No buy or low buy 2023

[TheOGCCL]

Starting a new thread for the new year. I really must do better. Pretty sure I am in need of nothing after my 2022 spending spree.

Ironically I think this board sets me off a bit.

I’m better with a blanket no spend but how dull. Still thinking about my ‘rules’, eg set a budget or an item limit.

I need to avoid the sales as many mistakes happen there.

All welcome who want to cut down for environmental or ethical or financial reasons, or simply the satisfaction of buying second hand, or the ease of getting dressed when you have less stuff.

I can recommend Lauren Bravo’s book How To Break Up With Fast Fashion.

Its a bit like eating meat, if we all collectively did it a bit less, the world would be a better place.

I caved in and bought two Barbour sweaters that were in the CHO sale - one a winter wool one for next year and a cotton one for cool Summer but then I often buy out of season for a bargain.

Everyone seems to be doing quite well which is encouraging!

I'm doing ok-ish. I bought a new mascara for £10.50 at the start of Feb, which was essential because the old one had run out and I don't leave the house without mascara. DH also bought our 3yo an educational toy for £19 which we split the cost of.

Then, two days before we were going away on holiday, I lost my beanie. We were going to Amsterdam and it was going to be quite windy and cold at night, so I bought a Uniqlo cashmere beanie for £24.90

I did spend money in Amsterdam, nice lunches, dinners and drinks, but was quite happy I didn't buy any stuff.

However, my husband accidentally shrunk 2 of my favourite jumpers, so on an act of defiance I bought a stripy cotton jumper which I do love - it's v-neck, and I'm slowly trying to move from crew necks to v-necks.

Now my only dark blue jeans have worn through in the crotch and I have a dilemma- they are my only "smart" jeans for work. I'd like to replace them but I am a little over my budget this month.

Well done everyone who's finding this thread helpful.I'm afraid I'm struggling. I can't stop myself buying multiples of things. The latest is white t shirts from a sustainable company. I bought 4 & I will wear them to oblivion. I have several from years ago that I even wear in bed when holey. But that's not the point. Why can't I just buy one?
My Mum does the same. She has bags of clothes she's never worn cluttering up her house. You literally can't stay over there now because of the amount of stuff everywhere.
Like @Netcam I'm finding the Whering app a work in progress but very useful. I'm too embarrassed to admit to the app just how many coats I've got, albeit bought over the years 😳 I die a little inside when I realise how many expensive items I have that I've hardly worn. The cost per wear is enormous in these cases. It's motivating me to wear everything. Even the really smart clothes I've reserved for special occasions. It's very easy to stick to the same tried & tested outfit combinations. Plus black/navy coats are always a fail safe option and i live in a very staid rural market town. It's not the done thing to stand out too much here.

I had been stalking a viscose mix top but it was already reduced .
Then it was on 4xEasyPay (this is QVC) so bought it .
If I waited for a further reduction my size would've sold out .

I;ve paid 25% to get it hom and try it , if not , I have the option to return it anyway , but I've spent less in the initial outlay
I very rarely buy things I;m not sure about so returns for me are few ,

I've managed to buy myself nothing but two plants. Plants are exempt. I do however buy to flip on. Ebay, so all those beautiful silk shirts, cashmere jumpers and wool coats bought from charity shops scratch my itch nicely.

My mindset is changing too! I bought 3 Rapanui t shirts last month and 2 more this month (striped, as opposed to plain) for £10 each but otherwise all our money has gone on sensible things like a second car and the insurance, installing some blinds, etc. I've not even browsed much.

I was so good in January brought nothing, but slip up this month everything I brought is in the sale, mint velvet shirt, £29. mint velvet dress £39, padded coat from John lewis £59 a green gilet from next £22 and lastly a pair of chunky knee high boots from clarks £ 64, everything was half price.

Regarding the Whering App, to be honest I think it's brilliant, I'm really impressed. I think it must have been developed by a big company and I'm sure they're researching buying patterns and gathering data. Something like this is obviously made by a big team, not someone with an idea for a fun app and highly likely funded by the big clothing companies in return for data about buying patterns.

But if you can cope with that in principle and want something that works I would recommend it. I have been playing around with the app uploading my clothes and playing around with outfits instead of looking at shops online, it is definitely working for stopping me shopping.

I have been going through all of my emails from online shops, finding things I bought and adding the cost and also the date I bought it in the notes on the app for each item. I have been able to search for product descriptions from the orders and find a lot of images of clothes I have so I don't have to photograph everything. Uploading the photos are really fast and they even take the background off for you. It also guesses some of the description info for you.

And there is lots of useful data, such as price paid, cost per wear, items grouped, least and most worn.

I have been adding what I wear each day as outfits. I've had to improvise a bit here and put a lot of individual items as outfits so I can add them separately. But I tend to have 2 outfits for a week, one for home and one for going out, just changing my base layer top and socks every few days and underwear daily. So I might well wear different things in a day and mix and match bits of those outfits depending on what I'm doing.

I've decided not to include socks, bras, knickers and my silk thermals or PJs/nightdresses as it's too much hassle to catalogue all of that and record it each day. But I've included coats, scarves, hats and gloves as well as all of my other clothes. I think I have added a big proportion of my wardrobe but need to go through the rest gradually and add missing items. I did organise my whole wardrobe over Xmas and have my clothes in sections of each type in the wardrobe and chest of drawers, so it should help when I go through it all.

Checking in… I was doing pretty well until Storm Otto put paid to my kids day out so we pootled around our town’s charity shops toy shops as DS calls them instead. Came away with a gorgeous forest green Reiss wool-cashmere sweater (that means I can sell on the one I have in a not-quite-right shade of green), a brown leather belt for 99p (much cheaper than repairing my broken one), and a few toys, books and bits for DS. Definitely cost less than the outing it replaced, so not going to beat myself up over it.

Stridthekiller I also buy charity shop items that I will ‘flip’ if they’re not right. My rule is to only buy things that I would conceivably use myself rather than trying to second-guess what might sell on.

My main downfall is the charity shop eBay stores - BHF, Cancer Research and Barnardos all have good ones - and I often buy things from them on the basis that it’s “for a good cause” rather than because I need it. There is also the ‘gotta have it’ feeling from the auction and one-off nature of secondhand shopping that is really addictive, so I’m trying to wean myself off it - it’s really hard going though

I REALLY need to do this. We're saving for a wedding, I'm currently forking out for driving lessons and there's a good chance we'll be looking to buy a more expensive house in the next year, so maybe this thread will hold me accountable?! 😂

Regarding whether outfits work when I try them on, I kind of started the other way round. Trying a few things on together, dressing for the day and then making the outfit on the app so I can save it and remember what I wore together. But I have started having fun putting other outfits together on the app since that I haven't worn, it definitely helps to see colours and things like different necklines together to get some ideas of new combinations to try. If they don't work after trying them on I can delete them. It also has a 'dress me' feature which is quite fun which also looks at the temperature that day.

@Cantonet I could have written your post. For me it's fear. Fear I won't find such a perfect item again. Fear I won't have the money when it comes time to replace an item. It's not rational. It was in the past, but things have changed and it's not now. I try to remind myself of that. I too have those stomach flipping moments when I think of the expense, but it's done and there's no going back so I set it aside and move on. Apart from wearing everything and saving nothing for best, my tip is to get rid of the holey tatty things. I'm guessing you have enough that you don't need to keep those, send them to be turned into rags or recycled and wear the nicer stuff. Your mum sounds like she's hoarding ☹️ if she's filled up rooms and you can't stay over. My other tip is to care less what others think. Who cares if the whole town thinks of you as the weird one because you don't dress like them? At least you'll be authentically you. If they're that judgemental they'll be the type to be secretly judging you on something or other anyway.

I'm doing ok. December was dire and I curbed my spending in January by two thirds, I think by the end of February I'll have cut it down by half again from January. I've also got rid of 3 coats and a huge shopping bag of clothes that no longer fit or don't suit me. It's not made any impact on wardrobe space because I've also been buying, but it's still stuff gone from my home and feels like a weight off. I've changed my habits from buying things I like to only buying things that are perfect and that I don't already have. If there's anything even slightly annoying about an item I don't buy it. Previously I would do things like buy something that wasn't even available in my size just because I liked the pattern. Madness.

@Cantonet and @IndianSummer78, I totally understand where you are both coming from. I am the same in terms of buying multiples, I fear that they will stop making something I love or a replacement will be too expensive and so I want a 2nd for when the first wears out. Going through all of my clothes and email receipts I found I have 3 spare pairs of my favourite black trousers bought in 2017. I'm actually on the 2nd pair now as one did wear out, so I actually bought 5 that year in the sale at £60. They still sell exactly the same trousers and cost £125 now, although they can be found in sales sometimes. But did I need 5 and how did I know I would still like them perhaps 10 years later, or maybe even 20, if they last 5 years as my first ones did? I am finding the Whering App is making me face up to reality and if I think 'I want to buy a new coat I found', I can look at all my coats and all the prices of them, whether I have ever worn them and then tell myself to stop looking at new clothes. I have 2 drawers, a wardrobe top shelf and 2 boxes of unworn NWT clothes. I went through them and wrote a list of all of them over Xmas so I knew what was there. Almost all of them are multiples of things I already have one of in my wardrobe and got in the sale to keep 'for later'. I intend to record the multiples on the Whering App in the notes for each item, with cost and date bought for each.

I'm doing ok, staying out of the shops and using up my toiletry stash. My low spend is also applying to my grocery spending and I'm eating out of the pantry 😃.

I was noticing how many promotional emails, I get from shops, it's bordering on ridiculous!

@IndianSummer78 we will both work out our own way of curbing excesses & staying within our personal limits. It will be a different approach for all of us i suspect. Yes, my mother is a hoarder & i'm really not. She still likes to take me shopping to her fave M&S & buy me things, in her 80's. I 'm the one saying no - i dont need anything ..... I've recently lost weight & started wearing my nice clothes again. I dont really care what other people think, because i really don't want to dress like the vast majority of residents here. I do get funny looks - like who does the hell she think she is 😂
@Noodle421 i'm finding the proportions thing tricky. Because of this the Whering outfits don't always work. The combination button mixes some weird n random things together. They're mostly not wearable. I am finding it useful to work out what outfits will go with a cream faux leather belted jacket i haven't worn yet. Plus it's really pretty easy to list n picture everything. Its also reminding me what clothes i've got already. As i have a tendency to buy more of the same every year. Hopefully this will curb any future unnecessary expenditure.

I'm trying to do that too. When grocery shopping my aim is to primarily buy what I need to make my pantry items into meals, and I'm using up the cleaning product stash of rejects before buying my favourites.

On the beauty side of things I have had a run of empties which I have replaced with similar from my stash.

I don't know which was more satisfying, the stash being reduced to only two small boxes now, or thinking about how much I have saved by rummaging in the stash and not going out and buying new stuff.

Every time I catch myself browsing I go and unsubscribe from some more emails.

@Cantonet What do you mean about the proportions thing? I do find the pictures I've taken from websites have trouser shapes for 6ft size 8 people when I am in fact 5'3 size 10-12, but I can't be bothered to take my own photos if I don't need to. But I find if I resize the images of items when I build an outfit, the different items fit together quite well, even if layering isn't depicted very realistically. Here are some examples I've done.

Or another example of what I'm wearing today

My pics are different to yours 😉
Spring lookbook attached.
It's more I think the pictures don't show the level of slouchiness. So a slouchy top & bottom don't work for me, as I'm only 5 ft 3. The other day I wore M&S side striped trousers in Khaki, a Whistles Khaki Jumper & a Whistles Camel Coat in a Cocoon shape. The outfit didn't look right but I suspect if I'd been 5 ft 10 it would have looked good.
But laid out on the board it looked great.
Also I've lost some weight & my older things look a lot looser & baggier & aren't fitting as well. Which all contributes to looking too slouchy.
Have you watched the Dragons Den presentation of the Whering App? It's all very interesting. The owner came away without any money as they couldn't see how she could fund the App adequately.
I must admit I'm wondering too, as I'm getting no advertising at all.

Interesting, thanks for sharing. No, I didn't know anything about the Whering App, I just tried it because someone on here had mentioned it. I'd tried a different one and it wasn't very good so thought I'd try this instead. So they must have got funding now I suppose to get it this far? I totally understand about being 5'3 and slouchy clothes, being the same height as you. Most of my clothes are quite fitted as baggy things rather drown me, especially dresses, which look quite ridiculous, not keen on the sack hanging of my boobs look. But it looks like you are laying all of your clothes out side by side. I guess I'm more trying to fit them together, DH says it's like those games we had as kids where we made people out of different pictures of tops and bottoms. I guess for me the app is more about tracking my wardrobe and counting what I'm wearing, the outfits are a bit of mindless entertainment more than anything.

@Netcam and @Cantonet - thank you both so much for your detailed and thoughtful replies to my request about wardrobe apps. I haven’t had a chance to read your comments properly yet but I’ll get back to you as soon as I do.

I'm doing ok, too. Have bought a few things but definitely more mindfully - holding myself accountable for the purchases and making sure I will definitely wear the item a fair bit. I know last year I was often buying things just because I liked the look of them but embarrassingly some of those are still unworn in my wardrobe. And I've realised the more I have, the less opportunities I get to wear the items I love the most as I end up feeling I need to wear a wide variety just because they are already here.

I now have a specific reason for saving money and I hope that will help me buy even less going forward. I really could wear a different outfit every day of the year even if I didn't buy anything else all this year... (or probably next year, too.)

I've still not bought any clothes this year. 😇

I did a rather ruthless declutter a couple of years ago and got down to 125 items (not including pajamas, workout gear etc.). I do enjoy wearing everything I have now and it all fits me, which is great.

This year I put all my items into Beautistics app - it's really designed for beauty, not clothes, but I've put all kinds of things into different categories - even handbags, candles, etc. - and it's helping me to see what I use vs. what seems to be taking up space. Apparently I've worn/used 60 of them since January 1st. Obviously that's partly due to the time of year, but it's interesting to me nevertheless. I've also got a visual of every complete outfit + accessories since mid-January in a folder, which lets me see at a glance the 'heavy hitters' in my wardrobe.

Can't say I'm 'recovering' quite yet with skincare, but I'm trying very hard to use it (which is going well) instead of browsing (which I keep doing quite often, to relax I guess??) or buying (which is mostly working, thus far, but I have a birthday discount of £15 that expires on 28 February and I will really have to try hard to avoid using it - I really don't need anything, but maybe can get something for DH as a treat or save for his birthday). Perhaps I need a better savings goal to help!

Good luck all!

@moimichme I'd buy whatever is your most used favourite thing with that discount because in the long term it makes financial sense. The challenge for me would be not buying 10 other items whilst there.

@Netcam I'm dealing with my purchases of multiples by reframing it. Now I know there's always going to be something I want to buy, what with online shopping meaning I'm not limited to what's in the local shops, I'm realising that buying multiples is depriving me of the experience of shopping for something fresh and new in the future.

@roselune I did wear a new outfit every day for 3 months of spring once and weirdly got fed up of that by the end and started longing for my old favourites again.

@verdantverdure I hear you with the stash of cleaning rejects, I'm working through those too.

My main challenge is going to come next winter. With the cost of living increases I want to be a bit less wasteful. My winter clothes were lacking from a practical perspective so I've been gradually putting together a wardrobe of warm winter layers which are practical for my lifestyle. With only colour being the changeable element. There's enough to get me through a week and enough layers I won't be cold if I turn the heating down. The problem is I get bored easily. So having to wear essentially the same thing for 3 months is going to be hard. I've got 3 more seasons to get myself into the mindset of having a total zero spend on clothes next winter.

Still enjoying all your insights.
I am in the Southern Hemisphere so heading to Autumn.
i hate winter dressing and so find it easier not to spend.
I spent Christmas in UK and have couple lovely cos jumpers and a cos boxy pale blue striped shirt which I love. I also bought a pair Made in England lace up docs so I am looking forward to wearing them in.. they will be great with socks and winter dresses with the jumpers over them.
Happy( non) shopping!