. To me, it's been worth a little more thought and a little more time. 

I also bit the bullet in the first year of the ban and had a chat with friends about setting a budget for our gifts, as in our mutual affection and enjoyment of gift-giving it was all getting a bit out of hand. One or two friends suggested that we no longer buy gifts for each other but focus on the littles instead. The rest of us agreed a £5 budget, which chafed at first but came to remind me of childhood Christmases, when we were given "token" gifts (often practical or edible) which were given with great love but caused the giver little stress, financially or otherwise. I also have one friend with whom I tend to exchange secondhand books - it works for us.

I realised that my personal Christmases had been overshadowed by worry. I was overthinking it, competing against the imaginary Joneses and their perfect Christmas gifts, frightened of appearing cheap (when money's tight for pretty much everyone right now anyway) and it was leeching all the enjoyment out of the process.

So please know, friends and family, that I may not have got you much this year, but I chose as carefully as I could, with the best of intentions! 

This Week's Accountability

Happily, I can report that I am now over fifty days into my current ban and doing well. Admittedly I have spent more this week than I normally do, but within shopping ban parameters - I have finished my Christmas shopping, posted the majority of my cards, and bought some local cheeses, chutneys and other nibbles (and driven Dai mad by pronouncing 'chutney' like Schmidt from New Girl), and some mulled cider and mead - I'm really looking forward to tucking in with the family over Christmas.

Comparison, the Gremlin On My Shoulder

The Comparison Trap

By July '19, two months into my first attempt at a year's shopping ban, I was becoming irritated by my inability to stop thinking about clothes. On days out, I found myself constantly playing the comparison game against other women, and I'd noticed the snarky voice of my inner critic carping at me: "This isn't cool, that isn't cool, it doesn't look right, your shoes are wrong, you haven't got the figure for that, who do you think you're kidding?" It was the inner voice of my younger self, who had enough self-awareness to want to try to be cool, but was never quite able to manage it. As an adult, I wasn't concerned with being cool - far better to be happy, or enthusiastic, then to keep chasing an ever-changing target (also I basically live by this page of the Incomplete Manifesto for Change) - but apparently no one had told the gremlin on my shoulder.

When friends visited, I felt sloppy, awkward and underdressed. If I put on make-up and made effort, I felt overdone and vapid. Whatever I did, I perceived myself as somehow wrong and out of place. I felt deflated every time I saw someone with what I perceived to be a better outfit, and became envious of women who didn't seem to care what they wore and were still at ease with themselves. I was getting increasingly frustrated, and wanted to just forget about how I looked. When had my appearance taken over my life to this extent? Was I completely vain, brainwashed by a misogynistic culture, or both?

It was as though the disordered eating behaviours I had overcome had simply been replaced by other damaging behaviours. I had read so much about body acceptance and self-love, but I had to face the facts - if I really loved myself, I wouldn't be spending my hard-earned money to fix imaginary problems, or constantly comparing myself to strangers.

I wanted to try to find an identity beyond clothes (and shut up that stupid little voice for good), and I decided that the best way to do that was to stop thinking about clothes:

- No Pinterest

- No style blogs or style guide books. The latter were consigned to the charity shop with a glad heart 

- No Instagram

- No browsing shopping sites, street style sites or Googling "fashion icons" , in fact no clothes-related Googling at all

- No fashion magazines

- No browsing the high street

- No mentally cataloguing other women's outfits

Just wearing the clothes I had. 

I'm not sure if this is a personal quirk or a common side effect of using these platforms, but when I have occasionally used Instagram or Pinterest in the year following, I have noticed a corresponding drop in mood, and more likelihood that I will make an unnecessary purchase (usually make-up or clothing) in the days after. So for myself, I have decided that these platforms are not healthy and don't contribute anything to my life except feeling vaguely low and crappy. That doesn't mean it's always been easy not to use them! Instagram, in particular, has a tendency to draw me back in. But I'm working towards a complete break.

Comparison was an extremely difficult habit to escape. There was a point when I thought I might never free myself from it, and was doomed to spend the rest of my life measuring myself against every woman (and occasionally a man with an outfit I particularly liked) that I encountered, and finding myself lacking. It took about ten months (ten months!!!) of avoiding fashion content and trying to notice and disrupt my negative thought patterns (I named the gremlin on my shoulder Keith; for anyone else who has a similar gremlin, I highly recommend Anuschka Rees's book Beyond Beautiful) before I suddenly noticed that the urge to compare had just... fallen away. Shrugged off, like an old coat. I cannot overstate how liberating this felt. 

On the Bright Side

Happily, a couple of months in, I was beginning to really enjoy the shopping ban. The stress and anxiety I had felt back in May were replaced by a newfound pleasure and satisfaction in removing myself from the consumer rat race. I had taken myself away from a source of guilt, envy, frustration and confusion, and I was achieving a simple joy from using what I already had. After trying for several years to catch up with myself, I was finally down to just fourteen unread books, and in the hotter weather I'd discovered that a handful of tops I'd thought weren't right on me actually looked just fine with skirts or culottes. 

It was frightening to think what I could have spent in the two and a half months since starting the ban if I had continued unchecked. Worse, there was nothing at all I really needed, so I would have just found things I quite liked and convinced myself that they were necessities. It's amazing how brainwashed we are into consuming as a way of life, and it was a relief to take a step back and look critically at the mechanisms at work. 

Accountability Corner

One benefit of giving up shopping that I noted this week was that, as a direct side effect of giving up the preoccupation with my appearance that constant shopping had contributed to, I find my range of interests expanding. I am more likely - and able - to pay attention to a passing whim (say, to plant vegetables, practise my guitar, or seek out a book about prehistoric matrifocal cultures or Japanese folklore), instead of reserving my time and attention for the constant tweaking of my physical appearance and planning what clothes I'm going to buy next. I hadn't realised to what extent I was stifling any interests that didn't relate in one way or another to my personal presentation. (Bet my mother noticed, though - she's disturbingly acute about things like that.)

Right, enough musing - on to the nitty gritty! I am delighted to report no ban breaks this week. I have purchased nothing but groceries and some cream for the baby's bottom. I can also see a notable change in my savings rate since reading Your Money Or Your Life, which is really exciting to me!