May 2020 marked the end of my first attempted shopping ban. Frankly I was surprised I'd remained interested and motivated for a whole year - including keeping notes in my journal every day!
The funny thing is, I'm not sure that at this point I was any more secure in terms of 'personal style' than I had been at the beginning. But I was happier, calmer, gradually becoming more creative, and much better with money. I still had quite some way to go, granted, but I spent some time just feeling proud of myself and how far I'd come. I'd learned not only to live within my means but to enjoy it and to thrive.
At the beginning of May, I was fed up with my endless routine of thinking (and feeling bad) about my clothes - keep, go, mend, donate, bag up, unbag, test, try, restyle, repeat til fade. It was all congealing into a major mound of annoyance and decision fatigue and I wanted a break from dealing with it for a while. So I packed away the vast majority of my wardrobe - around 200 items at the time - and embarked on Project 333, wherein you wear only 33 items for 3 months.
Yet on day one of my 33-item wardrobe experiment, the Spud climbed into my lap and joggled my arm at an inopportune moment, spilling coffee down the front of my hoodie. On day two, I got my first period in eighteen months, which turned several of my potential bottom-half garments into uncomfortable prospects.
On day three, my comparison fever reared its ugly head for the first time in months after encountering a well-dressed older woman with quirky, colourful style. I ended up on Pinterest, that hellhole, spent ages on it, then got bored and cross and remembered why I'm great the way I am.
On day four, I was about convinced that the universe was trying to tell me something when a bird shat on my cardigan.
I gave up and unpacked the rest of my wardrobe. You can't argue with a message like that.
My comparison stumbling block had got me thinking. I'd been feeling a bit worried because I didn't seem to know exactly what I like any more. My tastes had shifted without my noticing somewhere along the line, perhaps as part of getting older. But I was hoping that as I go along, curating - to use one of the media buzzwords of the moment - and carefully accumulating the right things and discarding the excess, it will all eventually come together. It doesn't matter if I can't make sense of it all right now - as long as I stay open, authentic and notice my honest feelings about stuff (check out that band regardless of whether you historically listen to that genre, read that book if it excites you even if it's not 'relevant', don't watch the movie that you're really not interested in even though everyone else is raving about it, if you never ever wear those shoes don't keep them), I'll get there. It's not as though I have to sum it all up and put a label on it (or, heaven forbid, a hashtag).
I just hate uncertainty and change. I want everything about me to be static, finished and complete. But that's not the way it works. We grow and learn, change our perspectives and opinions, open up to new possibilities. I need to stop trying to BE something, accept who I am and let it ebb and flow organically - instead of trying to force it into a shape so I can define it.
It was as though I couldn't stop thinking about THINGS in one form or another - how many, how few, how do they define me, what should I own, what should I own next, tomorrow, next week, next year?
I came across a couple of quotes from Kyle Chaka's book The Longing For Less that held resonance for me: "One act of will is to erase everything that's already around you, washing it clean and starting again so that the only things left are those you choose, which is the standard practice of minimalism. This is a simple way to build a sense of self. You are what you include... But favouring control leaves no room for surprises. A more difficult, perhaps more deeply satisfying method is to embrace contingency and randomness, accepting that life is a compromise between what exists and what you want, and beauty is found not by imposition but through an absence of control."
And, "Minimalism is thus a kind of last resort. When we can't control our material security or life path, the only possibility left is to lower our expectations to the point where they're easier to achieve."
Over the next year, I decided that I wanted to knuckle down with staying off the internet - or at least, those bits of it that seem to muddle my sense of self and diminish my imagination - and tackle those lingering shopping behaviours, such as browsing for things to buy 'in future'. I don't need to know right now what exact jeans I will buy when my current ones wear out!
In the end, I quit Project 333 because I wanted to make use of what I have, not just jettison stuff to meet an arbitrary goal of minimalism (you don't actually get rid of the rest of your stuff to do 333, but I was looking for things I could cast off). I agree with the principle of simplicity, but I don't think that the way to get there is to focus harder on my stuff.
In May, I also spent a bit of time looking at the Humans of New York website. It reminds me that what I'm wearing is the least interesting thing about me, and provides a good antidote to comparison thinking. Everyone's story is unique, each one worthwhile.
You’ve summed it up perfectly again.
ReplyDeleteNotice how it always comes back to I am not the sum of my clothes? They are the least interesting thing about you.
They can be pleasing to look at, but so can a necklace or earrings, and conversation starters if needed.
You get change don’t you because of the seasons, so you end up putting some clothes away for three months without having to think too much about it. That was simple lol
Thank you :)
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