Reflections on a Low-Buy Year
What's in a number?
I’m not great with numbers. Last week, I had to do a financial knowledge quiz to make some administrative changes to a savings account, and it unleashed a stream of anxiety as I tried to work out if John lost money investing in a unit trust instead of leaving his money to earn compound interest (he did, sadly). How well do I know myself, and how does it square up against hard, cold, numbers?
The same might be asked of my shopping habits in 2024, which is thankfully, a much more low-stakes topic to mull on. How have my consumption habits evolved in 2024 and where does my relationship with clothing stand? And how much of that was captured in numbers?
I bought 14 items of clothing this year, fewer than the 25 items I bought in 2023, but well over what was prescribed by the Rule of Five pledge (five new items), and certainly there are people out there who will laugh at the idea of 14 items being a “low-buy” year. To me, these simply numbers suggest that I’m on the right track, but I could do better, which is surprisingly succinct and on point, and not a bad place to be compared to where I was in 2023.
Fourteen is obviously more than five, but the numbers are only part of the story. Shopping less is one of my many shopping goals, and not hitting a specific number doesn’t mean the whole endeavour was a waste of time. How I feel about what I bought, where I chose to spend my coin—these are equally important and worthy of reflecting on.
And ultimately, clothes and how we shop are just one piece of our lives. Learning to make peace with my anxieties over my clothes and shopping habits—and letting go of what I think they say about me—was one of most freeing lessons I’ve learnt in recent years.
The tally
January — 1 item: Babaà wool jumper (new, A$346)
February — 1 item: Vintage wool jumper (secondhand, A$75)
March — 1 item: Dries Van Noten dress (secondhand, A$400)
April-July — 0 items
August — 3 items: Céline shirt (secondhand, A$178), Champion sweatshirt (secondhand, used store credit), Polo Ralph Lauren rugby shirt (secondhand, $40)
September — 0 items
October — 3 items: Fletcher Jones pleated wool skirt (secondhand, A$30), army surplus shorts (secondhand, A$9), beige leather coat (secondhand, A$80)
November — 5 items: Iceberg shearling jacket (secondhand, A$161), leather skirt (secondhand, A$27), antique cotton dress shirt (secondhand, A$28), velvet jacket (secondhand, A$8), Murano glass ring, (new, A$41).
December — 0 items
Total: 14 items (A$1,495 spent)
Things I bought new: 2
Things I bought secondhand: 12
Planned purchases: 1 (the Babaà jumper)
Online purchases: 2 (the Babaà jumper and the Dries Van Noten dress)
In-person purchases: 12
Things I could have left behind: 4 (the Celine shirt, the leather coat, the army surplus shorts, the Champion sweatshirt)
Things I regretted: 0
What I learnt
Guardrails are good. I don’t do well with restrictions, but I do well with guardrails. It was useful for me to treat the Rule of Five as a prompt that helped me shop more thoughtfully, rather than a restriction or a form of punishment for overconsuming.
It’s best to start from a place of “I have enough” instead of “I need to stop”. I’ve written about this before, but to reiterate, a low-buy exercise works best when you come from a place of abundance and feel good about your wardrobe. A hard stop isn’t sustainable or healthy to do one if you’re not ready for it.
Shopping in person is my weakness. Although I do my fair share of intense internet window shopping and wish-listing, I’m quite good at restraining myself online because I need to feel and try things to love it. In real life however, I find it hard to leave behind lovely clothes, even though deep down I know I won’t miss them. I don’t regret the items I bought this year, but I would like to get better at liking things without needing to own them.
Secondhand shopping is better for my style, but it’s too easy to get carried away. This year, I felt like I fell in love with clothes again, because shopping secondhand first made me look at clothes outside of the trend/consumption bubble—I felt like I had the space to let my sensibilities and interests come to the fore, instead of being influenced by the social media machine. And this is also why even though I know I could have bought less, I don’t feel regret; I feel an affinity for everything I bought. That said, I know there were times when I treated secondhand like a convenient crutch for satisfying the urge for something new while soothing myself with the idea that I wasn’t buying new.
Making a plan is helpful if your wardrobe has gaps to fill, but less so if you’re shopping for the spontaneous pleasure of enjoying clothes. I made a shopping plan for 2024, which was useful in helping me shop with purpose, but nearly everything I bought ended up being pretty much from one category: the “serendipitous nice-to-have item”. This was because I didn’t really have any real gaps to fill. Shopping for pleasure requires a different sort of roadmap, and I’m still mulling on how I will approach 2025 differently.
A budget is your friend. This year, I spent about half of what I did last year, not only because I bought fewer things, but also because I gave myself a spending limit whenever I set out to go shopping. I also set aside some of my travel budget for shopping while on holiday, which gave me the space to indulge without feeling guilty or stressed. Budgeting is not for everyone but for me, it’s a dose of reality and a clear boundary—this is one area where numbers do tell the whole story!
No regrets. This is my favourite takeaway of all. Although I bought more than I want to, for the first time in a long time, I didn’t buy any items that gave me a sinking feeling when I looked at them. It made me realise that regret is a pretty serious emotion, and to have been experiencing it over clothing regularly in the past was not a good sign. Experiencing less of it makes me feel like I’m headed in the right direction—not just in terms of buying less, but also coming to terms with loving clothes without attached to the idea that it’s a bad thing.
What’s next
One thing is clear, the Rule of Five/low-buy is a good thing for me, and next year, I hope to see it evolve into a habit instead of remaining a one-off exercise. I think I’ve made some progress on this, but I still have a long way to go—I still go shopping as a way to unwind and while I don’t think this is a bad thing, I don’t want to become the default activity, because of the risks of over-consuming and thrill-seeking that comes with it. Facing the fact that shopping was a problem for me was an important part of 2024, and I think I’ll have to be on guard against that for a while.
For 2025, I want to stay within the five-item limit (both new and secondhand), but realistically, going by how 2024 went, I think somewhere between 8 to ten new and/or secondhand items is probably more realistic. After all, I already have my eye on an item I’ve been obsessing with for months that I’m ready to order. I’m also going to be tougher about my shopping expenses as I’ll have more expenses next year and quite simply, there’s just less money for clothes.
I considered trying a full-year no-buy but I think it’s out of my reach at this moment (see above), and in any case, I can start one any time during the year—resolutions don’t have to start in January. November and December have been intense in terms of travelling (and shopping) and going straight into a hard no-buy for a year will feel too much like a reactive, punitive move instead of a considered one. I do like clothes and I am not averse to more clothes; I just want to buy them mindfully.
Elsewhere, I want to keep working on my mending skills and make alterations to old clothes that need a bit of a refresh. I have some skirts that could be taken out to fit better, and I have an ambitious plan to take apart my old jeans that no longer fit to maybe make a new pair of jeans altogether, but this will require me to find the right tailor/alterations expert to work with. Fingers crossed.
A final thought: I love rambling on and documenting my attempts to shop more mindfully, but clearly I am far from perfect, and no doubt there are people who wonder, what is the point of all this? I think judgement is inevitable—I judge myself more than anyone else—but what comes after that is more important. My hope for 2025 is for all of us to be able to move on from judging ourselves (and others) too harshly, and find contentment in knowing that we’re trying, and that’s all there really is.
Have a restful December, and see you all next year. Thank you for being here :)
Same here. I had to low buy out of necessity this year because I left an abusive husband. But I am unable to face the low buy out of that reason alone. The real reason I had to take a hard look at my shopping was because I was using it to fill in feelings inside me.
Your writing is so soothing as well as helpful. Thank you for sharing your year with us and many hopes for a conscientious joyful year for us all!
If you ever wondered : what is the point of all this ? or all this ramble .... Know that I am on the receiving end of your words being helped by your thought process.