Well, not sure how it can be February already, but here we are! Last month I challenged myself to buy no new clothes for the entire of 2022. Read it here if you missed it.
Temptations so far?
So how’s it going? Well honestly it’s been easy so far! Tempted? Yes maybe a couple of times, but deep down I know I don’t NEED any particular clothes so it only takes a second to continue on and forget about the temptation to even look. Plus we have been going through a heatwave here in Perth, and it’s pretty much been over 35°C for the whole of January! So the same few pieces of clothing have been worn on repeat to try and keep cool.
There have been a few times when I’ve been tempted to click through onto a brand’s website while I’ve been online. Sales, especially when it’s your favourite sustainable brand (who don’t have sales very often!) can be the hardest. Most of us love a good bargain so we can have this feeling of missing out. If we don’t buy something it might be gone forever and never be on offer again! But there will always be something else won’t there?
Your taste in clothing might change too and in a years time it might not even fit with everything else in your wardrobe. It’s impossible to have everything, and when you think about it we are always missing out on things, it’s just most of it isn’t suitable for us so we don’t even think anything of it.
The everyday challenges we face.
We are bombarded with advertising everywhere we go. TV, radio, billboards, and the worst of them all – social media, where everything is interconnected. Ever looked up something on one of your devices and then you get ads for that same thing on another? Yes, people can pay a lot of money for this targeted advertising based on what you’re searching for. That’s why if you want to make a change, it has to be with us – the consumer, and we need to be changing our mindset to shop more consciously and ethically. To really understand where our clothes come from and who made them. By doing this we are placing more value on them, and taking better care of them.
In Australia, an average of 31 kilos of textiles per person are discarded annually. That equates nationally to 15 tonnes of textile waste every 10 minutes, or 800,000 tonnes of waste per year. Every year the price of clothing gets cheaper while the effect on the environment is getting worse.
Some tips to help make the challenge easier.
Although it’s only been a month into the challenge, here are some tips that I’ve found to make things easier;
- Unfollow fashion brands from social media accounts. If you’re still following fast fashion brands, this is a great tip to stop seeing the new must-have trend or item that comes out every week. When it comes to more sustainable brands, the temptation might not be as strong so this is personal choice. I have unfollowed a couple of larger brands that I think would tempt me for now, but kept the smaller brands that I would like to keep supporting, even just as a follower and not as a consumer for now.
- Unsubscribe from fashion emails. This is similar to the above, but usually the first place to know about a sale or new range the brand has coming out. The unsubscribing can be as temporary as you like, you can always sign up to their newsletter again easily. It might also be a good chance to declutter and go through your newsletter subscriptions to get rid of the ones you really don’t want anymore! Setting aside the time to do this will be so helpful.
- Go through your wardrobe and dig out some pieces that haven’t been worn for awhile. Sometimes we get drawn to the same clothes all the time, so grabbing something that wouldn’t normally be worn will feel like you have something new. You might even get comments from others about it being new! (Yes this happened to me!)
I’m looking forward to sharing more with you over the coming months, and if you didn’t read my first challenge post, read it in full here.
Remember small changes in your mindset can make huge differences in your life, so even by making one small change every month will completely change your behaviours by the end of the year! I would love to know if you have done your own ‘No New Clothes’ Challenge? Let me know below.
Read my next post about the challenge here.