The Road from Shopaholic to a No Buy Year, and Everything in Between

Fraught with challenges, and rich in lessons.

In the wise words of Ruth Bader Ginsberg:

"Real change, enduring change, happens one step at a time."

If you would have told me 10 years ago that one day I would have a small wardrobe of clothing with what feels like endless outfit possibilities, I would have told you that you were full of crap. 

Photo taken in February of 2020. I still have all of these, except the light grey blazer.

Every place that I’ve ever lived in has been partially decided on because of the size of the closet.

In college, we lived in the basement of my in-law’s house. The closet was tiny but we had a second bedroom. We didn’t need it, so I converted it into a walk-in closet. I still remember sitting in that “closet” with my best friend, who was also my maid of honor, and crying on the eve of my wedding because my narcissistic father wasn’t coming. Not because he had a good reason to miss it, just because he wanted to ruin my day and make it about him. But I digress.

When we moved to Boston, we found a 1-bedroom apartment that had 3 (yes, 3!) closets that ran down the length of the hallway. There was also a little hallway nook that was big enough to house an Ikea wardrobe. I filled those 3 closets to busting, and I mean, busting! There was no room for the clothes to “breathe”. The Ikea wardrobe housed my husband’s clothes and we had a changing table/2-drawer dresser that held our son’s clothes. I can’t help thinking that present me would have loved those 3 closets so much more now than I did back then!

When we bought our current house, I remember walking into the closet and just feeling at home. The previous owner had filled it to busting with what I can only assume was Boden, Garnet Hill and J.Crew. I swear I didn’t creepily look at the tags of her clothes, but am just assuming because for a few years after we moved in, we continued to get the catalogues! I tried so hard to emulate her closet, and I gave it a good go for a few years. Weekly trips to TJ Maxx were helping me to fill those wire racks, but I eventually discovered minimalism and that, thankfully, was the end of that!

There were other closets over the years, but these are the ones that have stood out to me the most and in a way, have marked my journey through adulthood, from marriage to motherhood to home ownership.

Up until 2015, I was content to fill all these closets any chance I got. I thought that having more clothes meant that I was a true fashionista. I remember watching Sex and the City in college (lying on the floor in the living room of the first apartment above) and lusting after Carrie’s closet.

In college, my favorite stores were Bluenotes, Le Chateau and Pseudio. When we moved to Boston, I walked past Chanel and Burberry on Newbury Street to spend multiple lunch hours at Filene’s Basement, which I had to ride an escalator UP to get to (a little false advertising, ha). When we bought a house, TJ Maxx became my stomping ground. I spent many hours and a lot of money that could have been better used elsewhere to buy stuff that I eventually decluttered.

1. The True Cost

It was in 2015 that I watched the documentary “The True Cost” and my whole perspective on shopping changed. I could no longer justify buying things that were made by people that were treated unethically.

That one film has probably had the biggest impact on this entire journey and I believe that without it, I would still be overconsuming and have a closet filled to the brim with clothes, and simultaneously, nothing to wear.

Back in 2015, it was much more difficult to find clothing that was made ethically, especially locally. One local department store carried Eileen Fisher and I could sometimes find a few pieces on the sale rack. I did a lot of googling brands when I was out and about and I often came home empty-handed. And a lot of the ethical brands online were out of my price range as well and I didn’t have the mental tools yet to save up for larger purchases.

So, not for lack of trying, my clothing consumption went way down.

It wasn’t all perfect. I still bought things that weren’t ethically made but I was no longer unaware of the consequences of continuing to do so.

2. Introduction to Minimalism

My bedside table, early in my minimalism journey.

I’m not quite sure how I came across The Minimalists or Joshua Becker (Becoming Minimalist) but that was my introduction into Minimalism. I had been pretty interested in personal finance blogs at the time and I think that Mr. Money Mustache was probably how I found one of them. What they wrote about having less stuff really resonated with me.

I didn’t start decluttering straight away. I think I had a lot of guilt about getting rid of all the stuff that I had spent money on. But I have a flashbulb memory of the moment it started:

My kids, who were little at the time came into my bedroom just after I had made our bed. At that time, I think there was 10 pillows in total on the bed - 4 for sleeping and the rest for decoration. They climbed up on the bed and started jumping, ruining my carefully placed pillows and I got so upset that I yelled at them for messing up the pillows. It was in that moment that I saw how stuff seemed more important than the joy my kids got from jumping on the bed. That day, I removed all of the decorative pillows and set them aside for donation.

Then I started working on the rest of the house. It wasn’t a quick process but I began to enjoy getting rid of all of the stuff that I bought because of the expectation that when you own a house, you need to fill all the corners.

I’m a little more relaxed in my approach to our home now. I want it to feel cozy and warm without having a lot of stuff so I focus mostly on color and textural elements. Most of the things that we own are either old or secondhand and I love how we’ve found a balance where minimalism is a huge benefit in our life, while also managing to make the house feel cozy!

3. Zero Waste Movement

In January of 2017, I became interested in the zero waste movement.

Here’s the thing about me - when I become interested in something, I become a little (ok, A LOT) obsessive about it. Annoyingly so!

I started off on the wrong foot, though. Instead of vowing to not buy any more plastic and using what we already owned, I donated all of the plastic containers in our home and ordered all glass ones. I started shopping at a grocery store where I could bring in my own containers to the deli counter and they would put the meat right in them, even though I had to drive a half hour to this store. I was making my own beauty products, much to the dismay of my acne-prone skin.

It ended up not being sustainable for me in the long run, but I did keep some habits from that time, like no paper towels, reusing old pasta jars as drinking glasses, and avoiding plastic waste where possible.

But the biggest takeaway is that it made me aware of how wasteful my consumptive habits had been.

4. Capsule Wardrobes

One of the many capsules that I have built over the years.

In 2018, I started to experiment with capsule wardrobes. Not surprisingly, this time period had the biggest impact on my relationship with clothes. This was the point in the journey where I learned to fall in love with my wardrobe (corny, but true).

Capsule wardrobes had been on my radar for about as long as minimalism had. The Minimalists promoted the work of Courtney Carver, who was the original creator of the Project 333 capsule wardrobe. But back then, I wasn’t ready to make do with so little, so I focused on whittling down my wardrobe bit by bit.

It was at this time that I decided to stop preaching to family and friends about the joys of minimalism and I started a blog, Uncomplicated Spaces. Shortly after starting the blog, I did what any blogger did who didn’t already have an Instagram account and I started one! I quickly found the ethical fashion community on there, even though I was posting mostly about minimal spaces, uncomplicated spaces you might say, and at the time, the ethical fashion aesthetic was fairly minimalist.

Not long after joining IG, I saw that there was a Spring 10x10 challenge that was being hosted by Lee Vosburgh. I was intrigued and I decided to join. I chose my 10 items and spent the next 10 days styling them into 10 outfits.

And I was hooked!

From then on, I did more 10x10 capsule wardrobes, and eventually had a go at the Project 333 capsule. I can’t say that I was very good at building a 33-item capsule for 3 months at first but as I continued to do them over the next 5 years, I got much better. I also got a lot better at styling my clothes and thinking outside the box. I could see the potential to make a lot of different outfits with a small selection of clothes.

At the time, it was my dream to have an extreme minimalist wardrobe. I ate that kind of content up, and even now, I’ll still occasionally watch a YouTube video on the topic. But I’m no longer interested in having as few clothes as possible. It doesn’t make sense for my lifestyle or the climate that I live in.

I do believe that working through all of that made me really appreciate the things that I do own, and it also made me extremely selective about what I add to my wardrobe.

4a. Quality over Quantity

With a focus on fewer clothes, I started to pay attention to the quality of my clothes, specifically material composition and garment construction. I stopped buying synthetic fabrics such as polyester, acrylic, spandex, and rayon, replacing them with wool, cotton, silk and linen.

I started to pay attention to what the inside of the garment looked like, aka “the guts”. Did it have nicely finished seams? Were there loose threads? Were buttons properly secured? Was the item showing signs of pilling?

Very slowly, I started to replace my mostly synthetic wardrobe with items made from natural fabrics. I’ve became so familiar with how fabrics feel that I can pretty much tell by touch if an item is synthetic or not. However, some synthetic fabrics are starting to feel more like the real thing and I’m a little shocked sometimes to discover that something I thought was silk turns out to be polyester, or something that I think is wool turns out to be mostly acrylic.

4b. Love over Like

I stopped buying clothes that I didn’t absolutely love. If it didn’t give me butterflies, it didn’t come home with me…I feel like one could find an analogy here :)

I spent so many years bringing tons of clothes into the dressing room, trying them on, and as long as they fit, buying them. I think I figured that if they fit, they were worth buying because at the time, they were getting me closer to having a huge collection of clothes that I could point to, meaning I was a fashionista. Then I would end up wearing 1 or 2 of the selection that I had actually loved and the rest would remain in my wardrobe with the tags still attached until maybe, just maybe I’d wear them 1 time. And if they were on sale, all the better. How could I turn down the opportunity to “save”money?!?

But now, I only buy the things that I feel butterflies over. The items that I know I will wear again and again in a number of different outfits with items that I already own.

5. Thrifting

Around 2019, I started to focus more on thrifting. I had dabbled in the preloved clothing market in college. I had one friend in particular that I would go to Value Village with whenever we hung out. I remember thrifting a blush pink/brown wool blazer with a pink satin lining and it was one of my favorites! But I was much more focused on buying the latest trends at the mall that I’d see on the celebrities in US Weekly or In Touch.

Now I was seeing thrifting in a whole new light…I could buy clothes that I could afford, while also feeling good that I wasn’t contributing to the unfair treatment of seamstresses or the destruction of the planet through material waste.

In fact, I was helping the planet by keeping items out of the landfill. And I still stand by thrifting as being the most ethical and sustainable way to buy clothes for most people.

6. Sewing

The first item that I ever sewed, a Wilder Gown.

In the spring of 2020, I had a lot of extra time on my hands with the pandemic so I started sewing, which was something that I had been interested in for years but I never really went for it. My mom sews, and I grew up around her making little items or hemming garments and I wanted to learn to do those things, but I kept putting it off. I had even asked for a sewing machine around 2012 for Christmas but the only time it ever got used was when my mom was visiting and I needed her to alter something.

Through the ethical and sustainable fashion communities on Instagram, I had started following some sewing accounts. A few accounts that come to mind immediately belong to Rachael (@minimalmachinist), Ellie (@the.weekend.sewist) and Leila (@leila_sews). I was so in awe of their creations and after a while of consuming sewing content, I made my first garment, a Wilder Gown.

I sewed a lot in that first year and a half but once the novelty was gone and burnout set in, my garment making pace slowed waaaaaay down. As I write this, I have 3 pairs of pants that need hemming and a blazer that I want to crop. I also have pattern pieces cut for a project that I started months ago. Oh, and a pair of jeans that I took apart to make smaller that are still apart - and have been that way for months!

But I know that sewing, and all the projects that have piled up, will be there for me when I’m ready again. And I’m very thankful for that.

7. No Buy Year

Last year, on October 14, 2023, I started a no buy year. I think a lot of you were here for that, so I won’t go into a lot more detail. If you are new, or need a refresher, check out the post I did on the end of my no buy year, which has links to earlier posts in the challenge.

I feel like everything that I did from 2015 up until 2023 prepared me for the no buy year. Before it, I couldn’t quite shake the self-perception I had of myself as a shopaholic. It took not shopping for a year, and all of the self-reflection that I did over that year to realize that I have been slowly moving away from that behavior for a long time, with the help of everything that I mentioned above. It took a long time, but I was finally able to accept the shame and guilt that I had over my past shopping behavior and I feel like I’ve been able to let it go.

It was a part of who I was for a long time, but it no longer defines me.

8. Now

When I started this newsletter at 2:52am a few nights ago (couldn’t sleep), I had a rough outline and no idea where I was going to go with it. My original title was “How I built a small (ish) wardrobe full of clothes that I LOVE”. I definitely hadn’t expected to do a history of all of the interests I’ve had over the last decade! But, now that it’s written, I’m so happy that’s the direction that it went in. The only problem was I had to come up with a new title!

This time last year, I was excited about the year ahead. The idea of the no buy year was still fresh (and scary)! With January right around the corner, part of me feels pressure (internal) to have something to strive for. But after years of placing restriction on myself, I’m enjoying this more relaxed phase that I’m in.

The True cost documentary, minimalism, zero waste, capsule wardrobes, thrifting, sewing, and the no buy year will always be a part of who I am and will continue to influence my future decisions. Maybe I’ll even focus more on them in the future but for right now, I’m appreciative off all the things that I’ve learned about the world, and myself, because of them.