Shopping Therapy

If I'm being honest, I'm not at all where I want to be with my spending. If I'm being brutally honest my progress is marginal more often than not. Because where I want to be is spending $0 and saving infinity dollars.  

From the end of November through mid-February I was on a No-Buy and doing really well. Feeling good emotionally, mentally, physically. I thought this would be the time I kicked the habit. Then a close family member had a serious medical emergency and I had to take the lead.  

Quite frankly, I handled the emergency portion like a champ. All day. And the following days. Then when the chaos settled, I fell off the sobriety wagon, hard. The worst thing is that I actually realized I was using shopping to cope pretty early on. But I didn't stop. 

 A few hours bled over to the next day, turned into a daily thing, turned into purchases, turned into months now of repeated behavior and I am right back where I don't want to be. The good news for the blog is that I have lots of stuff to post photos of. The bad news is...you know, all the rest of it. 

 I could really sink here, just spiral down, but I would rather not. I'd rather just be OK with it.  Life happened; I coped. As far as copes go, it's not the worst habit in the world and maybe my journey needs to be on a spectrum from doing well at saving to spending extravagantly rather than seeing it as an on/off switch.  

While I am on an honesty streak, I also have to admit that as a perfectionist, I will probably never live up to my own expectations if I don't lower them just scooch or two below "practically perfect in everyway," and aim more for "I'm doing my best, honey."  I'm human and the best way to reach any destination is to just keep going, so I will and I do.  And in the spirit of transparency, it hasn't been all setbacks.  I've had a few victories too and I'll share those in my next post. 

A Diamond in the Rough

Physicist Erwin Schrodinger once said, "The task is...not so much to see what no one has yet seen, but to think what nobody has thought about what everybody sees."

I know it's a reach, but the ability to thonk what no one has thought about a thing everyone has seen describes thrifting to a tee.  Or perhaps it describes the sort of mind that loves thrifting.  To see an item of any sort and look beyond its current state to the potential buried underneath.  Sometimes that potential is deeply buried under grime and damage and it takes the right kind of eyes to see what lies beneath.  This Palava dress probably retailed for over $200, which is why I didn't buy it new.  But, without the belt it suddenly drops to $50.  Yes, please!  A gorgeous dress in excellent condition with plenty of life left for a fraction of the price and I get to accessorize it my own way; you just have to look with the right eye to find these hidden gems.

Outfit Info:  Palava Dress, belt, shoes, and bag are thrifted

To Thrill a Mocking Jay

So, back in the 2010's I watched The Hunger Games and liked it well enough that I decided to read all the books. I think it's pretty commonly agreed at this point that the books were great, the movies...not so much.  Eventually, when my children were old enough, we got the audio books and listened to them on our daily commute.  My kids were hitting an age where books didn't really interest them, but when we started these books, they started begging me to just get in the car and drive around with them just so they could hear what would happen next.  

Because of our mutual love of these books, we also got the prequel, A Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes.  The story was not really up to par, and the voice actor was kind of ridiculous, but we suffered through it together.  Now my oldest has informed me that the newest installment, Sunrise on the Reaping, another prequel which tells the story of Katniss' mentor, Haymitch, is actually very good and she begged me to read it so I can discuss it with her.  Family book club?  How could I refuse?

So, I'm reading the book and loving it so far, and in the spirit of summer reads, I  thought I would combine this thrifted Modcloth To Thrill a Mockingbird dress with a little Hunger Games goodness.

Outfit Info:  To Thrill a Mockingbird Dress-Thrifted Modcloth, YeMak Cardigan, Shoes are from SheIn

Tea in the Key of Chic

Ahh, ModCloth, I loved you so.  This Key of Chic dress in Tea print was one of my earliest ModCloth purchases, probably circa 2015.  I remember that we were living in Japan and I was wearing this dress with some nude wedge heels, walking down the street with my young daughters and was actually very loudly cat-called from a car driving by.  Japan is not a culture that tolerates behavior like that and sure enough, it was a car of foreigners, likely American, that were the culprits.  I remember stopping and thinking, "did that just happen?  Weird."  I also remember that those wedges were specifically purchased before we left America from Payless (rest in peace) to be walking friendly, but after about ten steps the blisters were forming not only on my heels, but also across the tops of my toes.  I went home and directly threw those shoes away.  Walking several miles each day was just part of the routine there and I had no patience for useless footwear.

I loved this dress so very much, but during a very impulsive declutter, I convinced myself that it wasn't getting enough wear and that it was practically a sin for it to sit on the hanger anymore.  I gave it away and regretted it for years.  It's only happened a few times that I've truly regretted parting with a dress or top, but Seller's/Donator's remorse is just as real as Buyer's remorse and I felt it hard for over this dress.  So, when I saw one on a thrift site, I bought it again and it's probably mine for ever this time.

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