Little Breakthroughs

By October 2019, I was fighting hard not to backslide into my old ways. But the shopping ban, failure or not, had already taught me so much - and at least it had saved me some money. I'd been keeping a running list of everything I considered buying - and mostly hadn't bought. I was starting to see how much I was in my own head, and how much of that related to acquisition or image. Turning it over in my head all the time, what my style should be or represent, what I could buy to make it so, as if my personality and existence were a puzzle I could solve only by shopping.

When had stuff become of such importance to me? I was surprised, and ashamed, to realise that the acts of acquiring, storing, and searching for things to own had taken the starring role in my life story. I had no long term goals, no big ideas for what I wanted to do with my short time on earth, but I knew that the plan had never been to become the custodian of the Me Museum. 

In his book All Consuming, Neal Lawson points out that previous generations of humanity defined themselves by what they produced, whereas we now define ourselves by what we own, what we buy. Was it any coincidence that as my Instagram use went up and my obsession with shopping skyrocketed, I lost interest in drawing, writing, making art in myriad small ways?

I didn't like this person I had turned into, this set of greedy, grasping values that had replaced anything meaningful I'd once striven for. This was no time for giving up.  

I ruthlessly edited my Amazon wishlist. I suddenly felt that I wanted nothing coming into my life that I wasn't totally excited about. I'd noticed a panicky feeling in bookshops that there seemed to be less books that I might want to read, yet I hadn't finished the stockpile I'd built up working in a charity shop years ago! Not to mention the beloved old books I hadn't had chance to re-read in years. 

I was amazed by how much more I was beginning to enjoy and appreciate the things I already had. DVDs, books, colouring books, notebooks, yarn and needles, sketchbooks... I could entertain myself for years without needing to buy a single new thing. I had also rediscovered the pleasure of savouring a thing before moving on to the next. Each individual book in a series gave me so much more enjoyment when I wasn't racing through to tick the next one off the list.

This was also the first month when I noticed a marked decline in those feelings of comparison that had been plaguing me. Rather than fretting about my style (or fashion, the vapid, twittering cousin of personal style), I simply put on my clothes and had done with it. If we were going out, I'd wear slightly nicer jeans, a smarter top, maybe a bit of make-up. At home, I wore scruffs. 

Every now and again my brain helpfully suggested that I could be sexier, happier or more fulfilled if I just bought a new outfit whenever I wanted. 

But mostly I'd just... stopped thinking about it. What I had was enough. I was enough. A brief pang of wanting, and the feeling would pass. 

It was around this time that The T-Shirt arrived. My skin had flared up, thanks to a foundation that really didn't agree with me, and my hair badly needed a wash with clarifying shampoo to remove some nasty sticky product build-up. Neither looking nor feeling my best, I pulled on The T-Shirt, this life-changing garment, this thing I'd built up in my head as the one last touch I needed to be complete...

And I was embarrassed to admit that when I looked in the mirror, there was a distinct sense of anticlimax. I still looked a bit crap and felt a bit deflated. I was just wearing a different shirt. 

Just like everything else hanging in my wardrobe, the high The T-Shirt gave me couldn't last beyond the point of purchase. I had been a sucker for a killer tagline and a good photography campaign. But it was still just a t-shirt.

This was the month the Spud turned one. I barely remember now what presents I bought him. I remember he was far more interested in eating the wrapping anyway.

I remember that we threw him a party and invited far too many people, almost all of whom came. Dai and I spent two days cleaning the house, hiding the assorted detritus of family life with an active baby who had got the hang of this walking malarkey two months previous (a boddler?). When party time came, we had guests packed in two to an armchair, sitting on the floor, perched on the coffee table. I wore a wafty floral blouse from the charity shop and a shiny blue cardboard crown and spent much of the party alternating between doing the music for pass the parcel - a brilliant power trip - and trying to coax the Spud out of the kitchen, where he had taken wide-eyed refuge from this influx of visitors. 

Dai had made a Tigger cake from scratch with a rented cake tin, a thing I hadn't imagined existed in this day and age. The cake was brilliant orange and big enough to feed about forty people. Dai wasn't happy with how the icing turned out and I was so overwrought already that his disappointment reduced me to tears! 

Emotional overload notwithstanding, it was a wonderful day, full of love and mayhem. We didn't have Pinterest-worthy themed decor and we didn't spend a fortune, and it was possibly all the better for that 

And so October and November, aside from a lot of fuss about Christmas shopping, passed with a feeling of great optimism - finally, the lessons I was learning were starting to sink in.

February Accountability

This month, I finally gave in and had a huge clear out of my wardrobe. January's gentle filtering hadn't done the job, and I was finding that tidying, organising, moving, hunting through, laundering and repairing my 200-plus garments was taking up way too much time and headspace - not to mention the daily dilemma of trying to choose what I wanted to wear amongst the should-wears, the never-wears, the it'd-be-great-if-not-for-that-weird-stain items. I'd tidied the rest of our bedroom, but my huge heaps of clothes that didn't fit into my wardrobe or storage boxes meant that it still looked messy.

I was frightened of being ruthless after my two previous clear out disasters of 2019 and 2020, but Topaz had just had a big clear out herself and was able to encourage me through it. Eventually something just seemed to click, and I suddenly felt lighter and more clearheaded. The only setback was that after taking some bags down to the clothing bank, I discovered I could actually have made a little money by using Loopster. But never mind! (I'd also sent some items to Re-Fashion and Thrift+, I have a couple of items for eBay, and two or three bags went to family and friends.)

The reason I think it went better this time than last time was that I haven't been constantly buying in between, so I've gotten to know myself a little better and understand what I like, as well as what I do and don't wear. Whilst I didn't want to be wasteful, eventually I knew that my headspace and peace of mind needed to take priority - I've been saying all along that I want to stop thinking about clothes all the time, and I hope that now I've managed to get myself to a place where that can happen.

Happily, my allowed purchase for this month was not clothing! On the first of the month I had an email to say that an item I'd been interested in was back in stock, and although it was utterly frivolous I decided to go for it, as I thought it was really beautiful and would make me smile. I'd been debating all through January what I might buy next, and initially I was concerned that my eventual choice of purchase was quite random, but I think I've made a good choice as it's very 'me' and I love to see it in my home. It was this LED cushion with artwork by Lisa Parker.

I also had an 'oops' moment, where I realised I was putting off making some necessary purchases because I was counting them under the low-buy rules. Really it was a bit mean-spirited towards myself to treat foot cream and a treatment for a dry scalp like frivolities or treats. The aim of this game is not to buy as little as possible or to live a monastic life but to learn how to make better choices with my money. So I've ordered my scalp treatment and will shortly be picking up some shea butter from the health shop for my poor, unhappy feet!

The Curse of the Pinterest Wedding

By the time Dai and I got engaged, two years ago this month, I had been living free from disordered eating behaviours for four years, and I believed that I was fairly comfortable in myself. Post-baby, my weight had gone up quite a bit (or at least, my dress size had - I don't own a set of scales), but I quite liked having a softer, curvier figure and I wasn't bothered by my stretch marks. Birth was the most incredible, awful, arduous thing I had ever undergone - it seemed only logical that it would leave a mark behind.

I thought I was pretty happy with myself and had avoided the traps and pitfalls laid by the industries who profit from getting women to feel badly about their appearance. I don't do diets, ever - my eating is intuitive. I only buy products that I enjoy applying and that don't hurt or make me feel bad about myself - so no waxing, cellulite creams or anti aging products but lots of beautifully scented skincare with natural ingredients (I love Lush, because they don't market to a particular gender, they try to be low-impact, and their products smell great and are a joy to use), massage oils, botanical indie perfumes and really pretty eyeshadow. 

However, the February before the shopping ban I discovered that the beauty standards of the dominant culture can get in your head without you noticing, and smack you across the chops out of the blue, leaving you in tears over the way you look. For me, it was the day I tried on my wedding dress.

I'd taken a risk and ordered a dress online, from a dress designer on Etsy. I was so excited when it arrived - it was beautifully packaged too, with pink and blue confetti hearts spilling out of the box as I lifted yards of tulle gently, reverently into my arms.

I'd thought it would take me months and months to find a dress. I wanted tulle. I wanted blush pink. I wanted a long train. I wanted buttons, not a corset-style lace-up back. And I found it the first day of looking. I'd never imagined myself in a strapless wedding dress, let alone a ballgown - too traditional - but on the model it looked like something from a fairytale. I remember catching my breath and thinking, I'd really feel like a BRIDE in that dress.

But when I tried it on, I didn't feel like a bride at all. I felt like a frumpy troll. What an idiot I had been, to buy such a feminine dress, when I was such a great ugly lump. The wedding guests would fall about laughing.

I rang my mum in tears. "I hate the dress," I sobbed. "It'll have to go back." But I felt sick. If I didn't feel happy in a lovingly handmade fairytale gown that ticked all my boxes, what would it take?

Luckily for me (and my dress), my bridesmaids came swooping to the rescue. They stuffed me back into the dress and took photos while I laughed and smiled with them. When they showed me the pictures, the troll I'd seen in the mirror was gone. The laughing woman in the photos was radiant and joyful. She wasn't the slim blonde model from the website, she was me, with my bad skin and more teeth than a happy beaver, but I was glowing, and I looked great. The dress looked great on me, baby weight, henna-ed hair, tattoos and all.

I realised I'd been freaking out because I didn't look like an airbrushed model. I'd swallowed the wedding propaganda hook, line and sinker, and I'd beaten myself up because I didn't think I looked how a bride "should look". I was so disappointed that I had nearly let poor self-image and stupid, stupid patriarchal beauty standards affect our big day, and surprised, too - recovered from disordered eating, I was usually pretty relaxed about my looks, and I was shocked by my own visceral reaction and the surge of shame and disgust I had felt. Unrealistic expectations and picture-perfect overstyled social media weddings had a lot to answer for.

The Great Dress Debacle was not the only occasion during wedding planning when I felt the pressure for things to be perfect, and I had to make it my mission to let go of impossible standards. As my experiences in motherhood, and my mismatched wardrobe (after my ill-fated spending splurge and clearout, when I fell off the shopping ban wagon), were fast teaching me, if you try to micromanage every detail and make everything perfect in every way, you're on the road to disappointment. I had to forget perfection and just get on with having a good time. Screw Pinterest weddings. I was going to aim for fun, memorable, and ending the day legally married to the man I loved. If there was something blue at my wedding, it damn sure wasn't going to be me.

So I didn't attend a bridal bootcamp. Actually, I didn't go on a wedding diet at all. I chose to do my own nails with funky wraps from Espionage Cosmetics, chose hot pink glitter Vans over high heels, my bouquet was... No, I won't tell you that, or there'll be no surprises!... and my biggest and most indulgent splurge was custom lingerie of my own design made by Buttress and Snatch, whose beautiful fripperies I'd coveted for years. Instead of panicking over everyone looking at me, I kept telling myself "they've all seen you before! They know what you look like!" and kept on doing what would make me and Dai happy, whether it would look good on social media or not.

Don't get me wrong, I still had wobbles. I nearly had a meltdown at a wedding fayre wishing we could afford an events designer to make the reception hall into an enchanted forest (with white blossom trees on the tables, tea lights in glass globes hanging from their branches, and gold lace table cloths... It WAS beautiful, I admit), but there was just no way we could shoehorn it into the budget. Instead we planned our own decor for the cost of just one such arrangement, with dried flowers from a local florist, beer bottles we rather enjoyed sourcing ourselves, wooden rounds handmade by a friend working in woodland management, and little succulents in pots. 

When you plan a wedding, you'll never please everyone. Assorted relatives offered "helpful" criticism during the planning stages, and we had to learn to shrug it off and carry on regardless. I eventually came to realise that everyone's 'perfect' wedding would be different. This one was going to be chaotic, colourful, quirky, utterly imperfect (trying to coordinate wedding outfits whilst still breastfeeding multiple times a night led to little quirks such as the groom's buttonhole clashing with the bride's hair ornaments... All you can do then is own it like you did it on purpose) and OURS.

I could have sweated over every detail. I could have bought matching floral robes for the bridesmaids for a single getting-ready photo. I could have hired a car for a grand entrance, got hair extensions, dieted into a smaller dress, fake tanned, mani-pedi-ed, Wonderbra'd, freaked out about every pimple and pore. Blown the budget on a candy floss machine and a temporary tattoo station and a photo booth and a doughnut wall and a personalised cocktail menu and vintage tea cups as favours... And it still could never be perfect, because there's rain and mud and breast milk, ill-timed farts and stray eyebrow hairs, and who the heck would I be trying to impress anyway? Strangers on the internet, or my friends and family who love me already and really wouldn't notice the lack of a rose gold balloon arch? 

My friend Topaz noted in the bridesmaid group chat that I looked "like a majestic jellyfish queen" in my wedding dress. Indeed. And what more could any woman want? 

As it turned out, I was grateful I chose to take the philosophical approach. Our wedding was planned for May 6th, 2020, when the coronavirus pandemic was newly devastating the country. We don't know yet when our wedding will happen, or what it might eventually look like, but all I can do is continue trying not to get my knickers in a twist over things that are out of my control.

Thank heavens for wedding insurance.

Budgeting and Birthday Treats

In September 2019, with a full, if slightly bizarre wardrobe and a tired heart I turned my mind to the next quandary - how was I going to keep my financial ship afloat? The state of my bank account was horrific - I was now worse off than before I started the challenge. It was time to dedicate myself to the pursuit of frugality.

Tightening the Belt

Firstly and obviously, I made sure to return as many of my recent purchases as I could. I kept two pairs of jeans from Topshop, a dress and top from Zara, and the lipstick. The rest went back.

I put a date in the diary for a clothing swap party with my friends. I didn't expect to have much to contribute, but it seemed like a nice non-spendy way to get together. 

Dai and I looked at ways we could tighten up the family food budget. Instead of buying baby meals and 'ping meals', my former staples (I could barely boil an egg), I got a Jack Monroe budget cookbook from the library and started learning to make simple, healthy food that we could all eat together. Cooking was more pleasurable than I had anticipated, and soon became a new creative outlet, and I took up baking bread as well. Simple swaps that may seem obvious to you were to me a revelation - my £2.49-a-week cereal exchanged for a hefty 75p bag of porridge oats - porridge was twice as filling and lasted me three times as long.

Once I'd started to see a difference, saving money became addictive. I breathed down Dai's neck as we trailed the aisles in Aldi, making sure we got the cheapest products per kilo. I switched our energy and internet providers for better deals and moved my savings to higher interest accounts. I even cancelled Netflix (on the understanding that we would reinstate it if there were to be a new season of Happy). Without a regular income I didn't want to invest in stocks and shares, so instead I started buying premium bonds. I started doing product testing and online surveys for a bit of extra money - it wasn't a fortune, but it was something I could provide for the family coffers whilst still being at home with the little one.

And it worked! The holiday pay came in, making my bank account healthy again - and it stayed. At last, I had turned myself into a responsible adult, able to live within my means. 

Over the next few months, I used the money we saved to save more money - buying reusable cotton cloths for the kitchen and the baby's bum (no more kitchen towels or baby wipes), a safety razor and shaving brush (bye, Gilette), and WUKA period pants (don't even get me started on the price of tampons). Happily, these changes were also better for the environment, and I was pleased with my new, greener way of living.

In the cupboard under the stairs I found a bag - a small bag - of clothes that somehow never made it to the clothing bank, and I was so pleased I almost wept. 

Age

That September I turned twenty-eight. I was finding my late twenties a very different animal than the carefree early twenties, before stretch marks, shortsightedness, the indignity of maternity bras and an onslaught of household bills. Not to mention the unwanted guest at every occasion, the furrow developing between my eyebrows. 

I no longer wanted to wiggle round town in a slip of spandex from Boohoo - or at least when the thought did occur, it was tinged with nostalgia for that apparently-fleeting time when shiny fabric with rather daring cut-outs had actually looked quite good. Last time I'd put false eyelashes on, instead of alluring, I was forced to admit that I looked deranged.

Apart from a growing suspicion that motherhood combined with my natural tendency towards introversion was making me old before my time, I found I was enjoying different freedoms. No, I couldn't now drop everything for a weekend in London on a whim, but I also no longer wanted or needed to present myself as universally desirable, which freed up a lot of time and headspace. Other women were my allies, not my competition. Daily leg shaving and uncomfortable underwear made out of bits of string fell by the wayside, and I really didn't miss them. 

So this birthday, I thought long and hard about what I wanted to do. This new all-natural version of me, unseduced by the glitz of the department store and the breathless excitement of the mall, who hearkened back to the easy joys of childhood. What kind of things did I REALLY enjoy? In this new shopping-free existence, my pleasures were simple - eating, reading, fresh air, looking at interesting stuff. So Dai and I elected to travel to a nearby town which was holding a flea market.

Somehow, at the time, it genuinely did not occur to me that shopping at a flea market was still shopping. 

An Accidental Ban Break

It was a beautiful day, the sky a cheerful blue over the higgledy-piggledy red roofs, the steam trains puffing industriously into the station of this historic market town. It was pretty and quaint, and we bought coffee and pastries as we wandered the stalls, captivated by doll parts on royal blue velvet and a cross-eyed taxidermy stoat. I bought three ribbons made from recycled silk and reclaimed sari fabric, thinking I could use them to customise, well, something. At some point. Definitely useful, anyway. And ethical! Supporting local businesses, too, I practically deserved a medal.

Please insert your own facepalm emoji here.

In other ways, though, my birthday was a triumph. In the run-up, I hadn't been able to escape thinking about buying this or that for myself as a "birthday treat", a habit I'd started many years ago, and, as with the holiday souvenirs, never since questioned. Dai thought that I should get myself a small treat, ban or no ban, but I had just about made up my mind not to, to confirm to myself that henceforth, I was doing things differently. 

It was also handy to have one or two specific items that I could think of when I was asked what gifts I would like. Because I hadn't been able to buy every item that crossed my path, I had a couple of books and useful items that I specifically wanted.

I also did something else I'd never done before. Usually, I spent all my birthday money on this or that, generally a large luxury purchase I'd been hankering after for ages. Not this time. This time, other than one little blip, I saved it all.

Been There, Done That, Became Weirdly Obsessed With A T-Shirt

I found September challenging in one notable way. Having broken the ban so very spectacularly in August, I was now having immense difficulty in reining in my shopping behaviours. Despite how much I wasn't enjoying it, every day I was back online, checking the new arrivals pages of my favourite stores, or - in a new twist - "researching" ethical brands, to, um, "make sure that I could buy what I wanted in the future, but, you know, from better companies". I was trying to put myself in the path of temptation. Even though I couldn't really afford it, let alone justify it, I was searching for something so beautiful, so right, that surely no one would say I shouldn't buy it.

This was how I discovered The T-Shirt. 

The T-Shirt was made by a small business in an English seaside town I had visited and loved many years ago. It was dyed with environmentally friendly dye and silk-screened by hand with the name of the town, and a quirky print of a trawlerman mending his nets with his trusty dog by his side. In classic British navy blue - flattering on me - and white.

Wow, I thought, that's so me.

But no. I was on a shopping ban. It was not to be. And yet...

It's barely an exaggeration to say that for most of the month my every waking thought was about The T-Shirt. I discussed it, I journalled about it, frankly I obsessed about it. I knew that sticking to the ban would give me more long-term benefits than any t-shirt - I wouldn't be learning anything if I didn't try to stick it out - but every occasion gave me new opportunities to try to get around my own rules. I should never have been browsing t-shirts in the first place. I was setting myself up to fail. 

Between that and the ribbons I felt like I was back at the beginning. One more thing, and then I'll stop. One more thing... And just one more. 

So I started planning a holiday for Dai, the Spud and me for my 30th birthday. I picked a place I had always wanted to visit, but had written off as too difficult, too logistically complicated. I chose Shetland. It gave me something to aim for with my newfound frugality, and also something to focus on other than acquisition. I felt that it was time to have a good hard think about the kind of life I really wanted, because salivating over a t-shirt wasn't it. 

I'd been shying away from doing that because it scared me. Change scared me. Goals scared me. But if I kept putting it off, my life would fly by in a whirlwind of shopping lists, everything worthwhile sidelined in case it was too difficult.

Oh, but that 'little blip' in my saving that I mentioned? 

I bought The T-Shirt.

Community vs. Consumption

Day 100 of the 2019 shopping ban - or what would have been - came and went. I consoled myself with the thought that I would have spent an awful lot more over the last three months had I not been putting my heart and soul into my challenge. It had been a shock to me how quickly I fell back into 24/7 browsing, shopping, and thinking about shopping. And I was astonished by how crap it made me feel - I was desperate to stop again. I didn't care if my clothes were unstylish, I would wear bin bags if that was what it took to leap back off the dizzying whirl of the consumer carousel. 

I stopped the clear out. It was making me worried and uncomfortable, wishing I'd left well enough alone. I was concerned about the time, money and effort it would take to replace what I was bagging up. I felt I was going too far in my need to reach a clean slate. And once again I was trying to create an image around myself instead of keeping in mind my true likes and dislikes, and my real life.

Three months of hard work, trashed in a few days! There had to be better ways of spending my time.

Shopped Out

Once I had some breathing space, it was time to tackle the new set of problems I had now made for myself, a matched pair. One: I had once again devastated my finances, and there was only one last lump sum of holiday pay on the horizon, at the end of the month. I was going to have to figure out how to stretch that money as far as it could possibly go.

Two: I had devastated my wardrobe. In the ruthlessness of my clearout, I had left myself next to nothing for daily life. It was all very well and good that these two party dresses and this winter blouse sparked joy, but what was I going to wear now?!

The second problem, after all that frenzied buying and discarding, turned out to be the easiest to fix. I set myself a £20 budget to hit the charity shops and replenish my naked closet. 

After the intensity and guilt of the previous fortnight, I was - finally - shopped out. I couldn't summon up the energy to browse every rail and compare every item to try to curate the perfect selection of items that "felt like me". I went to British Heart Foundation. I picked up every item in my approximate size from the £2 or less rail. I took them into the changing room, and I bought everything that fitted that I didn't hate. I repeated these actions the following week. 

It was far from being the perfect wardrobe, mismatched and full of oddities, but I was resolved, now, to stop giving the whole matter such goddamn importance. I was sick of repeating the same cycle and learning nothing. The whole experience of shopping online - with such queasy passion, such grasping desperation! - had reminded me of why I'd wanted to get off this ride in the first place. I'd felt totally out of control, and that frightened me. Much to my surprise, I hadn't enjoyed shopping at all.

The Generosity of Friends

For a short time I muddled through, doing an awful lot of laundry as my new "minimalist" wardrobe endured the daily deluge of baby food, milk, puke, and other things the bevy of well-dressed online influencers smiling benignly at their ethically produced ceramic mugs apparently weren't dealing with.

Then one day I was having a cuppa with a good friend, Bel, when I mentioned I was low on clothing options. Bel winced, laughed and said, "Well, I've just had a clearout. Let me bring you a bag of stuff over and see if there's anything you want."  I was delighted - even more so when she returned with an enormous shopping bag of lovely things. It wasn't all to my taste, but it cheered me up immensely to have some new outfit options - and for free!

Word soon spread amongst my social circle that the lunatic on a self-imposed shopping ban had compounded her personal torture by throwing out half her clothes. My mum, bless her, dug out from the depths of her cupboard a bag of things she'd been meaning to take to a charity shop, and kindly returned to me a warm coat I'd given her the previous winter because I thought it was unstylish. The designer replacement I'd bought did nothing to keep out the wind - not an issue in June, but a nightmare in January. When you can't solve your problems with spending, it's best to be prepared.

One friend, Alice, turned up with a bag of clothes and an expression of pity. I'm not sure if she thought I was a charity case or just a bit of an idiot. Bridesmaid Topaz turned up with an astonishing six binbags (SIX) for me to take my pick from. "I'm not a shopaholic," she explained. "This is what I left behind at my mum's house when I moved out. She's such a hoarder, she didn't want me to part with any of it. I've been working on her for ages! I haven't even seen some of this stuff in years. Do what you like with it."  

I was left with a bulging wardrobe (again), a sense of gratitude and great relief, and a new insight into the content of my friends ' closets. It seemed I wasn't the only one with a tendency to accumulate an untenable amount of stuff. One close friend had had an entire second bedroom devoted to rails of clothing, but had to scale back when her partner moved in. She is always beautifully dressed, but had dipped into her overdraft in order to fund her shopping habit. 

The ladies didn't want any of the excess clothing back, so as well as a full wardrobe I now had a full cupboard under the stairs. This time, rather than stress and overwhelm, my full wardrobe gave me only joy and a sense of abundance. I realised that the thousands of options online had only given me a sense of panic, of needing to keep up, of not-enough-ness. I had actually stopped browsing charity shops, prior to the ban, because I had come to feel that to make the exact right clothing choices and stop buying things I didn't wear, I needed the option to filter by size, brand or colour. I was overwhelmed by choices. Want jeans? Dark wash, acid wash, stone wash, sandblast, boyfriend, slim boyfriend, girlfriend, mom jean, skinny jean, super skinny, high waist, low rise, ripped, raw, ankle grazing, bootcut, flared, skate jean, balloon jean, cocoon, embroidered, slim fit, cigarette, stretch, jegging, bleached, cargo, frayed, button front, straight leg, cropped, distressed, crop flare, cuffed hem, pleated, pom-pom trim, patched, plastic knee windows... A smorgasbord of choices. (I did not make any of these up!)

And yet, I still couldn't seem to find exactly what I wanted - trend-driven fashion brands produce en masse, and their target market apparently wasn't a twenty-seven year old new mum with a round belly and boobs that require scaffolding. In fact, many brands and high street stores seemed to be aiming their wares at a target market of petite teenagers who don't need underwear or feel the cold.

Conversely, these new clothes of mine had been chosen from a very limited selection - they were not "perfect", or curated, or selected via a Pinterest infographic. But they brought colour, and variety, and I felt happy to have them. I also felt silly for not having thought of asking my friends and family for help sooner. Was I so locked into the consumer mindset that I had forgotten about community?

The Dark Side of "Retail Therapy"

I had also now seen first hand the sheer volume of clothes already at large in the world. Women and their overstuffed wardrobes are the butt of many a movie joke (Confessions of a Shopaholic, anyone?), but seeing the stress, financial pressure and even debt caused by overshopping, I wasn't laughing. 

Retail therapy is promoted to women as the cure for whatever ails us. I have bought new clothes to cheer up, to wind down, to reinvent myself, to affirm myself, to celebrate an achievement. It had become the norm for me to buy a new outfit for any given night out. When planning my wedding, I put "new dress for hen party" on my to do list without even thinking about it. It literally did not occur to me to wear something I already had. And I doubt that I'm alone in this. In fact, Metro reported in 2017 that one in six young people won't re-wear clothes they've been photographed in on social media; a survey of 2000 women cited by the Daily Mail found that an item of clothing is worn, on average, just seven times. During my ban, Dai overheard a Primark shop assistant telling her colleague that she replaces her jeans every six months, as she feels after that they are "worn out". 

With a culture that places so much emphasis on our appearance on the one hand, and treats clothing as a disposable commodity on the other, it was no major surprise that all my friends' wardrobes were bursting at the seams. 

Having worked in a charity shop, I had seen first hand a small portion of the millions of garments that are donated each year - many unworn. The shop I worked in received such a high volume of donations that we occasionally had to turn goods away, because we simply didn't have the physical space to take in any more! Yet despite the best efforts of staff and volunteers, charity shops in the UK only sell around 10% of the clothing they are given. The rest - damaged or soiled items, but also unsold items in good condition - is sold to "rag traders", who generally ship it to third world countries. The second hand clothing industry is worth billions of pounds, but it is also saturated. Second hand western clothing is no longer a hot commodity; there is just too much of it. 

Our cast-offs are known in markets in Ghana as 'Dead White Man's Clothes', as Liz Ricketts reports on the Fashion Revolution blog, "When secondhand clothing started flooding into Ghana in the 1960s people assumed that the cheap imports had been the property of deceased foreigners, hence the name. The truth – that the clothing was simply excess that living consumers in the USA and Europe no longer wanted – was less than obvious." Kantamanto Market in Ghana is the largest second-hand clothing market in West Africa; 15 million items are unloaded there each week, and yet Liz Ricketts discovered that 40% of each clothing bale sent to Kantamanto becomes waste in landfill. Haiti is so flooded by second hand clothing imports that the local textile industry has suffered and many tailors have gone out of business. We are producing, buying, and disposing of so much excess clothing that even the developing world cannot make use of it.