Same Stuff, Different Outfit

Starting my year with a No Buy (I promise I'm going to stop talking about it soon, but not in this post) had a lot of positive outcomes.  For one thing, it took a lot of the guess work out of what i was going to wear.  As in previous years, I did a seasonal capsule wardrobe and just rotated through it for three months.  Of that capsule, I had about 6 work dresses/outfits that I wore on a bi-weekly rotation, and it saved me time in the morning by not having to figure out what to wear.

Another thing it did was really forced me to shop my closet a lot and I found that I really enjoyed it.  At this point in the game, I really don't need to buy anything other than replacing my shoes each year as they wear out.  Anytime I want to experiment or mix things up all I really just need to dig through my storage bins to find the things I want to make an outfit work.

For my No Buy challenge, I decided that all the targeted ads I was seeing were part of the problem.  I knew I had to strictly limit my social media time in order to avoid the temptation from all the shopping ads.  It worked like a charm...in a way.  I decided to draw, cover lampshades, and be creative instead of shopping.  However, the depression and anxiety that accompanied being denied the dopamine hits I get from shopping and scrolling social media were tough to take.  I had to feel all my feelings, deal with all the situations without my retail therapy or doom scrolling to decompress.  Include in that mix the stress of the holidays, two medical emergencies and a family trip and I really struggled to cope without a crutch for a while.  But, I made it.  And now I know I can.  And that was probably the greatest success to come from this experiment

Getting back on social media, I realized, I really can't have it in my life.  Literally nearly every post in my feed and every email in my inbox, is an ad for something wanting to take my money.  No thank you, I don't want to go back to the desensitization and the mindless buying.  Plus, I don't want to go back to losing hours of my life each day and $$$ from my bank account to the scroll effect.  

Now, this is the part where I must reiterate that I will always love fashion and will likely continue to set aside money for buying clothes, as my break from my No Buy has proven, but I am continuing to be more selective and mindful about what I bring into my life.  To that end, today's outfit is entirely "old" thrift finds of last year and all the way back to things I purchased more than a decade ago.

Normally the blog is the testing ground, where I put outfits together and if I like how they look in photos, then wear them out in the world.  However, since I haven't been doing outfit photos over the winter months, I saw this original fashion photo of this skirt, decided to put my own version together and have been wearing it to work before featuring it here.  I really love this outfit and I'm glad it looks as good in the photos as it looked in my head.

Outfit Info: j.crew top, maybe skirt, remake cardi, seeing flats