The Fat Egg Fights Back, or, My Recent Brush With Diet Culture

This post talks about weight, weight loss, calories and dieting. I have avoided using actual numbers where possible, but if you think this post might be triggering for you, please don't read it.

I've been putting off writing this post for a little while. It's been hard to get my thoughts in order about this sensitive topic, and it also means admitting to a bunch of thoughts and feelings I rather wish I didn't have. But since this whole blog has kind of been an exercise in doing exactly that, I guess I'll just go for it.

So, earlier this year I went on a diet. If you know me in real life, you know this is a Big Thing for me, and also massively hypocritical, as I am usually quick to point out to friends that calorie counting is unsustainable and doesn't work, and that the assorted diets peddled via glossy cookbooks and 'wellness plans' amount to starvation. Why I came around to thinking that my diet was going to magically be the exception I don't know. With a history of disordered eating, I really ought to have known better.

But an old schoolfriend had been posting a lot online about her new, healthy diet and intensive exercise regime, and how much better she felt now she had lost all her baby weight. Conversely I have the kind of body shape that means after family functions my mum gets phone calls from various aunts asking when my baby is due. I'm aware of this, and my feelings about it range from not giving a flying fuck to crossing my arms over my belly when I sit down to hide my spare tyre, depending on the vagaries of my mood.

It's also true to say that at my final wedding dress fittings, there were some concerns about the tightness of the bodice. It was getting to be a bit of a struggle. My takeaway habit was showing. 

So I decided that I was going to have to do something about this issue. But, knowing my propensity for problem behaviours with food, I knew I was going to have to tread carefully. I downloaded the NHS Better Health app, thinking that the health authority of my country would be the safest and most appropriate guide. I bought a scale, because my general policy is not to have one, and entered my height and weight on the app. It told me I was slightly overweight, set me a target of how much weight I should lose, and a plan for how to do so in twelve weeks.

What I didn't like very much was the calorie goal the app set for me. 1400 calories. I knew that this was far too low for a moderately active adult human, so I changed the settings to 1800. This is still low, by the way. Food, health and nutrition experts have criticised the NHS's recommended calorie guidelines for normal eating as well as for weight loss. Consider that the calorie allowance for the famous Minnesota Starvation Experiment was 1600 calories a day, which was considered a semi-starvation diet. Marion Nestle, PhD, professor of food studies and nutrition at NYU, describes the modern 2000-cal recommended daily intake as "only enough to sustain children". (For more on this, read The Fuck-It Diet by Caroline Dooner.)

Two days in, I was hungry, dizzy, and miserable, and I face-planted into a takeaway pizza feeling like a failure.

The next morning I decided to try again. This time I turned the calorie counter off and tried to focus on smaller portions and more plants. The app doesn't like this very much, and kept prompting me to turn the calorie counter back on. This raised a few red flags for me - I didn't like to be pushed towards obsessive counting and monitoring. Maybe for many people these are 'normal' aspects of a weight loss diet, but I find it hard to see the differences between fixating on your food in this socially approved manner, and disordered eating. I'm not sure where the line is drawn.

Anyway, over the next couple of weeks I managed to lose almost half of the recommended weight. I wasn't hungry all the time, and I discovered that I quite enjoyed exercising. The only downside was that the weekly weigh-in made me really anxious, which, again, reminded me of having an eating disorder. 

Eventually the weight loss plateaued. And then, despite the fact I was still eating smaller portions, still exercising, it began to creep back on. I got stressed about this. I came, I would say, the closest I have come to relapse since my early twenties. I am still a bit cross about all of this. I knew, going in, that this industry is built on smoke and mirrors, that its game is fuckery. I've spent years trying to inoculate myself against its poison. And yet I still fell for it.

The week before my wedding, I was the same weight at which I started, albeit a bit stronger and a bit more flexible from all the movement I'd been doing. But I've still got a round soft tummy and a round soft bottom. What I learned is that unless you're willing to devote your whole life to the misery of monitoring and restricting your eating, which I am not, diets still don't work. Your body defends itself. Your metabolic rate adjusts.

I'm a bit annoyed that I now have a set of scales I don't want and that I put my hard-won mental equilibrium at risk when I could have just been kind. I'm disappointed that I felt badly enough about the way I look to have started this game yet again. Especially when I can see that the women around me are beautiful at all different sizes. Why don't I think that that applies to myself? Why do I think that other people are gorgeous when they are soft and curvy, but think of myself as looking like a fat egg?

So, I'm going to go and re-read The Fuck-It Diet and Beyond Beautiful. I found several fitness instructors on YouTube offering body positive workouts, which I'd highly recommend - it's nice to move my body just to feel good, not to punish or force change. I have deleted the Better Health app. I will be wearing crop tops and bikinis this summer, and unfollowing anyone who conflates self-love with having a specific body type.

Notes:

As well as the above-mentioned books, I would recommend reading up on the work and findings of the Health at Every Size movement (particularly when the NHS has apparently not caught up, oh dear).

The Body is Not An Apology 

 I will be away next week; normal service will resume the week after.

No-Buy: A Weekend in Glastonbury

Hey guys! I'm feeling pretty positive on this current incarnation of my shopping ban, and I've surprised myself a couple of times so far.

My first weekend on the shopping ban was actually a really big challenge, as we spent two nights in Glastonbury, which is chock full of temptation for me. When we originally planned the trip I confess I'd been looking forward to a Glastonbury visit with no shopping ban in place, but as the time came closer I could feel myself getting worried and uncomfortable. The thing is, I've been on so many big blow-out spending sprees over the years, I know what the aftermath is like, how long it takes me to get back on my feet financially if I overdo it, how guilty I feel having to shovel everything in my wardrobe to one side to make room for new. The high doesn't last. The repercussions do. 

All that said, there was of course still a part of me that wanted to shop. It's the same part of me who compares myself to other people, who wants to be noticed for the way I dress, for whom no wardrobe ever feels like enough because there's always this underlying sense of lack. But I know now that if I stop shopping for long enough, that feeling of something missing mysteriously dwindles away. It's imaginary.

I rocked up at Glastonbury's big Medieval Fayre feeling trepidatious. In all honesty I hadn't been able to decide how I wanted to handle this, and I spent the first hour or so on tenterhooks, waiting to feel those pangs of want!, for my contactless card to start flashing about. But that's not how it went. I looked at everything on the market. There was a necklace I liked. I couldn't afford it, so I didn't buy it. I had a cup of nettle cordial. It was pale pink and delicious. I started to relax.

We watched a joust. Dai tried his hand at axe throwing. We sampled lots of free mead. I was so bowled over by my absolute lack of desire to buy all the things that I ended up almost in a daze. Eventually I bought a blackberry lip balm for £3 and had two sparkly hair extensions put in for £1 each. Perhaps it would be more impressive if I'd stuck absolutely and totally to the letter of the ban, but I really feel like this was a big achievement for me and I'm happy with it. It didn't even take a huge massive effort not to buy piles of clothes and accessories. It didn't feel like any kind of sacrifice at all.

The people-watching, which is always on another level in Glastonbury, reminded me that I do love beautiful things and unique styles. But ironically, hiking backwards and forwards across town carrying a tired three-year-old also reminded me why I like to keep my look fairly low maintenance nowadays. I'm not afraid to try new looks and get a bit weird with it - my makeup over the weekend ranged from the full face with flicky eyeliner to nothing whatsoever to smearing some bio-glitter under my eyes and calling it a day - but I'm tired of worrying about what other people think of me. If I want to wear an antlered headdress or a flower crown then I will - but at other times I'm a shoeless scruff with mud under my nails or salt in my hair, and it's hardly photogenic but I'm done competing for the Best Dressed Weirdo Imaginary Award.

On our last day we took a walk around the shops. I love seeing displays and all the unusual things for sale, I'm still not the perfect anti-consumerist, but in all honesty there wasn't much I actually wanted to buy. I got some new candles for my altar and three books. Again, not perfect in ban terms, but for a whole day spent walking around shops filled with my every woo-woo hippie desire, I decided to cut myself some slack. Mostly I just enjoyed the sunshine and walking around with the Spud, watching the people and smelling the incense. It's quite nice that my days out no longer come with the sickly desperate feeling that accompanies spending hundreds of pounds on a whim. I'm so proud of myself for not buying clothes, I can't even tell you. (However, I am now over the book budget I set myself at the beginning of the year, so it'll be cold turkey for me from this point onwards!) 

A sidenote: I didn't actually tell Dai that I was doing another shopping ban, which I guess is a bit weird of me. I think where historically I have failed a lot at these things I wanted to see if I was going to actually stick to it before making any grand announcements. And sometimes it's easier to crack on with things if people aren't watching you and analysing your odd behaviour. Plus, around the time I started this ban I was also transitioning to vegetarianism, which had kind of unsettled Dai, as we have previously enjoyed his roast dinners or steaks together on many an evening. I suppose I didn't want him to think I was gratuitously punishing myself. (As an adult I've mainly been vegetarian or vegan; when my last long-term relationship ended I also started eating meat (several close friendships also blew up in a big way around this time - in hindsight it was possibly some kind of breakdown, let's gently gloss over that), and was still doing so when I met Dai. But I'm not comfortable with it for ethical and environmental reasons and it feels like a weight off my shoulders to just not. Dai worries about this because of my history with disordered eating, but I don't connect vegetarianism with disordered eating at all, it's not about weight or restriction in any way for me, I just don't want to eat animals.)

Overall throughout my first week I felt really good about the challenge. All the things I relished about the experience the first time around came flooding back, as I found myself less distracted, less self-conscious, more present. I found that when the urge to improve myself by making purchases came bubbling up, as it sometimes does, a bit of experimentation with make-up or a creative change of outfit could generally assuage it without difficulty. I felt more clearheaded, able to see items in shops as analogues of items I already have - oh, a necklace? I have necklaces already - rather than things I needed to accumulate to be whole.

MoonCon 2022: The Anti-consumerist Druid Book Chat

At the beginning of this month I was lucky enough to have a chat about my upcoming book with fellow Moon Books author Rachel Patterson, as part of the two-day free online event MoonCon. I was nervous (really nervous) as I'm much more of a writer than a talker, but in the end I actually really enjoyed myself! 

Turns out I'd written my notes so small that I couldn't read them (!) and I couldn't figure out how to see the live comments on my screen, but in the end I think I said 99% of what I had hoped to say and didn't utterly disgrace myself.

We covered all kinds of ground, such as consumption in the Pagan community, shopping bans, communication with goddesses and the importance of DIY. You can see the recording below - thank you to everyone who came along and watched live, and thank you Elena for your comments and support!

My New No-Buy Year

At the end of April this year I could feel myself spiralling back into old behaviours. I was checking Instagram dozens of times a day even though it reliably made me feel crappy, browsing Pinterest, hitting up Vinted again and again for that 'one last thing' I needed. My rewilding project for the year was going out of the window, and the Spud and I seemed to have started watching daytime telly, which historically I'd always avoided. 

At last I decided it was time to break the cycle before its grip on me could tighten any further. I was actually feeling nostalgic for my previous shopping bans. They had been challenging and difficult, but my life had felt fuller. I'd made more things, talked more to my friends, learned to cook, turned my journals into a memoir. 

I'd been so adamant that I wasn't going to ban myself from anything in 2022, but I could sense that the progress I'd worked hard to make was in danger of coming undone. Then I watched these two videos from Hannah Louise Poston, which really clinched it for me:

This video really hit hard for me. The way she describes "wanting to want", always looking for a new item to obsess over, using shopping as a kind of palliative faux self-care to paper over the cracks - that's me. And a lot of other people I know, actually. 

One thing I've learned from being open about my struggles with compulsive shopping is that most of us in this late-stage capitalist society are screwed up in one way or another about shopping. Older generations would probably consider my age group greedy or spoiled, which - to be blunt - we are, compared to the people who have to actually manufacture the stuff we buy. But we're also deeply conditioned to behave in this way by the society we live in, as Poston says in her video.

I've had some really interesting conversations with friends since starting my shopping ban, which have convinced me that the majority of us are completely screwed up about some combination of the following: money management, self-image, self-worth, compulsive buying, the gap between our values and behaviours (e.g. we know about sweatshops but can't give up the Primark habit), and many more issues swirling around the money/shopping vortex. 

I've spoken with friends who thought of shopping problems as a women's thing until they compulsively spent hundreds of pounds on kitchen equipment and then looked a little closer at their own habits. Friends who earn good money but have burned through it all before the next payday and had to rely on colleagues to bring in lunches for them. Friends who received a large payout and spent the lot without noticing because they are too edgy about money to ever look at their bank statements. Some who have multiple kitchen appliances stashed in their garages because the first three didn't quite match their colour scheme. Who describe themselves as broke and are always worried about the bills, but still make time for a weekly manicure and can never have enough cosmetics. 

I started my no-buy year thinking that my shopping was disastrous and everyone else was living within their means. I'm coming to understand that there are loads of people who really, really, don't have a handle on this shit, and in fact it's totally normalised and even encouraged by our culture. I'd been hearing myself for years making excuses for why I needed the most frivolous of items when I knew I couldn't afford them, and somehow I'd never noticed I was surrounded by other people doing the same. I know that some of those people read this blog, and I wish I could persuade them to go on this new shopping ban adventure with me, but I guess it's one of those things that you have to choose for yourself when you're ready. (But I'd love a ban buddy or even group, hit me up if you want to give it a go.)

I really love Poston's list of things to do that aren't shopping, and again this was a big factor in why I decided to give the no-shopping year another try - I was doing these things, and I was loving it. I was getting so much more value from what I already owned, I was feeling good about myself, I was learning new skills and having a really good time. I was being more creative than I have been in years. Then I started to slide back into the social-media-and-shopping life, and those activities started to gather dust once again.

I wanted to think harder this time about what rules I'm going to put in place, because as per the video, I know there are times when it will be harder for me to stick to my rules. Last time I gave up social media cold turkey, which I think made it easier for me to keep a clear head, but this time I probably can't do that - at least not until after my book launch - so I'll need to think really hard about when and how I use it, as well as what I do immediately afterwards. 

Holidays and days out are also huge weak points for me. I find it really hard not to think of trips primarily as shopping opportunities, so I need to get some guidelines in place for how I'll handle these - whether I'll allow some purchases, or go cold turkey. I also have a day out planned that is specifically a shopping trip with some girlfriends, but I know I'm already overdoing it with clothes, so I may choose to focus more on the beaches-and-cafes aspects of that trip, or make a list of items I could possibly buy (I have loads of jumpers but not many summer tops or dresses, for example). I can't decide how tough on myself to be this time around, so feel free to weigh in with your thoughts.

Meanwhile, I hope you find these videos as interesting and inspiring as I did! I'll let you know how things pan out this time around...

My Clothes Don't Define Me

Recently I started feeling annoyed at the amount of time I have spent thinking about my clothes. How many hours I've wasted on Pinterest trying to build a blueprint for the look I really want. I've tried to use my wardrobe to express and to define my essential self, even when I didn't really know who that self was. It's been enjoyable at times, but at others deeply frustrating, as I've learned that clothes, on their own, don't make a personality. I've treated 'the wardrobe issue' as a problem to be solved before anything else. I'll write this book once I've sorted out the wardrobe issue. I'll be an artist once I look artsy enough. Everything the wrong way around, as I try to make my clothes speak for me, to define the limits of my character and interests with exactly the right garments.

Pinterest is a time eater and no mistake. Five more minutes quickly turns into an hour of blankly browsing through other people's faces and outfits. This is not the way I want to spend my life.

However, much to my surprise, I learned through Pinterest that I love what the kids are doing with fashion these days. If styles like fairy grunge, goblincore, cottagecore, adventurecore, earthcore and dark academia had been around when I was a confused ex-goth looking for new ways to express myself, I would have had such a good time trying all these out and rummaging through the charity shops for new pieces. The little gremlin voice in the back of my head (I call him Keith - go away, Keith) tells me I'm too old for goblincore, but I remind it that I've been into these aesthetics since 90s styles were 'in' the first time around. (I'm glad 90s clothes are back. I liked them then, I like them now. I just wish the bigger sizes would start making their way into second-hand shops. Mumma wants some baggy jeans please kids.)

When I was a teenager, there were really strongly drawn lines between subcultures and the mainstream culture. You were a 'chav' (or 'townies' as we called them where I grew up) or a goth or emo, and that was pretty much the entirety of your options. Whichever box you fitted into, you were supposed to hate everyone in the other. Nowadays, as far as I can see, the boundaries between what is mainstream and what is alternative seen to be much more fluid. There's a lot more scope for individual expression, and even in my small town I have noticed much more variety in everything from outfits to hair colour. Is fairy grunge alternative or mainstream? Do these distinctions still hold relevance?

I've spoken before about what it means nowadays to be 'alternative', which I think has changed a lot since I was young. I still have friends who feel very strongly about their allegiance to alternative subcultures (and one or two who refer to people outside their particular scene as 'normals', which makes me cringe), but I do wonder exactly how alternative it is to simply shop on different websites - Attitude instead of SHEIN, Killstar instead of New Look. I wonder if now, having radical politics, building a style from sustainable, ethical or second-hand clothing, or choosing a lifestyle such as veganism or going off-grid is perhaps more alternative, in this era of clothing abundance and tolerance for bright hair and body modifications, than choosing to belong to a subculture. How much are we actually defined by our clothes these days, now that most of us in the global North can buy anything from anywhere and adopt any style as fast as it can be shipped out to us? Is darning your socks a greater challenge to popular culture than wearing nothing but black?

(Brief tangent: Gothic Charm School, a blog I followed avidly back in the day and still enjoy, recently-ish touched on the white, pretty, thin homogeny that has become the image of goth on social media. I noticed this myself when I browsed #goth on Instagram for some outfit inspiration, and was both disappointed and unsettled by it. The blog post is here if you are interested, and I LOVED reading all the comments as well, being reminded of what it was about the goth scene that spoke to me in the first place and causes me to linger forevermore around the outskirts of all things dark and spooky.)

If the sheer vast size of the clothing industry has caused even alternative fashion to lose its meaning, why are we still so obsessed with fashion? Perhaps more so than ever before? Will supply and demand ever hit a ceiling, or will it keep forever growing until we abruptly discover we can't actually live on shoes? (Eating a pair of leather shoes will keep you alive for about a week, according to a book of facts I read once, but it'll be a horrible week, I'd imagine.)

At the other end of the spectrum, I have been increasingly alienated from my friends who enjoy wearing trendy clothes and keeping up with what's fashionable. I'm the awkward lurker in the group chat when the girls are discussing L'Oreal foundation and new dresses from SHEIN. Do I weigh in and talk about animal cruelty and sweatshop labour? Sometimes, yeah. And everyone says, yeah, wow, that's terrible, the atmosphere gets a bit stilted for a minute, and then we all go right back to doing what we were doing before. I don't want to constantly be a downer - that person who only pops up in the chat to tell you why you're wrong, yikes - but I also don't have anything much else to contribute. I was genuinely surprised at a friend's house when she received several parcels from Boohoo. In the little bubble I've created for myself since I started writing this blog, I'd kind of assumed that since we learned Boohoo use modern slavery to make their products, people would have just stopped shopping there.

After that visit, during which my friend tried on several stylish Boohoo dresses to choose an outfit for a wedding, I found I was really missing the particular feeling of cheap, abundant fashion. The haul. When you buy more than you need, just to try it, because it's so cheap. I used to run around Primark just throwing things into my basket. I didn't ever expect to miss that feeling, because I know full well that it's a signifier of exactly what's wrong with the fashion industry. But there I was anyway. Luckily I had a brainwave - I downloaded the second-hand shopping app Vinted, and spent an afternoon using up all my data browsing fast fashion that other people didn't want. I bought four items for £20 and felt sated.

This post has rambled around a lot, which is a not-inaccurate portrayal of how it feels in my head when I think about my wardrobe. I even have strange, nostalgia-tinged, longing dreams about dressing up in miniskirts and fishnets, my pre-baby body miraculously restored. I enjoy the ease of casual clothes, but miss the admiration from more complex, unusual looks. I also realised recently that I am more affected by body image issues than I thought, which is why I feel uncomfortable and awkward when I do dress up - I feel like I'm too chubby and un-pretty to be able to pull off those looks any more.

I really need to get my head together. I can see that I'm still giving clothes way too much importance, and trying to make them define me when they don't, and can't. That's not what they're for. 

Saved by Stylish Vegans: Make Getting Dressed Great Again

I guess this post could be considered a reprise of Beauty Care for Wild Women, with a nod towards Toxic Femininity.

A couple of months ago, we had a day out at a vegan market in a nearby town (we've been cutting down our meat and dairy intake drastically). I had an absolutely fantastic time - it was sunny, I ate my own body weight in free samples, I bought a lot of plant-based cheeses, and I had the most incredibly delicious seitan "chicken" burger for my lunch - and I also came away feeling hopeful and uplifted. Firstly, it was great to see that more environmentally-friendly ways of living are becoming more popular and accessible, and secondly, the people-watching was absolutely on point. After a day of admiring stylish vegans with all kinds of different looks, it dawned on me that it was completely and perfectly possible to be someone who cares about ethics and the environment and also look good.

Although I knew in theory that 'lots of people doing a little bit is better than one person doing everything perfectly', and I hoped to gently encourage my friends to try a cruelty-free product or think a little more about the environment, I'd also read that 'it's better to kneel now than to fall from ten feet later.' I was (am) so convinced that we are staring down the barrel of climate change disaster that I'd just kind of given up on myself. Might as well get used to not looking nice, I won't be able to afford luxuries in a few more years anyway... Whether this depressing apocalyptic view is correct or not is up for debate, but it made me no kind of poster girl. 

It had started as enjoying a more low-maintenance look at the beginning of my shopping ban, but after a while I started feeling guilty for occasionally wanting to indulge in luxury or vanity. After all, the environment...

After the market, I realised that schlepping around feeling miserable with my hair scraped back, skin dull, no eyebrows and plain clothes was not only making my day-to-day more crap than it needed to be and knocking my confidence unnecessarily, but it was hardly doing a good job of promoting the eco life to my beauty-loving friends. I've come to this realisation once or twice before since I've been writing this blog, but finding it too easy to slip back into the same habits.

Meanwhile I'm still trying to operate in the everyday world - see friends, go out, do things - and as I was neither looking nor feeling my best (and haven't been, in all honesty, for some years, as I've just gotten so in the habit of not bothering), the old comparison trap was rearing its ugly head again.

I found this time that the best way to deal was to just make sure I was really happy in what I was wearing before going out for the day. Sometimes this means taking the time to blow-dry my hair and apply a full face of make-up. Other times I'm happy to go barefaced but need to pay extra attention to my outfit. 

While I don't really like to budge from my crunchy-granola ethics when it comes to cosmetics - I like things to be cruelty free, preferably made with natural and organic ingredients, and the packaging should be home compostable or recyclable - I'd been kind of half-assing it with nothing but a dab of coconut oil here and there. This might well work for some people, but eventually my skin and hair let me know that they needed a bit more pampering, and I bought myself a new moisturiser, a face mask and a deep conditioning treatment. It was good to feel that I could look after myself appropriately but without compromising my standards.

Likewise, by paying that bit more attention to what I'm wearing and how I feel in it, I can feel more confident and enjoy my clothes more without feeling like I need to rush out and buy something new every ten minutes. Sometimes I forget, throw on any old thing and end up feeling a bit glum, but in general I'm feeling a lot better in myself.

I also decided to tackle some of the appearance-related niggles that had been bothering me in a low-grade way for quite some time, but which I'd been ignoring as I didn't want to spend money on my appearance or acknowledge that I'm not 100% low maintenance and cool about the way I look. I was no longer happy with one of my tattoos, so I went to a tattoo artist and had a chat about how to improve the situation. Frugal? No. So very worth it? Yes. Similarly, I tentatively spoke to my hairdresser about tweaking my style a little bit. I didn't need to buy a lot of things, but I found I could feel a lot better on an everyday basis by not ignoring my feelings and making those tweaks.

Sure, it would be great if I was perfectly happy with every aspect of my appearance, but that isn't the case - same as for most people - and trying to tough it out and ignore those feelings was making me feel worse, not better. I was aiming for neutrality towards or acceptance of those bits I didn't like, but somehow ended up making myself feel like I wasn't allowed to enjoy looking good at all.

I'm trying to find the balance between taking care of myself, honouring myself, being a happy and functional person, but without doing more harm to others, including the rest of the ecosystem, than I can live comfortably with. 

The Dark Side of Decluttering

I swing back and forth on the subject of decluttering like a pendulum. This is another area where I've had to accept that my opinions and behaviour might differ from the prevailing tides amongst society in general, and also my friends.

Firstly let me say that I can understand why we declutter. It is certainly easier to maintain and manage a household that is not so filled with miscellaneous stuff. I live with two people who are in general less bothered by mess than I am (one of them is three, and doesn't actually realise that toys all over the floor constitute 'a mess' to other people) - Dai can sit and relax in an untidy room, which I find very difficult nowadays. I'm not a very tidy person, and I don't want to live in a show home, but sometimes things do get embarrassingly out of hand.

The other positive aspect of decluttering is of course mental - when you've had stuff piled up on your surfaces and in your cupboards (and That One Room that you're always going to get around to sorting), it's a huge relief, and greatly satisfying, to let it all go.

However, where I personally get stuck is that I see getting rid of stuff consistently described as positive, always positive. But actually, I don't think that constantly shedding possessions is a positive thing at all. It's a waste. Not of your money - those costs are sunk - but of the materials and energy that went into your stuff (our stuff). Since reading The Story of Stuff, I've really become aware that everything has been made somewhere, using somebody's resources, and it all piles up somewhere else when we, the privileged, decide that owning it has become a burden. The burden doesn't go away. We just push it off onto someone else's shoulders.

I'm not saying you should keep every single thing you've ever bought or been given. But I think we could take far more responsibility when we do get rid of stuff, and be more thoughtful in how we do so, rather than the standard procedure of dump-and-run at the charity shop or tip. The amount of fly-tipping of household goods that occurred during lockdown shows how burdened we feel by our vast array of possessions, but also how little we care for them, for the environment, or for each other. 

I've been following a lot of menders and makers on Instagram, and it's really got me looking at everything as a resource - one worn-out pair of jeans can be used to patch the next pair. I'm really excited about visible mending, it's something I want to get much more into. (I've also been looking at companies who make made-to-measure clothing out of recycled textiles, and giving serious thought to having my childhood character bedsheets lined and made into a crop top and pencil skirt set.) 

My other bugbear about decluttering is that not many people seem to talk about the flip side - buying less. Instead there are loads of people who have an annual 'big clearout', and then seem to immediately set about refilling their houses and closets again. Even if they actually intended to try minimalism. Obviously big business is loving this, but it's not doing anyone else any favours. I do eventually want to own much less stuff, but I've kind of resigned myself to getting there very slowly, when the things I use and cherish eventually wear completely out or break beyond repair. To my mind, buying less is a more important choice - for peace of mind, for sustainability, for putting a middle finger up to corporate capitalism - than finally getting around to clearing out your spare room.

Of course, I have to admit here that I'm biased, because I am very bad at decluttering. Not the actual getting rid of stuff, I'm pretty good at that. Mainly I'm terrible at decluttering because of regret. This year I have asked a friend to post back to me a shirt that I gave her (yes, I felt like a dickhead), and bought a t-shirt on eBay identical to another I'd cleared out. I'm also giving serious thought to buying some of my own clothes back from Thrift+. Which is deeply tragic. I'm pretty sure at this point that jumping aboard the decluttering train is not going to be for me. I get on much better when I accept that my clothes are my clothes, and try to wring every last drop of use and enjoyment from them, than always having half an eye on what I can next discard and replace with something else. Not treating everything as replaceable.

Some of my favourite menders:

@gatherwhatspills

@logoremoval

@mindful_mending

@visiblemend

@wrenbirdmends

@katrinarodabaugh