What I Bought
What, it’s May already? Sigh. This year feels like it’s going by quickly.
I thought I’d do a quick check-in about my consumption of stuff. After window shopping too much in February, I stuck to the wardrobe shopping list that I made. Sweaters figure heavily on that list, so I checked some out during winter clearance sales, but none of them worked out.
As to home goods, we barely spent any money on those in Q1. (Food and unexpected healthcare costs, though, were another matter.)
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I upgraded our plastic shower curtain rings to aluminum hooks from Target. (Similar to these, but with just one hook.) While the plastic ones did the job, they were strictly utilitarian. The marketing copy for the new hooks actually reads, “Ditch those cheap plastic rings and upgrade your shower.” Um, guilty as charged. I was not a fan of pulling the plastic rings apart every time I wanted to wash the shower liner. Such a first world problem, I know.
So, I was very good about not consuming much in the first three months of the year. April, though, is another story.
First, I bought two things from Everlane. I couldn’t resist the one-day sale on wide leg pants and grabbed a pair of the Wide Leg Crop. I only started wearing wide leg pants last year after coming across these. Did I need another pair of pants? No. But I pretty much only wore skinny jeans in the fall and winter and liked the idea of pants with a different silhouette, rendered in a thicker fabric for cooler months.
Variety is the enemy of a minimalist closet — and I easily fell for it. UPDATE: I ended up returning them. Review here.
The other item I acquired was the Form Bag, which I first wrote about in October. After thinking about it for six months, I finally bought it. (I’ve added some photos of my new bag to that post and will be updating it with a review once I’ve tried it for a month. UPDATE: New review here!)
Everlane Form Bag – $235
I also gained a pair of rain boots (one of the items on my list). Alice + Whittles saw my review of ethical rain boots and gifted me a pair in a size that fit me better. New review here. (However, it hasn’t rained here lately, so it’s not as comprehensive of a review as it should be.)
After not buying anything (except for shower hooks) for three months, I’m feeling kind of hungry to shop. And that makes me realize how ingrained shopping is to me as a habit. (For example, I’ve been looking at Vetta Capsule and wondering which shirt: the Boyfriend Shirt or the Girlfriend Shirt would look better on petite me?) Again, I’m forcing myself to pin things I want to my Pinterest boards to think them over. I also started a board with things that I’ve tried and rejected (an idea I copied from Xin).
I did purge some items, though. Do I get brownie points for that? Looking at my shoe collection, I realized there were an awful lot that I never wear. One pair I hadn’t worn since 2011!
I decided to line them up by my entry area. Every time I went on an errand in the neighborhood, I’d put on a pair. Thus, on walks to the library or post office, I determined that all of them were either uncomfortable or no longer my style. I used to put up with walking around on the balls of my feet in order to be 3″ taller. Nah, not doing that anymore. I purged four pair of shoes and could probably stand to do another sweep.
The great shoe purge of April 2019
What I Read
Do Plastic Bag Bans Work? – A statistic in this op-ed on the global movement to ban plastic bags jumped out at me. Apparently, “the average American throws away about 10 single-use plastic bags per week, but New Yorkers use twice the national average.” What? Who are these people who don’t hoard plastic bags under the kitchen sink or in the pantry? Do they not even reuse them once as trash can liners?
I only throw them out when they’re torn and unusable. (And by throw them out, I mean recycle them. San Francisco now takes bundled-up plastic bags and plastic wrap for recycling, but before I took them to Target. Bundling them together into a basket-ball sized ball is key, I learned. Otherwise they get caught in the machines.) I only really throw them away if they’re dirty.
However, plastic bag bans can backfire, as people tend to buy more plastic garbage bags if they don’t have access to “free” ones. And those bags are thicker and use more plastic. Free is in quotes because they’re not actually free. We consumers don’t see the costs as retailers pay for them.
San Francisco and other cities have instituted bag fees to encourage people not to take them. Here, we have to pay 10 cents per bag. (And they’re not supposed to be those super flimsy ones, but sturdier ones that you can reuse.) An economist who studied the issue says that bag fees are more effective than outright bans and that New York’s new plastic bag ban is bad policy as there’s no similar ban or fee on paper bags. People will just switch to paper instead of changing their behavior to use a reusable bag.
Cotton Totes vs. Plastic Bags – Another interesting read was this story about how cotton tote bags may be worse than plastic bags when it comes to environmental impact — putting the issue of plastic litter in our oceans aside. This story has a chart with bag types and the number of “reuses necessary to have same cumulative environmental impact (water use, energy use, etc.) as a classic plastic bag.” For a cotton tote, they calculated that it would take 7,100 reuses. For organic cotton, it’s 20,000 times! For a polyester bag (and they specifically listed Baggu as an example), it’s 35 times. So I feel good about my Baggu because I’ve definitely surpassed 35 uses with each of them.
Banks & The Gun Industry – I also read this story in the New York Times about banks that invest in the gun industry. That prompted me to close my account with Chase, which was rated an F. (You can check how your bank rates at IsYourBankLoaded). I still have a credit card with them, though, so as soon as I find a replacement card, I’ll be getting rid of that too. (Let me know in the comments if there are any with good rewards that you favor.)
The customer service rep who took my call didn’t ask why I was closing it, so I went out of my way to tell him and asked him to make a note of it. Like using a reusable bag, it’s one small thing I did on my own. But I’m hoping others did as well and they’re getting the message.
Welcome Objects 2019 Wardrobe Count To Date
Additions: 3 items = 3 items total for the year
Subtractions: 4 items this month = 27 items (more or less)
I really love the color of the Form bag (the design looks really cool too, though it’s not my style). I’ve been thinking about burgundy/oxblood colored bags. And I’m still finding the Pinterest board method really helpful, though I think it’s still too early to say that it’s really working to make my shopping more careful and thought-out than it was before!
It took me a long time to fully declutter all of my old high-heeled shoes, all purchased from long ago, before I started law school, and before I realized I wasn’t willing to be uncomfortable or have my feet hurt. I still wear heels sometimes for certain types of work-related occasions, so I still have a few pairs, but I’d never wear them now for any other reason but needing to dress in business formal.
I love oxblood! It just feels like a sophisticated color to me. I still have a couple pair of heels too. One of them is 4″ (with a 1″ platform). I’m not even sure I could wear them for a whole evening, but they look so cool so I’ve held on to them all this time.