My No-Buy July: A Belated Write-Up

July, it seemed, was a good month for those of us trying to buy less stuff. Frugalwoods was running the Uber Frugal Month (I've signed up for this so many times that I've memorised the emails, yet I still don't invest, and I haven't yet trusted myself with a credit card. Maybe next year. Why do I feel like there's this whole arena of adulthood associated with these kinds of financial decisions that I somehow don't feel ready for yet?). I also discovered a YouTuber, Christina Mychas, who was running a No-Buy July support group by email, and also has a Facebook group, Low Buy Beauties.

In July, our annual trip to Pembrokeshire was so close that I could almost smell the sea, and we were also starting to get excited about our trip to Shetland in October. Dai booked the overnight ferry at the beginning of July, and I was starting to realise, with considerable discomfort, that a 'big' holiday (we originally booked it to fall between my 30th birthday and Dai's 40th, but had to push it back a year due to covid uncertainties) would be something we could do far more regularly if I stopped spending so much money on other things.

My finances weren't looking great following my trip to Brighton with Alice. I hadn't emptied my piggy bank, but as a carer I'm on a low income, and it takes a while for the coffers to refill. I wasn't intending to spend a lot on either holiday, but it did remind me that it was time to have a look at how I was doing with my budgets.

Well, it wasn't good. When I added up the columns of numbers in the back of my journal, I learned that, seven months into the year, I was already over the budgets I'd set myself for cosmetics, books, and clothes. Clothing was the worst category - I'd nearly spent twice my annual budget, which meant, terrifyingly, that in seven months I'd nearly spent the same amount I spent throughout the whole of 2021. Not. Good. At all.

It was time for a bit of triage. I was on the waiting list for a commission from a slow fashion artisan I'd been admiring online for some time, and I contacted her to say I couldn't afford the piece right now, and would it be all right for me to get in touch in a few more months and go back on the bottom of the waiting list then. She was amazingly nice about it, and actually said that when I get back in touch I won't have to wait again, which was so kind. I also had a tattoo appointment booked in early September for a new large design on my left arm, but I knew I couldn't justify another three-figure spend, so I contacted my tattooist and cancelled the appointment. I did not enjoy doing these things, but I also would not have enjoyed finishing up the year with no cash cushion left in my account. The modern wisdom is 'treat yo'self', but without limits my spending was spiralling out of my control. Better to wait until I could afford these things without risk of crippling myself financially.

I was also still plugging away with Flylady, and our small house was looking so much better. Partly because it was cleaner (!), but also because we didn't have so much stuff squeezed where it didn't really fit. But then, reading back through my journal, I was quite alarmed to discover that apparently I had also had a 'big declutter' back in February. By July, I couldn't see the difference or remember a single thing I had gotten rid of only a few months ago, which freaked me out a bit! I took a quick inventory of my wardrobe, and was interested to find that my 63 t-shirts (as inventoried in 2019) had been reduced to a much more storage-space-friendly 25, yet even when I wracked my brain I could only think of five or six I had given to friends or donated. Where did the other 30-odd come from, and where did they go?!

This experience really confirmed to me that I am still not quite the mindful shopper I had convinced myself I was. I could do with being a lot stricter on myself when it comes to spending, and I think I'm doing the right thing by trying to get the most out of the items that I have so I don't constantly feel like I have to be seeking something more. It's a bit worrisome that so many pieces are still kind of just passing through - I do shop mainly second-hand nowadays, and I get a lot given to me from friends' clearouts, but if I don't want to be decluttering eternally I need to be MUCH more ruthless about what I bring into the house.

I decided to follow Mint Notion's Shop Your Closet challenge throughout July. It would challenge my ingrained consumer mindset - I'd noticed that when I picture myself doing this or that in the future, I imagine a fantasy wardrobe for myself and start planning what to buy, rather than figuring out appropriate outfits from the abundance I have already!

Week One

An easy week, shopping-wise. No temptations, no slips, no mistakes. I noticed that my usage of Instagram and Pinterest fell dramatically throughout the course of the week, which made me wonder how much the 'inspiration' I'm seeking actually translates to 'the next thing to buy'. 

This was also the week I had the brainwave of rearranging my clothes instead of decluttering any further. My winter gear was put away in under bed storage, and I moved my socks and bras from a drawer in my wardrobe into a small crate that sits in the wardrobe itself. Then I had enough room to vanquish the last of those plastic crates that have been living scattered around our bedroom. It's a great feeling and the room feels and looks so much better.

(Actually there are still a couple of boxes on my side of the bedroom. Those are my 'maybe' boxes, where I'm keeping those last few pieces that I haven't decided whether or not to let go of. Traditional wisdom holds that you should seal your maybe boxes and put them away for a few months, after which time you can declutter them guilt-free, but after reminding myself that I'm an aspiring environmentalist, not an aspiring minimalist, first and foremost, I've left the boxes open so that I can mix my maybe items into my outfits. Some of those items will still have to go - they just don't fit and aren't comfortable. Others might have ended up in the boxes simply because I was desperate to get rid of something, anything, to edge closer to the mythical capsule wardrobe of my fantasy self, and they might deserve another chance.)

I watched a lot more YouTube than usual during this week - I found that it kept me feeling positive about the challenge to hear from others who were doing/are doing a no-buy - it reminded me that I'm doing this to have more money for other things; that I'm not making a sacrifice, just changing my priorities. (I've linked some of my favourite videos at the bottom of this post, as well as some articles that kept me fired up!)

Week Two

Now that things were tidy and manageable I found myself quite naturally focusing on things other than my wardrobe. I'd been enjoying the Shop Your Closet challenge as it has encouraged me to try new combinations and wear those items that didn't see the light of day as much, but I now found myself deviating from the suggested outfits as I had so many ideas for combinations I wanted to try. But after getting dressed in the mornings, I noticed that I wasn't really thinking at all about clothes.

Instead I was cooking more and making some of our household staples from scratch (armed with The Planet-Friendly Kitchen by Karen Edwards). It was too hot to go out or do anything very active, but I made some headway into my To Be Read pile. I made some cash selling a few of my unwanted things through Facebook Marketplace, and I started getting up early to beat the heat so that I could start again with my yoga practice - I have an annoying tendency to stick with it just long enough to notice my strength and flexibility increasing, then slack off long enough to stiffen up again. Much like I do with shopping bans, actually! But not this time, I hope.

What I do with my time when I'm not on a shopping ban baffles me. Surely I can't just be spending hours a day browsing? I thought I'd broken that habit. And yet I suddenly seemed to have a lot more opportunity to do the things I was always too busy for. Odd!

Week Three

I really wasn't sure if I wanted to admit to this on the internet, but I had a horrible moment where I found myself crying behind my sunglasses on a busy high street because I felt horrendously self-conscious and ugly in my summer clothes. In hindsight I think the book I'd been reading that weekend had been a bit triggering for those faint eating disordered thoughts that sometimes still crop up in the back of my brain, and I was feeling a bit vulnerable. I just couldn't think of how to help myself past these painful feelings without either shopping or dieting, but I knew that neither would be helpful, especially not as a knee-jerk response.

I did eventually decide that I probably needed a bit of indulgence and self-care time, a morning routine that wasn't a quick wash-and-go, maybe even a bit of lipstick and a pair of high heels. I've mentioned before that I keep trying to do without 'frivolous style and beauty stuff' in the name of, I dunno, dedicating myself to being a more serious eco warrior (or something like that), and it has helped to see that my favourite sustainability influencers clearly love clothes and make-up and generally looking nice. This overload of crappy feelings really brought home to me that I actually need to carve out that time in my morning routine to let myself feel good about myself. 

I'm wary of coming to depend on make-up to feel acceptable like I did when I was younger, so I'm going to try not to overdo it but instead to find a balance. 

Week Four

Speaking of balance, I know that I've already spent too much in my 'problem' categories this year, so going forward I really don't want to spend too much more in 2022. But this week I started to have some some wobbles about what my next steps are going to be. Realistically, I don't know if a year without shopping is ever going to be a thing for me, and sometimes I wonder if that's even a sensible thing to aim for - this blog post about choosing low-buy over no-buy came into my orbit this week, and the writer makes a good case. 

Although I feel like 'giving myself a gift' every week might be a bit excessive and would definitely push those big holidays further out of reach, I can certainly see that, say, a monthly treat like a new face mask or a book or whatever could actually be really uplifting. But when I tried a low-buy year before, it went horribly wrong! Maybe now that I'm not shopping online so much, I could do it? Being able to still shop somewhat would also mean I could do some thrifting, which I have been keen to do more since I started watching Gittemary's channel.

I have actually started planning another trip with Alice for a few months' time - we're going to take the train to London in January or February, and we're planning to visit the flagship Waterstones bookstore in Piccadilly and browse the shops in Soho, as well as a bit of sightseeing. There's approximately a 0% chance that I will come home empty-handed after noodling around Beyond Retro, and I'm trying to channel my inner Gittemary and not feel guilty as long as the shopping is sustainable and doesn't bust my budget. The thing is that I still kind of want to be this hardline frugal mindful simplicity guru who doesn't care about style, doesn't go nuts for new zero waste and vegan skin care products, doesn't adore clothes, doesn't enjoy shopping as an activity, doesn't like going to the spa - but I'm not that person and I do love all of those things. I feel like it undermines my anticonsumerist Druid credibility, but I can't change myself - I have tried!

I can't decide if my end goal is to quit shopping altogether (except replacement items and the things I need to live!) or just to give it less overall room in my life, an occasional enjoyable activity rather than a complete obsession. People who've done a no-buy year tend to rave about it as life-changing, and I kind of want some of that! But I also want to not always be punishing myself...

This post is getting super long, but at the very tail end of July I went with Dai and the Spud to Valhalla Viking Festival, which I'll talk a bit more about in another post for the sake of brevity. But suffice to say I completed my no-buy successfully despite delicious temptations abounding. It was helpful to remind myself that there will always be something else to want, and I won't actually miss or regret the items I don't buy.

Inspiration:

Quit Fast Fashion in Your Twenties (applicable for any age, and funny as well as lots of smart advice on how to generally shop better!)

I stopped buying clothes and found my personal style

Zero Waste Without Minimalism? 

Un-Fashioning the Future

How I Overcame My Shopping Addiction

The Feral Gardener

Sitting in my garden this morning with my fleece over my dressing gown and a lovely, steaming mug of coffee, I smiled to myself wondering what my neighbours must think of my approach to gardening. My method can be described as a combination of thrift, ecological-mindedness, a fair amount of total ignorance about gardening, and a bit of laziness too. I like that the most ecological approach to gardening often seems to also be the easiest.

I did work hard last summer getting a lawn area seeded for the little one to play on, and planting our first vegetables. Then I was a tad disheartened when the lawn grew in patchy and we lost most of our radish crop to pests. The weeds, however, grow with abundance - I kept meaning to borrow a hoe and tackle them, after a few afternoons spent digging out each and every one with a trowel. Then I discovered books like The Forager's Garden (Anna Locke) and Letting in the Wild Edges (Glennie Kindred) and realised I could be digging out plants that were useful or beneficial. I decided to stop weeding indiscriminately and instead to learn what exactly I had growing. I also choose not to use chemical weedkillers or fertilisers, which sometimes feels like I'm stacking the odds against myself, but I'm adamant it's the right thing to do. 

One of the few things we bought new when we moved in was a compost bin, which is happily doing its thing. Dai's dad has offered us his old water butt, and we've made pathways out of rubble we found in the garden when we moved in, and planters for herbs out of whatever we could find, such as an old sink and a beer keg. Currently I'm saving up Amazon vouchers (one of the survey sites I use pays in Amazon vouchers rather than cash) for a bokashi bin set, so that we can turn our kitchen scraps - including those that can't be composted in a standard compost bin, like meat and dairy - into fertiliser.

The first frosts came around before I was ready, and we lost many strawberries and a couple of tomato plants. At first the colder weather drove me indoors, but after deciding to resume my morning sit spot regardless of the weather, I began to spot more and more wildlife in our weedy, scraggly patch. Robins are apparently partial to the three tangled elder trees that I had gingerly separated and gently pruned in the hopes of helping them avoid disease. There were blue tits in the bare-branched apple tree that reached over our fence from nextdoor. Once or twice we spotted a squirrel racing through the yew trees just behind our fence.

My neighbours on the left have the most velvety and pristine lawn you can imagine, which is nursed by sprinklers dawn till dusk, April till October (I've never seen their children in the garden - though I've seen them gaping at us from the bedroom window!). Comparatively, last year I decided not to mow my lawn, to help it establish itself, and since I haven't weeded it either what I have now is a small and bedraggled meadow (I will mow it in the spring!). I also didn't rake up the leaves from the neighbouring sycamore - I can't quite get behind the idea of raking a biodegradable, soil-nourishing product into plastic bags, so I'm hoping it will work as a kind of free mulch.

The result of all this is that right now, my garden looks a terrible mess. The clematis at the bottom of the garden has evidently been left unmanaged for several years, and has swarmed up the nearest yew tree with parasitical fervour to form a green wall between us and the cemetery. I'm not sure what I can do about that - I tried hacking it back last year but it has simply shot straight back up with undiminished enthusiasm. But in the spring we will have nettles for tea and soup, and in the summer we have blackberries - though Dai would rather plant a thornless variety. We were able to decorate our house for the winter solstice with holly and ivy from our own garden. 

As well as our three elders and nextdoor's apple we have a beech tree, a conifer and a small aster of some description. We've also tried planting a cutting from a friend's fig tree, and should soon find out whether or not that has been successful. So the ingredients for a forager's forest garden (and a small, handy grove) do seem to be in place, and I'm hoping that my job this year will amount to steering it in the right direction, and adding more and more edible plants. 

The Year of Rewilding

Life has a way of happening whether one likes it or not, and just as I decided to give myself permission to shop, a lot of it happened all at once. 

One night a stone came through our bedroom window (the previous resident of our house is apparently not a popular man locally). As well as being a bit of a shock, this was an unwanted expense as we had to have the glass replaced. Then I had to have my dad's car moved by a recovery firm. Then the deposit came due for the little one to start nursery in the new term. Then the Department of Work and Pensions made an error with Dai's taxes. A car veered too close to Dai's vehicle and scraped the wing mirror off. Again and again we had to dip into our piggy bank and watch the balance go down. 

It felt frustrating and unfair. Our finances had taken a battering several months prior when Dai's former employer decided not to pay him what he'd earned, and they'd never really recovered. Friends and family offered support, but it's hard to take money from loved ones when you don't know when or if you'll be able to return the favour. We'd gone from feeling not exactly well-off but able to afford some luxuries, to doing the food shop with vouchers and barely being able to afford the heating. 

Between being suddenly skint and the loss of my father, it was really hard to stay focused. I found that I could sit in my armchair, fall into Facebook or Instagram and still be there a couple of hours later. I was forgetful and slow - jobs that used to take ten minutes might now take whole days. It was getting more and more difficult to face the wind and rain to get out for our daily walks. Sometimes we didn't leave the house until evening. The to-do list was getting so long it made me nauseous just thinking about it.

The bright spots were few. Lighting candles on my altar and casting a warm cosy glow throughout the kitchen. Curling up with the Spud to listen to a local folklore podcast, as the rain drummed softly against the windows. Reading strange, mournful, viscerally beautiful poetry. 

I hadn't yet settled on a word for 2022. I prefer choosing a word to setting a resolution. It's like setting a heading to steer by, whereas traditional resolutions can be rather like selecting a personal failing to beat yourself up about for a few months. Much like trying to do a year-long shopping ban, I suppose. 

The word arose almost spontaneously, just a whisper at first, slinking out of the shadows around the edges of my mind.

Rewilding.

I tried to dismiss it at first - I have a three year old, a mortgage, and a business account on Instagram, what chance do I have to be wild? Wild is for the carefree, the unencumbered, the privileged, the courageous. Artists, artisans, nomads, small farmers, bush-crafters, van dwellers, communal-living-people, people who don't need at least one member of the household holding down a nine-to-five to keep the roof over. People I admire and follow on the socials, but am too comfortably domesticated to become.

Maybe that was the challenge. Maybe that's what I needed.

I saw a meme one day about feral housewives, and it made me laugh, but it also made me think (and not just me either). The next day I stumbled across a book entitled The Modern Peasant. Then I met a woman at a craft market selling baskets and decorations woven by hand from willow. My IG feed was filling up with foragers, home brewers, people weaving their own clothes from linen and dyeing them with leaves and berries, people who found happiness and empowerment in living simply and close to nature.

[Image text: The term "domestic housewife" implies that there are feral housewives, and now I have a new goal.]

Fair enough, I can't pack up our household into a caravan or narrowboat (yet). But being a feral housewife? That, I could probably manage. Or at least have fun setting out in that direction. Rewilding in baby steps. 

A wilder life was also a different way of looking at living frugally, which can be a fun challenge when your coffers are full but a stressful grind when they're nearing empty. One of my favourite reads in the last few years was Radical Homemakers by Shannon Hayes, which seemed like a pretty good jumping-off point for further disconnecting my life from consumer culture - which right then seemed to be doing its damnedest to reel me back in, because sometimes it's harder than others to resist the endless scroll and the easy fix.

Maybe I could choose foraging over Facebook, take up reading poetry by candlelight, make things with my hands, get dirt under my nails and stars in my eyes, and in so doing become a little stranger and a little wilder over the course of the year. It definitely seemed worth a try.

Shopper's Guilt

We all know about buyer's remorse, but I'd like to coin a new term: shopper's guilt. This is something I have noticed I now feel when buying, well, anything, from a new item of clothing - even when necessary - to a hot chocolate on a cold day. I think it stems from having tried for so long not to buy anything at all. I love to see whole weeks of no-spend days on the page in my journal where I write down my daily spends, and sometimes it's hard to remember that groceries, birthday gifts for other people's kids, and even - deep breath here - the occasional treat, are not failures.

The thing is, I've read about so many people who successfully completed a year-long shopping ban that I just assumed it was something I would be able to do with enough willpower. I didn't really take into consideration other factors at play in my life, such as the struggle I'd had to put a wardrobe together post-baby. As long-term readers will know, due to a number of factors such as lack of self-esteem and not much sense of personal identity, my wardrobe for the last couple of years has largely been made up of items gifted by friends and family during their own clearouts, which helped to tide me over when I didn't have money to spend to buy new items for my changed body and really needed a break from online shopping.

But now, three years after the Spud's birth, I am finally starting to get comfortable with who I am, what my shape is and what I like, and I'm able to make good choices about what to buy and when. But I felt so guilty about wanting to do so, when I already had things I could wear.

Then recently I read Real Life Money by Claire Seal. Actually I put off reading it for ages after checking out the sample, because I was super invested in trying to be as anticonsumerist as possible at all costs, and sentences like "it's not about bullying yourself into frenzied frugality and then beating yourself up when, inevitably, you need to buy a new toothbrush on a 'no spend day'," gave me the Fear. I'd learned to think in very simple terms regarding money - spending = bad. I was sceptical - and nervous - about the suggestion that there might be other ways to tackle my shopping habit other than the extreme frugality method.

But after feeling terrible for buying myself a new jacket - even though I'd already identified that I needed one, and had had it on my wishlist for nearly a year - I decided I'd better give it a go. I've gotten way better with money since starting this blog - I actually have savings now - but I was tired of the guilt. I'd spent years feeling small because I shopped too much - now I felt bad if I shopped at all, which didn't really feel like an improvement.

After reading Real Life Money - or rather, devouring it in two days - I bought two items from a local business run by some friends of mine - a pair of rainbow dungarees with a celestial print, which were discounted, and a deck of Tarot cards I'd been looking at on Amazon for about eight months. 

Immediately I felt awful and texted Dai, telling him I needed him to hide my debit card, as I "was suffering a lack of self-control". Then I stopped and thought about it. Did I want to return the items? Well, honestly, no. The dungarees fit beautifully, went with a lot of my favourite items, and were gorgeous. I was pleased that I'd been able to find something so me in a local shop. The Tarot deck was bright and colourful, and had a very different vibe to my other deck, which is more dark and earthy. I do try not to collect decks, as I don't see the need, and I'm sceptical of collecting things just for the sake of it (everything takes resources, after all) but having two beautiful sets for different moods and different readings didn't seem like the end of the world.

I texted Dai again. "Actually, belay that. I've spent within my means and I don't regret what I've bought. It's not a self-control issue I'm having, it's a guilt issue."

Learning to shop mindfully scares me a bit, because historically I find moderation harder than an all-or-nothing approach. Last winter I tried to take a break from my endless shopping bans and immediately bought far too much. I'm the sort of person who finds it hard to eat just a couple of cookies. But, is all-or-nothing healthy, or have I been shooting myself in the foot trying to go from full-throttle shopaholism to a dead stop? Have I been subconsciously telling myself that I don't deserve nice things, or that I am bad, wrong or brainwashed for wanting those things in the first place?

Real Life Money was a really useful read for me, not just because of the similarities between Claire's shopping issues and mine - she discusses how new motherhood, body image and social media can all be factors at play, which I have definitely experienced. But I teared up reading things like this: "The appeal of stripping out every extra cost from your budget can be hard to resist, especially if you’re angry with yourself. But punitive budgeting just doesn’t work in the long run, because you grow resentful and bitter as you start to feel more and more deprived. If we take things right back to our goal of happiness, security and mental wellbeing, months and possibly years on end of putting your life on hold for the sake of improving your finances doesn’t really make sense. After all, to put a slightly morbid spin on the matter, you could finish off paying your debt or reach your savings goal, and promptly get hit by a bus. That’s not to say that it’s not healthy or necessary to make a few sacrifices – after all, if we carry on doing the exact same things, we can only expect the exact same outcome – but making sure we keep our emotional wellbeing front of mind is important."

A note: I regularly add new books to my Recommended Reading list (which lives in my sidebar for easy reference), and this month I decided to add an extra section specifically for books that I would definitely have included in the bibliography of The Anti-consumerist Druid, had I read them before submitting the manuscript. So if you're hunting for something new to read, you'll find all my favourites in that post.

My Love Affair With Old Clothes

One of the biggest shifts in my thinking since I started making efforts to change the way I shop has been in the way I view clothes. Previously, like many people, I bought new clothes unthinkingly. I worked in a charity shop, so often bought secondhand, but I also trawled Topshop (RIP) in my lunch breaks, and as regular readers will know, shopped online on a daily (if not hourly) basis. Clothes came into my house and went out again to the charity shop like flotsam borne on the tides.

This last year, I've stopped buying fast fashion. It's something I'd considered before - and tried before - but I failed to resist the siren song of New Look, Zara and H&M. This year, for whatever reason, it just suddenly clicked, and all of a sudden fast fashion holds no more interest for me than a dictionary would for a bumblebee. 

Old clothes are just so much more interesting! Whether from charity shops, online resellers, or passed on from friends, you never know what you might find. I'm currently wearing a pair of mauve, navy and emerald brushed cotton trousers - St Michael - which I got in a charity shop for just £2. They are so unusual, and comfortable too.

I have a tendency to rescue the weird and unwanted from charity shops - a moth-eaten cardigan with a Fair Isle-ish pattern in an ugly colourway gets a few punk patches added and becomes a wardrobe favourite, warm and versatile. 

Charity shop cardigans mended with patches

Another source of old clothes is my own wardrobe. I have clothes that are coming up ten years old - most notably an orange Star Wars t-shirt with a pun about coffee (May the Froth Be With You), which I originally bought for 94p in a charity shop when I was about 21. It's been worn on pretty much a weekly basis for all those years and has become attractively weathered. It still goes with everything.

The longer I go without buying new, the more grateful I feel for what I have. I expected to feel bored with my older items, and sometimes I do 'rest' items for a bit, but at the moment every time I open my wardrobe I feel delighted!

I regret getting rid of an old favourite t-shirt of mine - it had a beautiful Ganesha design on it and was just the right length - when it became peppered with holes. It didn't occur to me then that I could mend the holes, or put a different coloured fabric underneath and make a feature of them. 

Customising clothes was an idea I first really became aware of in my goth years. As the goth scene developed out of punk in the late 70s and 80s, it came with a strong DIY ethic. Or perhaps it was more deconstruct-it-yourself, as rips, patches and safety pins were often strongly featured. Sadly, over the last few decades this handmade, creative ethos has been seen less in alternative fashion, with the rise of goth brands selling ready-made items to the black-clad masses (as seen particularly in the 90s with Hot Topic chain stores in the USA). Whilst more expensive than conventional fast fashion, the majority of these brands  - in my day some of the big names were the likes of Dead Threads, Hell Bunny, Poizen Industries, Phaze, Banned - are no more transparent about their supply chains and manufacturing processes than any of the stores on your local high street.

Whilst I certainly availed myself of these brands as a young gothling, I was always aware of a faction within the goth scene who sourced their clothes secondhand, customised and altered prosaic items of black clothing into something unique, or even made their own clothing from scratch. I didn't have the commitment then to adopt this ethos, although even I got handy with some black dye and safety pins from time to time.

Since moving on from the goth look, customising hadn't really had a place in my life. I was a bit wary about being judged for things looking 'handmade'. Funny - now I embrace it. I love that visible mending is becoming more popular, and as well as darning, patching and replacing buttons I'm looking to tackle bigger challenges. I have a much-loved dress that doesn't fit any more that I'm intending to make into a skirt. 

I don't worry much any more about whether I'm suitably alternative, or how to define my look, but I do love having a wardrobe that is totally unique. The only possible downside is that my growing tendency towards making things work means that I'm keeping things I would have previously let go of. This is better for the environment, but not brilliant for keeping my wardrobe under control! Especially since I'm working in a charity shop now - I'm trying really hard to keep my acquisition in check, but gosh, I really couldn't resist those checked trousers. I'm spending wayyyyy less on clothes these days, but not necessarily buying less!

I am away next week - normal service will be resumed upon my return!

I Suck at Being Green (But I'm Still Trying)

There are a number of reasons why I'm not very good at being green. I've been trying to 'go greener' since late 2019, when I learned about the climate crisis and went into panic mode. And whilst I do my best, I still often feel like a beginner at these lifestyle changes, and I've made more than a handful of bad decisions along the way. I console myself with the fact that I alone won't make any huge difference one way or the other, but as someone who cares about nature and the environment, and who wants to leave a safe and thriving planet for future generations, I still feel that it's worth trying to bring my lifestyle in line with my values.

In some areas, I feel like I'm doing okay. I've hosted a successful clothing swap party (pre-COVID!) and look forward to doing so again one day. We clean our house with reusable cloths and white vinegar, we use cloth wipes for the little one's bum (he doesn't like wearing the reusable nappies, though, which I wish I could have predicted before I bought them as they're hardly cheap. And I don't know if the staff at his nursery next year will be willing to use cloth wipes, but I'll certainly ask), and I continue to volunteer for Greenpeace. I use an eco friendly natural deodorant, and it took a long time to find one that was natural, effective, and doesn't contain baking soda, to which I'm sensitive (I use Space Cat by Awake Organics; it lasts absolutely ages - one tin lasts me six months - comes in recyclable packaging, I smell faintly citrussy, and I don't need to worry about aluminium in my breast milk). My hair dye is henna; for laundry I use an eco ball with a touch of Dr Bronner's if it's Dai's work gear or baby poop; I have a safety razor so I don't use disposables. We have a sustainable loo roll subscription. I'm on a green energy tariff (I use USwitch to get the best deals). So it's not all bad!

But there are still a lot of changes I'm struggling with. My biggest weakness - and this won't surprise you! - is that I still find it really hard not to shop for new clothes. Even though I don't need any! It's a problem. I've noticed that I have a big splurge around every third month (September, December, March). So gotta watch myself this month. And yes, I'm buying from much better companies, and I no longer spend my entire bank account every month (hooray) so things have distinctly improved. Fashion is such a polluting industry, though, that I really want to stop shopping when I don't actually need to be. (Even as I'm typing this, my brain is like "oh but when you go away for your birthday weekend you might see something you like," but I must try harder to be a bit more ruthless if I don't want to end up back at square one.) 

I find it hugely frustrating that others find it comparatively easy not to clothes shop. My friend Topaz has only bought a handful of second-hand items on eBay since her last big clearout, which was last year. Whereas I seem to be convinced that I'll miss out on some magical item that will, I dunno, round out my personality and give my life meaning? 

Food is another bone of contention for me. We did try switching our weekly grocery shop to an organic delivery company last year, but in the end we had to accept that although the quality was great, the cost just wasn't realistic for us. I also don't do all the grocery shopping for the family, and those who do don't necessarily share my concerns about excess packaging and imported foods. I did put my foot down over blackberries in January flown from South America, but when somebody else is buying your food you can only do so much whingeing before you start sounding seriously ungrateful. We also do eat meat, although we have cut down a lot, but I can't honestly picture Dai ever going veggie.

I have also found that frugality and environmentalism don't always go hand in hand. Often they do, such as with our kitchen cloths and baby bum wipes, but sometimes the price of an eco alternative puts it well out of my reach. Sometimes I accept paying more for an item which is better for me and better for the environment, for example I only use cosmetics without a whole host of toxic ingredients (except the batch of seriously colourful make-up I recently bought off a goth friend - she wasn't using it, so it's recycling, and although I'm ambivalent about make-up on occasion I've been enjoying playing with things like upsettingly orange eyeshadow and swamp-witch-green mascara. I dread to think what's in it, though). And since I switched us all to natural bath products, the Spud's eczema has cleared up, which is telling. It means that my spend on cosmetics is a lot higher than some people's - what's a body lotion cost in Aldi? 70p? The last one I bought was from Luna Levitas and cost about a tenner. But I use what I buy, only buy what I need, and my skin does actually seem to benefit. And we save on eczema creams, so there's that.

I had a bit of a problem with shampoo, though. I tried switching to natural shampoo last year, but I didn't know that in a hard water area, shampoo needs to have a surfactant to actually work. Many shampoo bars and natural shampoos are just made with oils, so for several months I went around with greasy hair and a horrible grey waxy build-up that even the strongest apple cider vinegar rinse wouldn't shift. I couldn't understand what was going on and thought I was just going through the worst detox phase of all time. Then just when I was ready to give up, I found a post on a blog called Sustainably Lazy that explained the whole thing. I immediately switched to a shampoo bar from Lush and have never looked back! 

I've made the mistake of trying to buy my way to sustainability, spending a fortune on organic veg boxes and reusable nappies and fancy matching cloths and zero waste bras (okay, I actually really recommend these, they're from Pethau Bach on Etsy and they're brilliant and gorgeous. They also come in a breastfeeding style, which is what I currently wear) and jute washing up cloths and organic toothpaste and so on and so on, which blew a chunk of my finances and turned out to be completely unnecessary in a lot of cases. You can use old cotton t-shirts for cleaning rags, you don't actually need a colour coordinated set. I've also tried to do the opposite and stop spending any unnecessary moneys ever, but I went too far in my Eco Thrift Crusade and felt like a right joyless old frump; in the end it was a relief to run out and buy some nail polish. So as usual, extremes are counter-productive, at least for me. I push myself too far in one direction or the other and then tend to burn out. 

For a while recently I felt tired of the whole thing - I'd lost any sense of what the point was, and the ever-present temptation of shopping my way to fulfilment (or at least a sort of pleasant-ish numbness) was starting to seem a far more tantalising prospect. Funnily enough, it was my rekindled interest in Paganism (more about this later!) which has revived my interest in green and simple living. I say funnily enough because my previous forays into various Pagan paths have involved purchasing a lot of fancy implements and setting up elaborate altars only to feel disheartened and move on after a couple of months. This time I've bought no athames, pentacles, incense, altar cloths, crystals, divination decks, Goddess statues, wands, runes, singing bowls, ritual robes, goofer dust, crystal balls, besoms, black mirrors, candles or anything else! Instead I've taken my own advice - spent time daily in nature, kept up my meditation practice and done a bit of online research. I came across a description of Druidry that stopped me in my tracks, as it seemed very close to what I've been feeling and experiencing myself. 

I'll need to know more about Druidry before I say for sure, so I need to get my hands on some books and look into it further, but it really seems like a down-to-earth philosophy of living that could add meaningfulness to my environmentally-based choices and depth to my experience of the world. The Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids offers a highly recommended correspondence course that I'm intrigued by, not least because you're assigned a mentor whom you can plague with questions (Dai can attest to the fact that I'm full of annoying spiritual questions right now). I've also been reading some Druid blogs (Druid blogs!) and, well, isn't it great when you find someone else articulating things you've been thinking and feeling? 

So that's where I'm at right now. Imperfectly green but doing my best, intrigued by Druidry, excited by possibilities (and overfond of parentheses). 

In Praise of Borrowing

When I was in my early teens, sharing clothes was pretty normal. It was exciting when my best friend Topaz got a bag of clothes handed down from her older, trendy neighbour, because I knew she'd give me what she didn't want and probably let me borrow the rest if I pleaded enough. My mum and I used to borrow each other's clothes too. Sometimes we even gave them back.

Nowadays, it's not so common to borrow a mate's dress to wear to a party. But for me, on my shopping ban, having a community of friends and relatives I could call on to help out was heartwarming and uplifting, not to mention it saved me a pretty penny or two.

When our electric whisk spluttered and died halfway through Dai making our son's first birthday cake, I called my friend Rose - she lived five minutes away, was a fellow mum so likely to be awake at such a silly time on a Sunday morning, and given her perfect house and propensity for holding coffee mornings, I felt sure she had a set of beaters we could borrow. And she came up trumps, saving us from a two-hour wait for the shops to open so we could have the cake ready in time for the party. (And she even said we could keep the beaters! What a woman.)

My friend Topaz lent me a pair of smart shoes for an evening out, and we now have an agreement whereby we share the shoes - mostly they live with me, unless called upon by Topaz for an occasion, thus saving us both from needing to buy any more nude wedding-guest shoes for quite some time.

When lockdown started, I asked Alice, a hardcore movie buff, if she could lend me some family-friendly DVDs to get me and the Spud through those long afternoons. She dropped off a stack of DVDs on her way to work - along with her Disney+ password.

At first I felt awkward and a bit weird asking for stuff, until I realised that it opened a door for people to ask me for things in return. This year I have lent and borrowed items from irons and plungers to books and hairdressing scissors, and therefore we have all saved a) money and b) resources, because rather than having one of everything each, we are sharing what we have.

I'm pleased to say as well that, as well as sharing, my friends and I do a lot of swapping. Maternity wear, baby clothes and toys have done the rounds from mum to mum in our group, saving us each a small fortune. And when we have a clear out (or just an item of clothing we're sick of looking at), we have developed the habit of rehoming the clothes with a friend rather than plonking them straight into the charity shop. 

Sometimes this has come in extremely helpful - just before my planned clothing swap in January 2020, my friend Ana was living in a camper van, which was stolen from a supermarket car park with all her possessions inside. Under my stairs at the time was a huge stash of clothes - spare items from all I had been given by Topaz, Bel and Alice, plus bags of things that had been given to me for the swap party. After making sure no one minded, I was able to go through it all and sort out an emergency stop-gap wardrobe for Ana. 

I've noted before that the generosity of friends had helped me out of a tight spot during my ban, and I really feel now that being able to help each other out - and ask for help (and nick each other's old clothes) - has brought us closer, and created a feeling of community. With the added bonus of being kinder to the environment. Happy days! It's not exactly ground-breaking, but I was so out of the habit of asking for what I needed (when I could just buy it) that people's willingness to share came as a lovely surprise.

Relapse or Realism?

At the beginning of March, I had a mini freak-out and totally muffed up my low-buy. I've been letting this news percolate for a while, so that I could try to work out how I feel about it. The initial spend, which started with lingerie and fancy chocs, could have been for hormonal reasons, I'm not one hundred per cent sure. I just felt a little glum, and frustrated that my self-imposed limits prohibited me from buying things like magazines and face masks without guilt. I'm twenty-nine, I found myself thinking, shouldn't I be able to buy a damn Fortean Times and a chocolate bar if I want to? (Not that chocolate was counted out under ban rules, but my new Sense of Frugal Duty made me feel bad for considering an UNNECESSARY purchase. It's entirely possible that I have some issues. Thanks for noticing.)

In case you're wondering, I'm super happy with all the items I bought, which had all been on my list of upcoming monthly purchases. I'm waiting for one more item to restock in my size, and then I intend buying that too, as I don't have a lot of summer-appropriate clothing. I didn't spend more than I could afford, either - hooray! (And after I bought the lingerie set, a wire came wriggling out of one of my last semi-decent-if-too-small bras, so I'm gonna go ahead and call that one a good buy.)

As much as I (mostly) enjoy having the structure of a low-buy challenge or shopping ban, and at first it seemed to be going really well, I'm starting to struggle now after nearly two years of self-imposed rules. The problems are firstly that it focuses the mind on all the things I'm NOT buying, and secondly this guilt developing around things that would be quite reasonable to purchase (like chocolate). I also have found myself thinking that more flexibility might be in order - I love the items I bought in Glastonbury in September - a patchwork jacket, tie dye dungarees and rainbow striped harem pants - and if I were to make a similar trip in future I would probably want to make purchases again, if something special caught my eye.

This last couple of years I've tried really hard to embrace anti-consumerism and simple living, but I keep tripping over my love of clothes, adornments and other little luxuries. This makes me feel quite disappointed, but it does seem to be in my nature. I can moderate it and choose not to make a purchase, but I can't seem to just stop being interested in my style, even when I feel convinced that it makes me shallow or silly.

I hope that now I've bought those things on my list I can make a clean break from browsing shopping sites, which is probably my most irritating and self-defeating habit. Going forward, I'm going to try to only buy things when necessary, because I'm happy with the amount of clothes that I have and don't want to keep piling on, and I'm going to prioritise physical shops (not chain stores or fast fashion! I mean small businesses, boutiques and charity shops) whenever possible. 

I know that I can indulge my enjoyment of dressing up without shopping for new things all the time, but persistently telling myself that I MUST NOT SHOP seems to be shooting myself in the foot a little. I'm tired of guilt and self-analysis and for feeling like a terrible person because I like sparkly nails and quirky jewellery and am not a combination of Swampy and a Buddhist monk. I had this kind of ideal eco version of me in my head for a while last year; I imagined myself barefoot and tan in worn jeans and a visibly mended T-shirt, no make-up, growing my own herbs and veg and keeping chickens. Not gonna lie, I still love that image - but that's all it is, an image. Real me would not like to part company with my blue hair extensions (they're clip-ins from Etsy), New Rock boots, and iridescent UFO earrings. Ideal eco me is great for sunny weekends in the garden, but it's the whole me, not just an idealised image, who has to go about in the world feeling good. Which is much easier when I'm embracing who I really am and what I really like. 

So my plan is, at least for a little while, to have no plan. I'm going to take a little bit of time to re-set. During that time I'm going to really embrace the things I have - read those books, play those CDs, wear those earrings, use those hair products! I try to do this anyway, but I'm going to try extra hard. I'm also going to refocus on the goals that I felt were most important when I first set out on the shopping ban - to be more present, especially with my son; to continue reducing my time online; and to take more time to be creative (other than writing blog posts, which has become my fallback spare time activity). I may also choose to read some books I've been eyeing up for a while that might remind me why it's important to reduce our consumption - books like Affluenza, Loved Clothes Last, Mend! and The Story of Stuff. 

Another train of thought I found myself boarding this month came about as I was reading a novel, The Dressmaker's Gift by Fiona Valpy. It's about three seamstresses working in a couture house during WWII, and it isn't at all the sort of thing I'd usually pick up (no ghosts, robots, or wizards), but it was lent to me and I found it fascinating. And it really reminded me that we have as a society completely changed how we treat our wardrobes - characters in the book used fabric scraps to create new gowns, treated everything with great care, even made wedding dresses out of parachute silk. Nowadays we buy a dress from Tesco, wear it twice and think nothing of discarding it!

I can't suddenly afford couture, but the book did remind me that caring about the way we present ourselves isn't just frivolous and doesn't just relate to 'fashion' as it's presented to us nowadays, a dizzying carousel of trends the advertisers want you to wear out your wallet keeping up with. But people used to spend a much higher proportion of their income on clothes, and treat them with great importance. (In Middle Egypt, fabric was literally currency.) Knowing how to mend, care for, even update your clothes would bestow pride, dignity, self-respect. We would have eked out their lives as long as possible. A new dress would have been exciting, important, savoured. 

Vintage clothing tells a story, whether it be a hand-stitched seam, a small repair, a scattering of beads added for a special occasion. The fact that clothing from one hundred years ago survives today in wearable condition tells us its quality, when I've had things from Topshop fall apart in my hands after barely a month. I now feel that I would like to focus more, when I do shop, on acquiring items that can tell stories. Either secondhand, vintage or made by individuals (this is why I like Etsy).  

Since I managed to purchase a few items without tipping back into overshopping and disaster, I'm hoping that I might now be able to go forward without specific rules, able to make an occasional thoughtful purchase without feeling like I'm letting the side down by failing to be the Queen of Frugality. I must admit, though, there's a part of me that feels like this is giving up, as though I'm giving myself carte blanche to go back to being a spendthrift. That's not my intention. I've just had enough of the feeling that I'm somehow cut off from the flow of normal life because I have to second-guess every purchase I think of making. Maybe I can get close to the present, focused, conscious, creative life that I want without imposing a total moratorium on new items?

Spending Out and Sparking Joy: Why Frugality Isn't Always the Answer

The Eco Thrift Crusade

My journey to quit overshopping led me, for a while, to become really averse to spending money at all. Developing this new, thrifty mindset was what allowed me to repair my finances, build up some savings, plan some holidays (still hoping I might get to actually take some of them... Stupid COVID...) and start excavating my life from under the 24/7 shopping, Instagramming and more shopping that had dominated for the past decade or so.

However, my tendency towards obsession (not always a bad thing; I've written some secret fanfic I'm pretty proud of) tipped me a little too far into the world of frugality. For a while last year I was wearing shoes that hurt my feet, because they weren't completely worn out yet; paranoid about getting rid of anything that 'might come in handy one day', which sounds fairly logical until you realise it included wearing clothes I actively disliked and saving every single glass jar that entered our home; and keeping my hair in a style I didn't like because it was more low-maintenance. These things might have been saving a few bob here and there, but they were also making me feel pretty damn fed up.

Some of the tips I picked up on my Eco Thrift Crusade were great. Vinegar cleans everything and won't poison my child when he randomly licks stuff. Old baby vests with questionable food stains are fine for cleaning rags. I really do want to do my bit for the planet. But feeling drudgelike and glum with lank hair and ill-fitting clothes and shoes hardly made me an inspiring poster girl for the 'eco life'. I waffled between feeling smug for how "anticonsumerist" I was now, and deeply uncomfortable when bumping into an old friend in town knowing I looked, well, a bit rough.

I've always admired people who don't care much about their appearance - I like a bit of devil-may-care, and I think it's important to have more going on in your life than just thinking about your looks. But even people of my acquaintance who don't care much about clothes will buy things a) that they actually like, and b) that fit comfortably.

The Happiness Project

I felt a shock of recognition when I read Gretchen Rubin's book The Happiness Project. Talking about the idea of 'spending out', Gretchen says, "I tend to cling to things - to stuff, to ideas. There is a preppy wabi-sabi to soft, faded khakis and cotton shirts, but it's not nice to be surrounded by things that are worn out or stained or used up. [...] I wanted to stop worrying about keeping score and profit and loss. I wanted to spend out." 

Gretchen stops saving things "for another day" - stationery, creative ideas, unworn clothes - and starts making use of them. She also learns to 'indulge in a modest splurge' on things that bring her happiness (in her case, a set of embossed hardback books from a favourite author), and spend money on 'needful things', instead of her habitual underbuying: "I delay making purchases or buy as little as possible. I often feel stressed because I don't have the things I need. I'm surrounded with things that are shabby, don't work, or aren't exactly suitable." As someone prone to repairing (or bodging) with whatever I have to hand, I recognised myself so much in this. 

Ironic, for an overshopper, but that's one of the curses of a shopping problem - I have historically been more likely to buy something frivolous (six inch heels, Gothic lace veils, PVC corsets, lacy parasols, collectable dolls, soft toys) and go without practical things I actually need (Welly boots, orthopaedic insoles, a winter coat). My inner overshopper has no sense of priorities, hence that time I bought a ton of frilly underwear at a mall and then realised I couldn't afford a) food or b) a train home. In my defense I think I was about eighteen. I have been known to go without medical prescriptions and dental appointments because I can't afford them, but still buy new books and clothes. So yes, I definitely bodge repairs around the house, when really I ought to buy replacement items or pay to get things properly fixed.

Gretchen treats herself to some new shirts that she actually wants to wear, and some new pens for work. She notes in the same chapter that overbuying can easily lead to the 'hedonic adaptation' effect, where we need to spend more and more to get the same good feelings, and that more of something isn't always better, but it was interesting to me to be reminded that spending money, even on something technically frivolous or non-essential, isn't necessarily bad (probably not the six inch heels that I never wore, or frilly knicks instead of food though). Gretchen learned to use her money in ways that brought happiness and value into her life, rather than frittering it or hoarding it like Scrooge. (She also decided that cutting out one category of spending altogether - office supplies - would cut out a source of anxiety from her life, which is rather like how I ended up doing a shopping ban in the first place.)

So rather than guard every last penny at all costs, I've resolved to spend out. Sometimes this means hiring a window cleaner or paying for dental treatment (practical!). Sometimes it means a magazine subscription or natural hair care product (comparatively frivolous!). It requires more thinking about than a blanket decision not to buy anything, but I find I quite enjoy pondering what potential purchase will bring me the most joy and lasting value. 

Spark Joy

I've enjoyed Marie Kondo's famous tidying books often, although you'd never know it from the state of my house! But by far my favourite is Spark Joy. It's not just about tidying, storing or decluttering, though it touches on all of those things. Mainly, as the title suggests, it's about joy - how to decide which of the things you own bring you joy, and how to maximise the pleasure you get from them (hint: don't bury them under other stuff that you don't really like much, and actually use them). 

Now, I have tried to do the full KonMari on many occasions, and whilst I've succeeded in getting rid of vast amounts of stuff, it's never 'stuck', and I always end up back at square one. I believe this is for two reasons: firstly, because I've never tackled my overshopping, so new stuff merely replaces the old stuff, and secondly, because my joy antennae are a bit rusty, so I don't necessarily keep or let go of the right things. 

However, what Spark Joy has provided me at this stage of the game is permission to let go. After my previous obsessive decluttering, I'd been so fearful of being wasteful that I was hanging on to just about everything. Which, in a backwards way, was making me feel like I always needed more. I couldn't see how many really great clothes I had, because every day I was dredging through piles of things that were mediocre. As soon as the mediocre was cleared out of the way - which I have been doing in dribs and drabs rather than the approved KonMari method, but that's life with a toddler - I suddenly had an abundant wardrobe of nice things. By focusing on joy, I was able to clear out what I didn't want - much more gently, not another decluttering frenzy, and cutting myself a lot of slack (not wanting holey leggings filling up my drawers doesn't make me an instant minimalist!) - and savour what was left. 

It was also a bit of a newsflash to me that I actually deserve to take pleasure in the things I have around me. Just as I'd stopped doing my hair and nails out of eco guilt and rejection of 'vanity', I'd also forgotten somehow that I am allowed to want a nice house and a wardrobe of things I actually like. The panacea for overshopping isn't asceticism. I was inflicting a weird sort of penance on myself, and yeah, okay, my shopping behaviour has at times been selfish and greedy, but being a martyr didn't exactly improve the situation.

As with spending out, choosing things that spark joy involves a little thought. For example, in January I really liked a magenta faux fur messenger bag, but plus shipping and taxes, it was going to cost a whopping £95, which I just couldn't justify (I realise people spend a lot more than that on bags, but I've never been a Balenciaga or an Hermes girl, which is just as well as my budget wouldn't stretch). Although I liked the bag so it would in a sense 'bring joy', I knew I'd feel guilty for spending that much on, essentially, a novelty bag, when for half the price I could subscribe to my favourite magazine for a year and get a seasonal dose of magic, beauty and whimsy, or for £80 take a twelve-month personal development course from one of my favourite authors. The joy of the bag would be outweighed by the terrors of sticky baby hands, and feeling crappy about the spend (although I haven't yet ruled out buying the same faux fur on eBay - £30 - and knocking up my own knockoff). Whereas the magazine subscription would bring joy and value over and over.

So I have learned that buying things isn't automatically bad, and neither is getting rid of them, but I need to recognise the difference between true joy and the temporary thrill of an exciting purchase. I also need to continue becoming aware of my feelings about the things I own - it's no good forcing myself to wear things I feel horrible in, life's too short.

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. 

Frugality and Motherhood

Back in those innocent days of 2019, the shopping ban was ticking on in the background. Some days I questioned whether it was even really a good idea - wasn't life going to be dismal and ascetic without a little treat from time to time?

But my definition of 'treat' needed some tweaking. During the ban I'd bought a £1 honey lip balm - that was a treat. Not the expensive shoes and perfumes I was looking for excuses to buy. Treats could be free, too, I was remembering, or at the very least take up no space - the library, a mocha dusted with nutmeg, a bowl of fresh strawberries and cream, a box of macarons, a walk by the river, a cuppa accompanied by a good sunrise. I hadn't exactly been living a life of deprivation without the occasional shopping spree.

In fact, I'd discovered the Frugalwoods blog, and I was starting to feel really grateful for all the things I now had, which before had been taken for granted, or which I'd planned to replace with 'something better'. Mrs Frugalwoods has documented her journey from budding frugalista to homesteader and mum of two, sharing all her money-saving tips and tricks along the way. A few years ago I would probably have scoffed at the idea of extreme frugality - why on earth would you deliberately spend less than you could?! - but now I was looking for ways to stretch our family budget. Early retirement was not going to be in the cards for me without a regular income, but I wasn't going to endure the shame of having to schlep down to the food bank because of my own irresponsible spending, either. 

Suddenly I was implementing all sorts of new (to me) strategies to try to keep money in the bank - going a few more days between shampoos; going through the Spud's next-size-up clothing stockpile so I could fill the gaps cheaply rather than panic-buying when he needed something.

The Spud's wardrobe was largely second-hand anyway, which I sometimes felt a bit guilty about, but now I was grateful that the generosity of friends and neighbours had saved me the need to find, choose and buy hundreds of baby items. I would have spent considerably more, and because of the cost I would probably have felt the need to have everything coordinated, which really isn't necessary for such a young baby. In fact, with a sinking feeling I came to realise that in the first few months of the Spud's life I had wildly overspent on him. 

It was easy to justify - I only want the best for my baby! - but I could see that as a new mum, I had really been floundering, and I had used numerous gifts and baby purchases to try to cover the fact that I didn't feel I was bonding with my son, I had no idea what I was doing, and frankly, I felt lost and terrified. Not to mention exhausted! The Spud breastfed round the clock, and there were nights I cried with sheer tiredness and thought about packing my bags.

New parenthood is rarely easy, despite the image perpetuated by social media yummy mummies. My birth experience had been - not to put too fine a point on it - a massacre, and the aftercare deeply lacking, so when I then found myself at home after a long, unexpected hospital stay with a newborn who wouldn't sleep unless he was held, and an impressive set of stitches, I felt nothing short of traumatised. For a while I became reclusive, and I was resentful - almost frightened - of this squeaking, squalling beetroot-faced tyrant in my arms. 

Christmas approached when the Spud was two months old, and I still didn't feel as adoring as I thought I should. Terrified someone might notice I was a weird, ungrateful, abnormal mother, I ordered a great raft of luxury gifts for him from Harrods, Hamleys and Selfridges (paying extra for the branded gift boxes in case anyone missed the point). I think this was when the overshopping really kicked up a notch, as after Christmas I decided to revamp my wardrobe... You know the rest. 

Suffice to say, my two month old bundle was not impressed by Selfridges, Steiff or anything else, although he quite liked the wrapping paper and the Christmas tree lights. I'd just used conspicuous consumption to hide my insecurity - it hadn't really been about the Spud at all.

Bonding was a long and arduous process - aided by Dai in the early days, who made a show of the Spud "giving me a kiss" and "bringing me a coffee" every morning. My son's baffled blue eyes as he was lowered to my face for this "kiss" never failed to make me giggle. (Nowadays he DOES give me a slobbery, slightly violent kiss when the mood takes him, but he's more likely to put a Duplo brick in my coffee than make it for me.) But we got there, and there was nothing I could have bought, no amount I could have spent, that would have made those early days any easier. Giving another being round-the-clock care was more taxing than I had been braced for, and I felt the lack of autonomy very keenly. 

As an introvert with many hobbies, I found it difficult to put a huge chunk of my inner life on hold. Only seeing how quickly the Spud grew made that any easier - soon I was able to see how fleeting all-consuming babyhood is, and realise that whilst he won't want me to cuddle him for hours forever, my books and crafts will still be there. I have to lean into this now, and make the most of this now, because we won't get this time again.

P.S. I came across a post on the Frugalwoods blog that has echoes of this post and my previous post. It's a long read but it covers body image and body positivity, motherhood, and trying to balance a love of clothes with frugality, and new-mum-appearance-neglect. It really resonated with how I feel at the moment and I was so glad to have stumbled across it.

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.