The Year of No Shopping: What I Learned

A little over a year ago I decided that 2018 would be The Year of No Shopping. The decision was inspired by a NY Times article by Anne Patchett, who did the same thing in 2017, inspired partly by a friend who'd done it years ago and partly by the gross, crazy-making-ness of our current world.

"After traveling for much of the previous year, she had decided she had enough stuff, or too much stuff. She made a pledge that for 12 months she wouldn’t buy shoes, clothes, purses or jewelry.

...

At the end of 2016, our country had swung in the direction of gold leaf, an ecstatic celebration of unfeeling billionaire-dom that kept me up at night. I couldn’t settle down to read or write, and in my anxiety I found myself mindlessly scrolling through two particular shopping websites, numbing my fears with pictures of shoes, clothes, purses and jewelry. I was trying to distract myself, but the distraction left me feeling worse, the way a late night in a bar smoking Winstons and drinking gin leaves you feeling worse. The unspoken question of shopping is 'What do I need?' What I needed was less."

Now, the idea wasn't to completely 100% stop purchasing any and all things; it was more about breaking a few particularly bad habits. For me, the pathology wasn't purses and jewelry but clothes and shoes were definitely in the mix, and I also found myself purchasing wine, new books, & gadgets at a rate that was influenced less by what I actually needed and more by anxiety, shiny thing syndrome, and craaaaaazy deals. Like, I wasn't trying to become a monk or some kind of extreme minimaist living in a plain white room with two chairs, ten books, and a bowl, but I was starting to become super weighed down by all the STUFF in my life that felt like it wasn't necessarily earning its psychological keep.

So the rules were:

1) No wine buying. We have so much good wine, and with the vast majority of it in storage during our renovations, we weren't 100% sure of how much we had of what. So I decided that with the exception of non-fancy white/rose (to be drunk more or less immediately) and bottles I'm committed to through club membership (which isn't that much), I would not buy any wine.

• How did I fare? Pretty well! For the most part, this meant just deleting all the emails I get about crazy deals on rare or special bottles without reading them. And actually, that's what made it easy. I think if I'd said something like, "Only x bottles per month" or something like that that left the door open to maybe reading some of those emails and agonizing over whether this bottle or that bottle would earn a coveted monthly slot, it might have become a slippery slope. I actually think I didn't buy any non-club wine at all until late summer (and that was just non-fancy white/rose for tailgates & parties) and I'm pretty sure the only non-club red I bought was on a Paso trip in November. We took some friends to a winery we'd liked in the past but hadn't been to in a while, and a couple of things we had blew me away, so I think I bought maybe three bottles total. But I felt good about it, because I'd decided based on tasting in person, and because I knew I hadn't just been stacking random good deals in the cellar all year.
• Status going forward? Our new cellar is done and the shelving is ordered, meaning it's all still sitting in boxes. I've gone through some of it but not enough to REALLY know where the gaps and the gluts are, so currently I'm planning to stick with the moratorium on age-worthy wine at least until it's all organized and invetoried.

On January 3rd we bought two bottles in Mexico, which I think is fair since they don't export.

2) No new running clothes or shoes (except for 1-2 Boston souvenirs). The logic with this one was that I have plenty of activewear, like not drawers and drawers full, but certainly enough even for those crazy weeks of 5-6 runs and three gym days and two karate nights. (And honestly I was hanging onto some things that I never wore anymore and really needed to just toss.) Shoes, in particular, had become a weakness whenever I ran across a sale on one of my favorites. I had (and still have) enough running shoes to get me through probably the next decade.

• How did I fare? Again, this one was a lot easier than I thought it would be. I got off a bunch of email advertising lists & started deleting stuff without read, and then just never let myself trawl Sports Basement or Oiselle or The Clymb or whatever for deals. (And once again, I think for me, a hard NO, NOTHING was easier to stick to than agonizing over some kind of monthly or yearly limit. I think my only infractions were this one time when I had to go straight to PT & realized I'd forgotten to pack a running top & bitterly purchased one on sale from the nearby Sports Basement (which, I have to say, I've come to really like) and one pair of Kinvaras, half off at the Oakland Marathon expo, that were just too beautiful to leave there. (Running gear purchases that to me did not feel like breaking the spirit of the rules were a pair of Ice Bugs, replacing worn out socks and sports bras, and the Wonder Woman shorts, socks, and headband below purchased specifically for my Halloween 5K.)
• Status going forward? Honestly I can't see why I wouldn't just stick with this one pretty much forever. Worn something out & truly need to replace it? Fine. Maybe even stockpiling ONE spare pair that gets a lot of use. But otherwise, why buy stuff when you don't need it? You lose money, you lose space, and you don't get any real benefit once the initial giddiness of buying something new has worn off.

Quality purchases!

3) No purchasing new clothes/accessories via idleness/anxiety/shiny thing syndrome/crazy deals. That is, a carefully considered purchase that I truly needed would have been okay. But to be honest I didn't feel like I could truly MAKE a carefully considered purchase without spending a while wearing only what was already in my closet. And while my work wardrobe is a bit anorexic, it's not like I was wearing the same thing every other day so I decided to just not worry about this at all for a while.

• How did I fare? NAILED IT. Other than the running purchases above, the only clothes I bought in 2018 were two pairs of jeans, which I bought in mid-December when I ripped my only decent pair (which were sort of old and faded and stretched out anyway) climbing over a fence.
• Status going forward? The best thing about not buying any new work clothes was that it forced me to wear what was already in my closet drawers & really consider what I should get rid of and where the gaps are. I do need some new work clothes, but I really don't want to go about it the way I have in the past ("Let me just buy 900 things on sale at Nordy Rack, return 50% of it, realize six months later that I don't like another 25%, and by a year or two only regularly wear one item.") I absolutely 100% loathe in-person brick-and-mortar shopping but I also hate the online order/return carousel so I might actually drop some money on one of those personal shopper services that help you figure out what looks good on you for whatever budget you give them. Like I would soooo much rather spend a little more on fewer things that I truly like and that will stay in the rotation for more than a year. (I'm also researching ethical fashion because OOF, reading too much about the textile/fashion industry is utterly horrifying.)

4) No new books unless I *actually*, *literally* have nothing to read that I'm excited about. I'd gotten into a habit of browsing online or in my local bookstores & just buying way, way too many books under cover of "Hey it's not like books expire!" And books are not cheap. So this rule was mainly about making sure that I actually READ the ones I'd already bought before bringing any more into the house.

• How did I fare? Not too badly. In any case I definitely did a lot better. Physical books I bought this year include:
  • Gravity's Rainbow and the companion reference guide (because a group of us were doing a reading group on it & it was going to take like six months)
  • Things Fall Apart and No-No Boy (because they were two of my 2018 classics that I didn't already have/couldn't find elsewhere)
  • The Giver and Between The World & Me, which I got for after Gravity's Rainbow.
  • An Unwanted Guest; if on a winter's night a traveler; Everything, Everything; and They Both Die at the End for reading over winter vacation.
  • I also bought some books for work that were not strictly needed but I don't know if that counts against the "no shopping" rules or not.
• Status going forward? This is still too many books coming into my house. Some I think I'll be glad to keep a copy of (like the classics and Between The World And Me, but I may just have to suck it up and get better at the library for quick, leisurely reads. (I could also use my Kindle but it's small and I don't really like reading on a screen unless I have to, like on a long vacation where bringing a bunch of physical books isn't really feasible.) I use to sell my used books but it's such a pain.

I read all of these, finally! Well almost.

5) No unnecessary gadgets.

• How did I fare? Pretty solid. I bought some adapters that I needed for my new work computer and one for connecting old school headphones to my new phone (which didn't really work very well and bounced around a lot while running), a decanter brush (because we were having trouble cleaning the decanter thoroughly), this silicon egg bites mold for making sous vide egg bites in the Insta-Pot, and a new pour spout for the olive oil bottle because the one it came with didn't really work very well. But these were all things where the need came first followed by the shopping; there weren't any random things where I just went "OOOOHH! NEED THAT!" {add to cart}
• Status going forward? Honestly, I've gotten so used to not buying things being the default this year that I sometimes have to think very carefully about whether it really WOULD make more sense to buy a particular thing. Like, I keep going back and forth about packing cubes. Everyone raves about them and I travel so much. But...then I read about a few different kinds, the pros and cons, and when it actually comes down to whether I'm going to add it to my cart, all I can think about is how I've always done just fine rolling clothes or whatever up into little burritos. Which is probably a good thing.

So, there you go. The Year of No Shopping is complete, and while I probably WILL do some wine/clothes/book/etc. shopping this year, I feel like abstaining for the last twelve months has put me in a better position to assess what my needs and wants truly are and to weigh bringing something new into my house against the satisfying lightness and freedom of empty space. I think it's also helped me to pay more attention to the stuff that I do have and enjoy and use regularly, to really value things and appreciate them and the work it takes to maintain and eventually dispose of them. And if I can stay in that mindset while doing any necessary shopping, I think I'll be a lot happier in general.