Thoughts On a Year of Mostly Not Shopping

Back in December of last year, I announced as part of my goals for 2011 that I would be participating in the Great American Apparel Diet and that I would not be shopping for new clothing for the entire year. (GAAD does allow participants to replace worn out garments and undergarments and shoes are a grey area.) Because I enjoy shopping and style, I knew that doing GAAD would be a challenge for me. However, I also knew that I wanted to focus my spending in other directions this year so that I could afford a couple of trips and some race registration fees. For the most part, I did pretty well. The first few months of the year were not difficult. I thought my birthday in March might be hard, but it was surprisingly easy to not shop. I got to the summer without any setbacks.

At the end of July, I did purchase some clothing (three dresses, one skirt, a cardigan, three blouses, and a suit) for work and conferences. I viewed this as acceptable under the terms of GAAD because all but one of these items were replacements for clothes that either no longer fit or were stretched out, stained, pilling, or threadbare.

Over the course of the fall I made three other clothing purchases (aside from athletic sock and a couple pairs of replacement tights) that violated both the terms and the spirit of this ban. I bought a skirt that was on sale at Anthropologie in September when I was feeling upset about my ITB injury. I remember that one afternoon I suddenly found myself browsing online -- something I had been really good about not doing up until that point -- and put the skirt in my shopping cart. I revisited it several days in a row before I actually clicked on "buy." I bought a pair of red jeans in late September on the weekend that I did the Women Run the Cities 10 miler. Again, I think this decision was largely made from a place of disappointment and frustration. I knew I wasn't going to Chicago to run the marathon, and even though I was happy about running that 10 mile race I was facing a setback. I basically justified my purchase by telling myself that I wouldn't be spending money eating out or for a hotel room in Chicago two weeks later. Once the date of the marathon had passed and my injury had abated I found the desire to browse online had also largely (though not completely) dissipated.  In November I made a calculated purchase of a pair of wool trousers. While technically, this was a violation of GAAD as I had no wool pants or any other sort of trousers that were in need of replacement, I don't feel guilty about scoring them on sale and wearing them on days when the high temperatures were in the single digits.

In terms of running and work out apparel, I did buy a few things - all but one in the second half of the year. I replaced my running shoes twice and replaced a couple pairs of worn out running capris. I bought a shirt to run the Madison Half in with my friend Suzie, and a few weeks ago I invested in some cold weather running pants, a couple of long-sleeve tech tees for layering, and a jacket.

Shoes proved to more difficult. In June when M. and I went to Toronto and Montreal I had planned that I would treat myself to a pair or two of Fluevogs for making progress on various writing projects, which I did. I also bought a pair of flats to replace some that I had worn into the ground. Those acts of consumption seemed to send me sliding down a slope, though, because in the weeks that followed our return I purchased another pair of Fluevogs on sale online and a couple of other pairs of shoes on ebay. I also bought a pair of boots when I was in Seattle for a conference. Shoes technically fall outside of the purview of GAAD, but I do wish I had been more in control of myself in this category over the summer. I did get myself in check by the start of the school year, and only bought two more pairs of shoes since then. I purchased a pair of brown boots in November, and I recently bought a new pair of black heels for conference and teaching to replace a pair of favorite spectator pumps that broke when I was in Fort Worth.

So this ban on purchasing apparel didn't go perfectly for me. It went far better during the first half of the year than it did during the second half. Including shoes, I made 3 purchases between the beginning of January and the end of June. The second half of the year was harder. There were moments when I succumbed to temptation, largely as a result of feeling down, and I think because I was tired of the ban and once I had slipped up it became easier to slip up again.

I would say that I have made substantial changes in the way that I think about shopping for clothing. I do not browse online for shoes and clothing in the near-daily fashion that I once did as a means of procrastination or stress relief. I am much more calculated in (most of) my decisions to be a consumer. And I would like to continue to be a more rather than a less thoughtful consumer. I still have a long way to go before I will feel truly in control of my shopping habits and compulsions, though. I won't be on GAAD during 2012, but right now I don't really need to add anything to my closet, so I will be continuing to limit my clothing acquisitions in the year to come. I'll post more details about this in a forthcoming post on my 2012 goals.

I apologize for the length of this post, but I felt like it was important to hold myself accountable for this goal and that entailed detailing some of my slip-ups. Have you ever been on a shopping ban? How did it go for you? Would you ever consider going on a shopping ban?