What I Learned From Four Years Of NO Shopping For New Clothes

In February of 2016, I posted about my journey of not buying any new clothes for three years. The post really appears to intrigue readers, who still comment about being impressed by this seemingly-impossible task. To the readers who want to know how long I was able to keep it up: here is your update.

Things were very different for our family back then.  We only had three kids, I was working full-time for a law firm, and our debt was a full-blown, house-is-on-fire EMERGENCY.  In my old post, I rationalized the drastic goal of not buying any new clothing at all by discussing how no one really notices what you wear and that you can save time and energy by relying on frequent rotation of your favorite outfits.  These arguments provided good motivation for sticking with my mission.  However, the real drive came from the fact that our finances needed drastic help.  

You can read my original post here: Three Years Without Shopping For Clothes

My success with this goal required a big change in attitude toward clothing.  It seemed that having the right clothing was essential to fitting in back during my pre-teen years.  I would go shopping for the perfect, trendy, name-brand outfit and actually think that those clothes would automatically increase my popularity at school.  That belief stuck with me to some extent into adulthood.  

In adjusting my attitude for the first year or two of the experiment, I had to learn a new confidence about clothing being of little relevance to my worth.  It meant relying on my basic black and gray suits at work, with rotations of different blouses.  My casual clothing disintegrated a bit over the years, but only really only made things more comfy for relaxing at home and taking care of kids.  I had to learn to ignore the advertisements of new trends.  But my shopping impulses have mostly faded away, to faint and very short-lived admiration of shiny new things.  I learned to prioritize our finances and stop trying to use clothing to impress people.  

Thanks to many changes in our lifestyle, including no new clothing shopping, we were able to pay off tens of thousands of dollars in debt.  The emergency is over and now we’re saving towards a new goal: buying our forever homestead.  I have started buying a few new things here and there, but they are used items, and instead of following trends, I focus on adding staples to my closet which will be useful for years to come.  

The Secret To Finding Great Deals On Almost Anything You Need 

My newest resource is Poshmark.  It is a website/app that I would describe as garage sale meets consignment store.  COVID had shut down most of the big consignment sales we typically relied on for buying clothing for the kids.  Virus or no virus, they keep growing out of clothing!  I found this site worked really well for finding deals on gently used clothing for our five children.  

When you first check out the site, it doesn’t seem like that much of a bargain.  The clothes are listed at a certain price and then every single item comes with a shipping fee.  There are a couple tricks that make Poshmark a much more affordable place to shop.  First option is to “bundle.”  This is where you add a few items from one seller’s closet to your virtual shopping bag.  Then, you only need to pay one shipping fee for everything.  The second option is to “like” a listing.  This seller will probably send you an offer (discounted price) which may or may not come with a lowered shipping fee.  Finally, there is a third option where you can make an offer on single items or the bundles.  The seller can accept or make a counteroffer.  The offer and counteroffer process goes back and forth.  You get to decide whether or not it’s a good deal.  

If you do want to check out Poshmark yourself, please consider using my referral code: luvyamissy.  This code should give you a $10 credit on your first purchase.   

Poshmark has been a great new tool for me.  I can go shopping for the family or search for those staples to supplement my own closet (ex. my recently purchased, classic denim jacket – never had one before!).  An awesome bonus has been that I have started selling our used items on the site – it’s really encouraged me to organize and clean out old clothing and they make it super easy.  There are no fees to list the items and the listings stay up forever (unlike eBay).  You can choose to cash out your earnings or apply them towards purchases.  It almost feels like we’re swapping old stuff for new-to-us clothing.   

In summary, it was a lot easier than it might seem to give up shopping for new clothes.  It used to feel like such an important requirement of “normal” life to go on regular shopping trips, but I honestly don’t miss it.  Most people should be able to get by with whatever is in their closet right now, for at least a few years.  You just have to devote yourself to new priorities.  We needed to get out of debt, so there was no room for luxuries.  As a result, I’ve grown and learned how to better focus my energy and attention, while enjoying the comfort of wearing my tried-and-true favorite clothing, over and over again.