How to Stop Buying Junk Clothes

Posted by Jill Chivers in Attitudes and Habits, Shop Your Wardrobe Strategies, Shopping Strategies, Shopping, Clothes and Emotions

Imagine that your object of desire is food, and not clothes, shoes and shopping.

Here’s the trap many folks who over eat or eat the wrong foods fall into: they know they should eat healthy, unprocessed, natural food, increase their physical activity, get better sleep, drink more water, and lessen their daily stress. They know what they need to do to create a healthy, nourishing lifestyle.

But it all seems so very hard, the mountain seems too big to climb. And their starting point is too far back: They believe themselves to be too unfit, too fat, too frumpy.

Sure, they have good intentions. They may even start the week with gusto on Monday with a trip to the gym and the making of a low fat fruit smoothie with chia and spirulina supplements for lunch.

But by Wednesday afternoon all those good intentions have disappeared, the gym visits are a dim memory and it’s a quick PB & J sandwich standing up at the kitchen sink. And by Friday they have lurched through their day in a haze of one urgent thing to the next, and are stopping off at the local drive-through to pick up a sack full of processed fast food for dinner.

This is a scenario we’re all familiar with, even if we don’t have such a problem with our health and fitness.

Imagine now that your object of desire is not food, but clothing.

So how do you stop doing the same thing with your wardrobe? For women who aspire to creating, but haven’t yet created, a wonderful working and well-considered wardrobe, it can be tempting to fill it up with, or at least add a few, “fast fashion” items.

So how do you break the crap-clothes habit and Just Say No to more junk clothing?

Ten Strategies For Creating A Healthy, Nourishing Wardrobe

Recognise your tendency to junk clothes, shoes and accessory shop. Like a dieter who normally snacks on a chocolate bar at 3pm but who is seeking to introduce healthier food into their life, recognise where fast fashion is fitting into your life – are you using it as a reward? A quick pick me up? By recognising that cheap fast fashion is a temptation for you, you have an opportunity to change that behaviour, one shopping trip at a time.
Recognise that all those cheap small purchases add up. You can literally put yourself in debt $10 at a time. If your justification for continuing to buy fast fashion is “But it only cost ….!“, then it’s time to reconnect the small dollars to the bigger financial picture. Every dollar counts, even if you’re buying items $10 or $20 at a time.
Flush out of your wardrobe the fast fashion that’s clogging it up. This may not happen overnight or even in a few months. It can take some time to cull and cleanse your wardrobe of all the unwanted items that don’t deserve a place in it. But if you have decided that fast fashion is not the pathway through which you want to create and curate a wonderful working wardrobe, then having a plan to remove those items from your existing wardrobe must surely be part of your wardrobe management plan.
Consume fashion at a slower pace. You don’t have to be in a constant state of acquisition, buying more and more all the time. Slow your shopping down, at least for clothing, shoes, accessories and other appearance related items. Give yourself a break from shopping and simply create some space for life to flow without so much shopping in it.
Conduct some research into where fast fashion comes from. Those cheap clothes came from somewhere! And if you aren’t paying for it at the cash register, you can guarantee that somewhere someone in the production process is paying for it. Fast fashion comes at a price – if not to you the end consumer, then from someone somewhere further up the production line.
Pay closer attention to how who you are shopping with is impacting your shopping behaviour and attitudes, and especially in your consumption of fast fashion. Sometimes we can enrol ‘partners in crime’ unintentionally and unwittingly into our shopping experiences.
Tune into your shopping drivers and your why. We all have reasons that prompt our shopping behaviour and attitudes, and exploring what yours are, and where the consumption of fast fashion fits into your shopping picture, will give you important insights into changing those behaviours and attitudes. Especially if becoming a more conscious consumer is your goal.
Learn what your shopping conditions are. Sometimes we shop for fast fashion because we have simply made it oh so easy, too easy, to do it. Like driving home past McDonalds, if we make accessing fast fashion too easy, we aren’t setting ourselves up to succeed if we want to remove fast fashion from our lives, and our wardrobes.
Be attentive to the Before, During and After nature of shopping that makes you feel good (and shopping that does the opposite – makes you feel bloated, guilty and unhealthy). Make healthier choices so that all your shopping, every single shopping event and every single purchase, makes you feel good – before you shop, during your shopping, and after your shopping trip.
Find other things besides shopping to fill your time and take up your attention. The world is simply brimming with interesting and uplifting activities and people and experiences – you are limited only by your imagination! And if you are looking for ideas to inspire your life besides shopping, check out these shop less and live more inspirational daily postcards.