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Step 1 to Stop your Shopping Addiction
First step in aligning your Clothing Budget: Know what you’re spending each year
Yes, this can sound very simple but honestly I had NO idea about this when I first started realizing I had a shopaholic addiction. If you’ve seen my previous videos, you know that I coped with my burnout by shopping – mostly shopping for new outfits and clothing. When I went back to document everything I purchased over a year, it was well over $5,000. I spent $5,000 alone when my burnout was very bad for 3 months in 2015.
Step 2 to Stop your Shopaholic Behavior
Second, we can’t take back what has already happened. Time is valuable and we can’t go back in time. It’s happened, so let’s reflect on PAST EXPENSES. You could do this by pulling out your credit card statements, bank statements, email confirmations from online orders and/or receipts. Since I was a responsible credit card user (I pay off the bill in full each month and never carry a balance), I went through my credit card statements to document my past expenses.
Here is an example Excel file of what I documented during the peak of my shopping problem and burnout.
Start asking yourself honest questions about Shopping and Clothing.
- How do you feel when you go into your closet to pick out the outfit for the day?
- Do you feel overwhelmed by choices in closet each morning?
- Feel like you have nothing to wear?
- What joy did each item bring you?
- Will items last you several years?
- Do you live with a capsule wardrobe?
Step 3 to Set up your Clothing Budget
Third, start setting up a Clothing Budget for the YEAR. I personally prefer this as a YEARLY line item instead of a monthly line item. It allows for more flexibility. It also means that if you spend the entire budget in February, you will go without the next 10 months of the year in this category. YES, I actually did this in 2021 when I found a coat I was searching for over 5 years and purchased it. I spent my entire Clothing Budget and didn’t spend another dollar for the rest of the year on clothing. One way to address this is by focusing on borrowing, renting or purchasing secondhand clothing instead of new clothing. This is eco-friendly and saves piles of clothing from going to a landfill. Places I recommend include the Buy Nothing local group, ThredUp, Poshmark and creating a friend group who shares or borrows items.
Step 4 to Stop your Shopping Addiction
Fourth, let go of temptations around spending money on clothing. One way to do this is by decluttering your digital communications – aka EMAIL. We are bombarded with marketing emails from companies we purchased from in the past or signed up for a coupon code in the past. Unsubscribe from these marketing emails to reduce the distraction (and temptation) in life. If you are not sure how to get started with this, my Decluttering Workshop can walk you through this process.