Clothing Cleanse Diaries

Bringing you along on an (attempted) no-buy month, plus reasons on why I choose to habitually participate in this personal challenge!

Up until getting married, I was (perhaps quite obviously) a part of a one-income household. All clothing purchases were filtered through my monthly clothing budget, and I adhered to it as closely as possible. Especially when I worked as an RUF (a college ministry) intern from 2017-2019… I basically took an oath of poverty those years, lol. To give you an idea, my clothing budget was $50 a month… but I digress.

Once getting married, my husband and I had more money per month than I was ever used to (I run our family’s budget), and I quickly got sucked into a frequent and impulsive habit of shopping. I remember looking at my bursting closet sometime in September of 2020 (about two months after we got hitched) and realizing I’d gone a bit overboard with my clothing consumption. And the thing is, half of the things I purchased in the previous months I didn’t even like! I had fallen into a trap of purchasing because I could rather than purchasing to fill a specific need or even want.

I shared with my husband the icky feeling that had come with this over-consumption, and thus the idea of the “clothing cleanse” was born! The idea is that every few months as needed (NOT as a requirement… again, I run our family’s budget and my husband is supportive of my fun-money-spending on clothing!) I would refrain from purchasing any clothes, whether secondhand or new, and try instead to shop from my own closet as well as create a wish list for any perceived “gaps” in my wardrobe during the cleanse. It was very Old-Loser-in-Brooklyn of me, if I do say so myself!

Realistically I have about 2-3 of these cleanses a year, and the goal is to buy nothing at all. To be frank, I have never successfully made it through one of them without buying something. What can I say, I shop for a living… sue me!!! My first clothing cleanse was in October of 2020, and it happened to be the month I sourced my famed vintage fruit sweater, and I have absolutely no regrets about breaking the cleanse for it. The *realistic* goal is to shop as little as possible (and more points if I can abstain completely).

So here I am at the precipice of a brand new month ready to cleanse myself from clothes shopping because my April was quite stacked with personal sourcing! Come along with me!!!

5/1/24

The first day of my new cleanse! Feeling hopeful as I did buy LITERALLY 6 things on Etsy at 11:25pm last night which will hopefully last me through the next month. Whoops, lol. I also have some sourcing to do for the shop as well as a thrift swap with another Instagram/TikTok creator which I’m VERY excited about! A no-buy month is never a no-shop month, after all.

Literally six… most of them are small trinkets, but still!

5/1/24 3:45PM

Okay… I just bought a shirt… welp, quickest no-buy fail ever. BUT HEAR ME OUT!!! This was a vintage 1970’s Mississippi State University T (my alma mater), and I’ve never ever ever seen one like this before. ALSO, I’m not going to open the package until June, and I may even extend my no-buy month out through June 2nd… so there’s that.

5/3/24

A gap in my wardrobe I’m seeing is that of tank tops. I’ve got like 4 cotton racerback tanks from Target, but only 2 non-racerback “dressy” tank tops. I’d love to find some secondhand that are white cotton (shocker) with some lace detail… think Edwardian or Victorian vibes. I’d also love to find a tailored vest I can wear as a tank!

I’m heading to Goodwill to source items for the shop as well as the thrift swap I have coming up. Hoping I can avoid temptation to get something for myself as well!

5/9/24

Nine days in (or eight depending on if you count my day one fail), and I haven’t bought anything! There were a few pieces I saw at the thrift store the other day that I might eventually decide to keep, but as of now they are shop property!

I’ve started a new, very part-time job at a local thrift store, and it’s made me feel even more convicted and icky about America’s (and my own) shopping and consumption habits. The sheer amount of inventory this small local thrift shop has piled in trash bags ceiling-high in their storage room could probably clothe an entire family for their whole lives. It makes me sick to my stomach… I know I shop more than I probably should, but seeing clothing in this capacity has made that fact even more glaring for me. Maybe I’ll have no-buy months more frequently after this… just some word vomit.

5/23/24

Several weeks since my last entry, but I literally haven’t bought a single clothing piece or accessory for myself this month!!! I think this diary is keeping me accountable. I also went to the beach for a week which didn’t exactly give me many opportunities to shop or scroll. But I am ready to shop again, y’all.

This month off of personal sourcing has continued to highlight my need for non-racerback cotton tank tops, and I also am in need of a black swimsuit top. Not sure I’ll go secondhand for that one, though. Also on my wish list is a pair of silk pants! Something that works well for summer but could also feed into the fall.

As far as tanks, I’ve been saving several lovely options from Doen on eBay as well as screenshots from their website! Fingers crossed they have a sale soon…

5/28/24

Well, I bought a pair of pants today. Quite an expensive pair, too, but I was fairly unbothered at the price since I’ve been saving for TWENTY SEVEN days, and the pants were on sale! They were also the very last pair, so I didn’t feel like I could wait until June 1st to pull the trigger. I will not disclose how much I spent, but let’s just say I SAVED $178! What a great deal, right!? They were also a wish list item: a pair of silk pants. I am excited to style them throughout the summer and beyond!

I also bout a pair of pants at the thrift store where I work that I’m planning to turn into a pair of bike shorts a la Gimaguas, and they were $1. That’s basically not even shopping!

With four days left in this challenge and only 2 (or 3 slip-ups if you count my day one purchase), I consider it fairly successful, honestly. I’m not mad about it!

6/5/24

An update on the aforementioned expensive silk pants (they were actually viscose, but whatever): I ordered a size up because it was the only size available, and they were just too big to justify keeping them, so I returned them yesterday! Which means I only bought two things the entire month of May!!! And I kept my word and did not open the vintage Mississippi State shirt until June 3rd. She’s on fire, y’all!

And that’s a wrap on this clothing cleanse! Thanks for following along with me! And please let me know, are you going to try a clothing cleanse any time soon?

And that's All That She Wrote today, folks! Sorry for keeping ya hanging so long! Sometimes life gets busy. You know how it is!

-Anna Kristen