What really happens after a year of not buying clothes? [REPLAY]

So number one.

One major thing that has changed for me since the experiment is the urge to buy has gotten so much quieter.

I'm so much more resilient to temptation.

Now, this doesn't mean that I don't ever feel it, but this was a significant change and it has been a significant change.

since I embarked on that year and everything that followed.

This sort of like quietening down of my mind was a gradual shift.

Obviously it started throughout the main experimental year when I wasn't buying, but it really translated to the period afterwards as well.

In the book, in The Wardrobe Project, I talk about how often we are in this default state of yes because of the world that we live in, how often we are open to buying, how often we are open to being sold to, how often we allow things into our consideration and how often we take on the decision about whether or not to buy something and kind of carry around this weight of wanting, how commonly we are open to that.

And during the year that I wasn't buying, that default yes became a default no.

And that was so eye opening to see the difference between just how often we're in a subconscious state of yes.

Getting comfortable with that default state of no really, really paid off in the long term.

after the challenge when I wasn't in that you know container of the experiment anymore I did have this sort of recalibration period where I was allowed to buy again and I kind of had to grapple with what that meant and what state was I in now am I in a yes am I in a no am I somewhere in between and and I'm not going to say to you that it was totally easy to do I did record an episode in 2024 I'll try and find it and pop it in the show notes where I was sort of wondering if I was finding it a bit challenging again and having the option to buy again having you know learning to manage that and you know during that year as I kind of got used to what my buying style was like and how I wanted to engage with clothes having done the experiment and learning everything I had learned and feeling the way I felt about my style and feeling so much more confident, that ability that I'd cultivated to buy better did sometimes leave me wanting to buy lots and lots of things because of almost that muscle memory of I know that this feels good in the moment.

And now that I know to buy better, I kind of wanted to put that into practice and be like, I'm buying such better things now.

But despite having those feelings, what is really important to recognize is that just because I did have those urges and I'm still a human being, I still felt temptation and things like that.

I was much more confident in moving through them and i guess using all of the things that i had come to know about myself and all of the skills that i had cultivated and the new perspective i found on my style and what was worth my money i was much more confident in actually using that to live my life better to not give in to those urges to not think oh well i'll just get a hit of dopamine now and deal with it later i was able to balance it despite still experiencing those feelings um And I got really, really good at recalling the feeling of life just moving on, regardless of whether I buy this thing.

And that was really quite freeing.

While I could still, you know, see, oh, a really good sale.

I'll have a look or shiny things would catch my eye.

The really big change was that I was able to recognize that.

And realize that I can actually deal with those feelings differently and those feelings don't have to mean something about the way that I'm going to behave and I don't need to be a victim of those feelings.

I can still experience those feelings and I'm actually in control of them.

I can actually manage them.

And this part is why it was really important for me to not just write the book about the experimental year and not just have it end in December and be like, yay, I did it.

I wanted it to capture the year that followed and the period of time that followed, even right through to the beginning of this year, where I decided to do the challenge again and see everything from a different perspective, having learned so much about my style and effectively living with a completely different lifestyle.

view of my style and approach to my wardrobe and having a few different things in my wardrobe as well I honestly think that the aftermath was just as powerful as the year itself the learnings from actually buying more mindfully in practice you know there's a lot that you can learn from abstaining from a behavior but when you then use everything that you learned from not engaging with the behavior at all and learning to engage with it in a different way there's a whole new experience that comes with that and when I then sandwich onto that this year so that you know the book covers 2023 when I was actually doing the challenge the experiment then 2024 when I was buying again and I was navigating what that looked like And then the beginning of 2025, while I was writing it, of how I'd committed to doing the experiment again to see how it was different, it really, really proves that this stuff compounds and it builds up over time and that tolerance and those new ways of dealing with feelings towards material things really are skills or muscles that we can learn and strengthen.