My Year Of No Shopping
Originally written in May 2020
In January 2018, my friend Nicole Jardim shared the NY Times op-ed article My Year of No Shopping on Facebook. I recently quit a job, traveled in Europe for 2-months, was making large monthly student loan payments and incurred unexpected medical bills. I started the New Year strapped for cash. As I read the article, I thought to myself ‘why not commit to a year of no shopping? Or at least a few months while I get back on my feet and build up my savings?’
I didn’t tell anyone I was trying this out. I just made the commitment to myself and decided to do the best I could.
Nearly 2.5 years later, changing my relationship to fast fashion and consumerism has completely changed my life.
In this blog post, I share what this experiment opened up for me that first year.
I BEGAN APPRECIATING WHAT I HAD.
Before beginning this experiment, I often stood in front of my closet thinking to myself ‘I have nothing to wear.’ As soon as shopping was no longer an option, I shifted my inner script to “Ok Jess, here are your options - pick something!” Not only did getting dressed become much more simple and quick, it also became an enjoyable process. I started to appreciate what I had, knowing that the items in my closet were my clothes for the year ahead. No point in feeling badly about them!
I NOTICED MY SHOPPING HABITS.
I realized that I online-shopped or window-shopped when I was bored. I became aware that most of my shopping wasn’t out of necessity, it was a way to pass time or have fun with friends or family.
Because shopping has been a bonding activity with my mom for years, this process made me think about what other activities we could enjoy doing together.
I remember chatting with a friend to make plans for the weekend and she suggested going shopping in SoHo. I’m sure that’s something we did SO many times over the years but only when I decided to kick the habit did I realize that it was an activity we did often.
Because there is little easy access to nature in the city, my go to options for hanging with friends on the weekends looked like going out to eat or bopping around a neighborhood and going in and out of stores. Of course there’s The High Line, Central Park and Prospect Park, but looking back on my seven years of living in the city, eating and shopping were usually the plan.
Taking a step back from consumerism helped me evaluate what kind of environment and culture I wanted to be around.
I BEGAN UNSUBSCRIBING + UNFOLLOWING.
Living in NYC, you can’t walk down the street and not see windows full of the newest trends and sale signs. They are designed to pull you in. I couldn’t control all this fashion marketing in the streets and on the subway, but I could control what I personally subscribed to.
Over the course of a few months, I unsubscribed from ALL fashion/shopping focused emails and took stock of my Instagram. I unfollowed clothing brands and influencers that were always promoting new things. I had 100% control over what I allowed in my inbox and feed and making these changes helped me be more conscious about what information I was consuming.
I GOT NEW CLOTHES WITHOUT EVER ENTERING A STORE OR SPENDING MONEY.
I’ve always been a big fan of clothing swaps, hand-me-downs, and sharing with friends, but this experiment really took this to a new level. Even now as I travel, about 1/3 of my clothes came from one of these avenues!
I BEGAN LIVING MORE MINIMALISTICALLY.
Half way through my year of no shopping, I left NYC and moved out to Fire Island for the summer. Moving to the beach gave me the opportunity to really evaluate what I wanted to bring with me and what brought me joy in this new environment. I brought a fraction of my wardrobe with me and ended up only wearing a handful of the items.
I realized I LOVED comfy clothes. This sounds so silly writing but being at the beach made me realize that a lot of the clothes we buy are not comfortable and I began prioritizing wearing clothes that looked good and felt good to wear. I was happy repeating my favorite items daily. The simple beach vibe worked for me. With less, I had more space. Space to garden, read new books, and just be.
I TOOK A HARD LOOK AT THE CULTURAL BELIEF “I NEED MORE.”
“Our first waking thought of the day is “I didn’t get enough sleep.” The next one is “I don’t have enough time.” Whether true or not, that thought of not enough occurs to us automatically before we even think to question or examine it.
We spend most of the hours and the days of our lives hearing, explaining, complaining, or worrying about what we don’t have enough of… We don’t have enough money. We’re not thin enough, we’re not smart enough, we’re not pretty enough or fit enough or educated or successful enough, or rich enough—ever.”
- Lynne Twist, The Soul of Money
As Lynne says, “when we let go of trying to get more of what we don’t really need, we free up an enormous amount of energy that has been tied up in the chase. We can refocus and reallocate that energy and attention toward appreciating what we already have.”
Reading The Soul of Money helped me write a new script: I have enough and I am grateful for what I have.
I WATCHED THE TRUE COST ON NETFLIX.
Watching this documentary opened my eyes to the true social and environmental impacts of the fast fashion industry. It takes you around the world to see where our clothes are manufactured, the villages that process our cheap leather and to hear from the cotton farmers that grow the materials used to produce our clothing. It opened my eyes to the downside of donating clothes to places like the Salvation Army. Although donating our clothes makes us feel like we are doing something good, it is actually destroying traditional ways of producing textiles and eliminating local fashion industries in many countries around the world.
If you haven’t seen The True Cost movie and you have purchased clothes from a big retailer at some point in your life, please take the time to watch it. Knowledge is power.
I MADE A PACT WITH THE OCEAN.
As the season ended and Fire Island returned to quiet, I began taking two hour walks on the beach nearly every day. These peaceful walks quickly turned into beach cleanups. At first I naively assumed that the little bits of trash I picked up on the beach were left from the Labor Day Weekend crowds, but after days on end of seeing zero people on the beach, I knew it was something else. Plastic being washed up from the ocean wasn’t just polluting some far off island or trapped in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, it was washing up on the very beach I’ve loved the majority of my life.
Cheese wiz bottle, DVD case, rope, yogurt container, soda caps, bottles, balloon strings, and this list goes on and on. It all washed up. There wasn’t one clump of seaweed that brushed up from the Ocean without some sort of plastic webbed in.
I mourned. I took a hard look at my consumption behaviors and at society. How did we get here? Why haven’t we made radical changes yet?