Final Shopping Report, 2023
Some failures, some breakthroughs, and a large amount of really good clothes.
I’ve had a hard time figuring out how to tackle the beast that was my shopping in 2023, and I know why: it’s uncomfortable to write about buying too much stuff, yet again, year after year. When it comes to shopping, I tend to dwell on feelings of failure, shame and guilt: I should have done better, why didn’t I control my shopping urges. I see a lot of people on social media celebrating their year of having bought only five new things and declaring their commitment to never buying anything they wouldn’t actually need, and even though I never attempted the rule of five, I’m comparing myself to those who did and succeeded. That's the life of an overthinker, I guess! Analyzing one’s shopping habits is complicated because there are all sort of feelings at play when it comes to shopping, but if there’s one thing I know by now, it’s this: do not compare yourself to others. It really serves no purpose.
For those of you who are new here (Hi! Welcome!), I have a history of self-diagnosed shopaholism (I have written about it here and here). I come from having had a wardrobe with a perpetually revolving door, where stuff kept going in and coming out. I kept purging and buying, and it’s taken me years to understand myself and to begin to change my behavior. A big part of that has been listing my purchases and looking at them critically at the end of the year. Buying less and for keeps is my goal, but I still trip up regularly. You can find the previous newsletters regarding this year’s shopping via the following links:
January - March 2023
April - June 2023
July - September 2023
Here’s what happened in the final quarter (October - December):
By the end of September I had already blown my annual budget and I was approaching my limit of items as well. I felt that I was in a pretty good place though. Visiting thrift stores felt tiring, I had bought great things, and I felt settled. The final quarter of the year was supposed to be a No Buy, just like last year. It didn’t go as planned.
In the final quarter I bought a pair of winter boots by the Finnish brand Pomar. They were a highly practical purchase and came at a good price (thank you Black Friday!). They’re not everything I want from a winter boot, but they’re serviceable, very warm and they have good traction. Despite my total thrifting fatigue in September I eventually went back to thrift stores, and found a bunch of things I didn’t want to leave behind. I bought a men’s long vintage vest (despite not liking vests in general), a Liz Sport patchwork tweed blazer (perhaps an unnecessary impulse purchase), a gorgeous black vintage sheepskin coat, a long Homme Plissé shirt, a really special Junya Watanabe cotton knit cardigan, a luxurious wool and cashmere column skirt that I went back for after I had left it behind once already, and a vintage YSL pleated skirt with gold buttons that fell on my lap at work.
Here are the numbers for the final quarter:
Pieces purchased: 8
Planned purchases: 1 (the winter boots)
Impulse purchases: 1
Spontaneous purchases: 6
(Note: Lin recently wrote about the difference between impulse and spontaneous purchases, and it made so much sense to me. As I backtracked my purchases I regrouped them under planned, impulse, and the new category, spontaneous.)
Pieces I regret buying: 1, possibly? I’m not sure about the patchwork blazer yet.
Pieces bought new: 1
Pieces bought second hand: 7
Pieces bought in person: 8
Pieces bought online: 0
Tops: 3
Bottoms: 2
Dresses: 0
Coats/jackets/blazers: 2
Accessories: 0
Shoes: 1
Money spent in this quarter: 524,89 EUR
This is not exactly rocket science: I bought more clothes and I spent more money in the final quarter. I feel very pleased about the clothes I bought, but guilty about not coming close to making my goals. A part of me feels that since I had already blown the budget earlier, it didn’t matter as much to try anymore. This led to some extremely uncomfortable moments as I tallied up the numbers for the whole year.
2023 stats combined
Pieces purchased: 46 (the goal was to buy fewer than 42 items)
Planned purchases: 8
Impulse purchases: 15
Spontaneous purchases: 23
Pieces I regret buying: at least 5 or 6
Pieces bought new: 2
Pieces bought second hand: 44
Pieces bought in person: 41
Pieces bought online: 5
Tops: 11
Bottoms: 9
Dresses: 0
Coats/jackets/blazers: 15
Accessories: 4
Shoes: 7
Money spent: 1.935,21 EUR (the goal was 1.200 EUR)
Conclusions and questions
The bad news is that I bought more than I should have, and I went over my budget. The good news is that I bought almost entirely second hand pieces, I was able to curb my online shopping, and overall I spent a lot less than I did in 2022. I would also like to take this opportunity to thank the thrifting gods — I’ve had some amazing luck this year finding special pieces for relatively little money. I managed to sell a lot of my old clothes that I couldn’t fit into, or clothes that no longer felt like ‘me’. I sold 34 pieces and made 3.222,00 euros, so the financial balance is more than acceptable.
I donated a bunch of clothes this year (I was going to keep track of my donations, but it didn’t happen), so I’m just guessing that my volume of clothes has remained more or less the same this year compared to last. I have a lot of clothes and I feel that I could do another calculated closet purge at some point, but I’m not freaking out about my closet at the moment. That’s very rare for me, and it actually feels like an achievement, or a breakthrough. I can’t even remember the last time I haven’t felt anxiety over the amount of clothes I have.
Even though I failed with the number-related goals I had set for myself, I did well with the others. My goals were to analyze my wardrobe seasonally, to invest in wardrobe staples, and to lean onto my style words.
Approaching my shopping seasonally was a mental goldmine: like I wrote in my previous newsletter, I’ve begun to embrace season-specific dressing. It just makes sense for the climate that I live in. It’s of no use to desperately hunt down clothes that I could wear 12 months out of the year, because they don’t really exist in the context of Finland’s very specific four seasons. It was a great decision to invest in some sharp winter pieces early in the year, and to stop buying so many summer clothes.
Sadly this didn’t stop me from going off the shopping rails in the spring and summer months. I made my shopping mistakes in the season of light. I think it has something to do with the deep duality of life in Finland: we’re always engaged in either gaining light or losing it. Everything revolves around light or the lack of it. The former makes us giddy and over-stimulated, the latter pensive and sedate.
Investing in wardrobe staples is something I’m still trying to figure out, but I’m getting there! I had fewer regrets this year about the clothes I bought compared to last year, and I bought some truly great pieces that I’m getting a lot of wear out of. My two Pleats Please skirts go with everything. I got a ton of wear out of the vintage Anne Klein wool gabardine coat I bought this spring, and the winter-friendly Dries Van Noten Podium trousers have been in constant cool weather rotation. Other purchases from this year that fall under the wardrobe staple/‘without fail’ category include a black vintage wool skirt, a pair of men’s tailored wool trousers, my black woven poppana coat, two great pairs of lace-up shoes, the vintage YSL skirt, the Homme Plissé shirt, and the three Yohji Yamamoto pieces I bought this year.
As the year has progressed, I’ve moved away from trying to define or analyze my style too much, but I still sometimes go back to the idea of style words. I’m even more convinced than I was before that style words are deeply personal and that they don’t necessarily translate to the people around you. Style words are your tool, and you can use them the way it feels right for you. I use mine to help me shop smarter and I don’t expect them to describe me holistically. Leaning onto style words while shopping has allowed me to recognize the overly trendy things or the completely bonkers pieces that I am often drawn to, and as a result I’ve bought fewer '“of the moment” and crazy things that I don’t get any wear out of.
The questions that arise from my year of shopping are the same as they always seem to be: I should be able to do better and to buy less. Why do I keep failing? Am I somehow destined to keep buying too much? Why am I not getting any better at this? Yet at the same time I recognize that staring at the numbers is useless. I am more comfortable with my style now than I have ever been before. I hold onto and keep wearing the clothes that I bought last year, and the one before that. That’s serious progress, and time will tell if I’m just still in the process of rebuilding my wardrobe after I went up a size or two in 2020. (Size fluctuation is a real issue: I can fit into some of my clothes comfortably one day, and quite literally not the day after.) My relationship to my body, my clothes and my personal style is still in flux, and that’s okay. It will take as long as it’s going to take for me to figure things out, and who knows if any of this will eventually lead to me not wanting to buy this much stuff, but I’m hopeful.
Despite my failures this year I will face 2024 with optimism: I will try to buy less. I don’t care if I stumble again, I will just keep trying. Some of the things I want to investigate next year are:
to recognize the difference between impulse and spontaneous shopping,
to find ways to control my unproductive spring and summer shopping sprees, and
to tap into what I really like and gravitate toward naturally, if such a thing exists.
Obviously I will keep buying second hand clothes, I will continue to shop in person, and I will try to stay on budget next year.
Bubbling under
In episode 6 of the first season of Twin Peaks Agent Dale Cooper has a conversation with Sheriff Truman at the Double R diner. Cooper says:
“Harry, I’m going to let you in on a little secret. Everyday, once a day, give yourself a present. Don’t plan it, don’t wait for it. Just let it happen. It could be a new shirt at the men’s store. A catnap in your office chair. Or two cups of good, hot black coffee. Like this.”
Truman responds: “A present, like Christmas”, as the two men begin to enjoy their coffee.
I’ve always loved that scene. In October I had a fascinating chat with a customer at my shop. She was trying to decide whether to buy a dress she had tried on, and she asked herself out loud “could this be my October present?” I enquired about this October present thing. She told me that for a couple of years now she had gifted herself something once a month. It could be theater tickets, going to an art exhibition, a nice meal with a friend, a road trip to a nearby town, a new dress, or a pair of earrings. The idea was, much like Agent Cooper’s, to not plan it, but to let it come to you, and to welcome it as it happened. She said the exercise had allowed her to consider her purchases more carefully and that it had even affected the way she lived her life: less randomness, more intention. (She ended up buying that dress as her October present.)
I know I’m not zen enough to give myself a present every day like Agent Cooper, but I think I could do it once a month like my customer. I’m not attempting to buy only one thing a month, but I am going to try to make a mental note of giving myself a monthly present. It’s just an experiment, and we’ll see where it takes me.
How did you do with shopping this year? I’d love to hear about your successes, failures, ponderings, and conclusions.
Happy New Year to each and every one of you! See you in 2024!
Tiia your quarterly shopping round ups are some of my favorite to read! Thank you so much for your transparency. I want to offer you a bit of grace as I can see the mindfulness you are bringing to your shopping and while you didn’t hit your goals, you brought that thoughtfulness year-round. Bravo!
i am sick with how much i over-shopped in 2023! fluctuations were part of it, but so was the resulting frustration and desire to feel better. some takeaways: (1) 70+% of my purchases were 2nd hand, almost all online, and my new purchases were mostly due to influencer recommendations. (2) i seem to regularly sell and replace a lot of my knits, and i'm not sure why. now i have some quality pieces from studio nicholson and lauren manoogian, so i'm hoping they keep me happy for many years. (3) i have recently shifted my focus to separates that can be dressed up for special events. although these dressier pieces will get less wear, i was in a cycle of buying a dress for an event and never wanting to wear it again, which i hated. hoping some mix and match special pieces bought out of love instead of last minute panic will fix this.
finally, going into 2024, i hope to shop MUCH less, and invest time in selling and/or mending/tailoring. i don't expect to be capable of only 5 pieces, but i can at least ask myself: if i were to commit to buying only 5 items this year, could i make a strong argument for this to be one of them? if the answer to that is no (i've found it often is a quick no), then i don't want to buy it.