Let go of (unnecessary) things to FOCUS on the important things

If you have a hard time actually letting go of things, especially clothes, and if you're like me, it really boils down to the guilt of wasting money if I were to let go of an item. This is particularly true if the item is relatively new and I have been trying to incorporate it to my wardrobe without much success (i.e. it doesn't get enough wear).

These are the summary of my thoughts process on the issue:
• I have already spent the money to buy the clothes (or whatever item) and letting it stay unused is equal to getting it wasted, I am not getting any value from its presence in my closet.
• I can convince myself that I am getting some sort of value – because of some irrational attachment or whatever, but if I were to be honest with myself, I am actually not because every time I see it, I am reminded of the mistake I've made and the financial costs attached to that mistake. We are all human, we make mistakes, it happens. Learn from it and move on. I don’t need a daily reminder, really.
• The real cost of letting an item stay in my closet is more than its initial purchase price. It costs me some form of resources, be it financial or time or at least, mental capacity, to maintain it, clean it, store it, move/transport it.

The highest cost is this: having unwanted stuff amongst my wanted stuff distracts my focus. Lack of focus is dangerous because it makes me more prone of making mistakes. I am a big believer in making my life easier be creating an environment that’s conducive of clarity and light.

Since I am  not getting any positive value out of it, I have decided to let it go, cut my losses. Donate it and let it have a chance in someone else's closet; or sell it, if it's worth the trouble (read: if I can afford the time and resources). I have very little patience for these things and for the non-profit that I made from my last round of putting stuff for sale on ebay, donation works best for me.

I have been letting go of a lot of things from my apartment, I did not even realise that I had so much stuff. This has been liberating on so many front, primarily because it allows me to focus on the most important things: the things that you cannot buy with money.

Simple is not always easy, but it is a worth while exercise.

one step closer towards a fuller life: working on a new me

i signed up to a further 6 weeks of yoga this week, or to be precise, two lots of lessons. in first batch, we are given a goal, the crow, and in the second, we are working towards a stronger core, i.e stomach and lower back. yoga was previously fun and relaxing, but not so much these days. i think it's good because we are now in the next stage of improvement. as always i was being a wuss and ended up whinging and whining. then again, my right shoulder was playing up (it is weak, so...) and when there is physical pain, it is really hard to be positive about life.

i was tagged in an ice-bucket challenge by a dear friend who thought that "i could do it". and yes, i guess i could, and i am not doing it out of principle. it is not about donating to charity (although this is a different discussion altogether), it is the fact that i think doing an ice bucket challenge is just plain silly, not to mention wasteful. no offence to everyone else who participated or going to participate - you do whatever floats your boat. this does not float mine.

so in lieu of doing an ice bucket challenge, i am doing a no fried chicken challenge. as the name suggests, it entails me not eating fried chicken from Sep 2 till Sep 30. i am now in day 8 and have been experiencing 2 days (and counting) of fried chicken craving. this, coupled with a more challenging yoga routine, sound like a recipe for disaster. i honestly don't know how my will power will cope with this.

my yoga teacher said that we have to put in the effort towards a vision, while at the same time, not having an attachment to the outcome of our efforts. (she of course put it in much better words.) i am willing to put in the effort to do these in the hope that i will be a better person by the end of the month. don't know if i will be able to do the crow, only hoping that i become stronger in the next few weeks.

i guess in short, happy to report that this whole wardrobe simplifying slash mindful shopping principles have started to permeate to other aspects in my life. we'll get back to more discussion on wardrobe/closet/shopping stuff soon.

you have to have stuff before you can let go

... else there's nothing to let go.

As was cleverly pointed out to me the other day, this whole notion of downsizing and letting of stuff happen for people who have had the luxury of overindulging in excess stuff. Just like any other kind of excess, once you've had too much, you don't want it anymore.

My overindulgence experience makes me who I am today, and I am pretty okay work in progress, I think. There are still moments in which I wish that I had the wisdom and vision of knowing this before it happens, so that I can skip over the wasting money/resources while unnecessarily overindulging. At times I am mortified at my former self and how I used to approach spending and shopping.

But I focus on the good and the other things on my list that I'd like to become and concentrate my efforts in that direction. I try to be kind when it comes to the mistakes I've made in the past, and just move forward. This is hard, and necessary for progress.

In my latest round of downsizing, I am letting go of the things that I am lukewarm about. These are things that are, you know, oh-kayy, which found their way into my closet because I was too lazy to look for the item that would allow me to realise the vision I had in my head more closely. Specifically, these are:

(1) red coat - holy fucking shit, I love red coats. This has got nothing to do with the fact that I attended a school whose winter uniform included a red duffle coat, that I secretly loved; I guess now the secret's out. This has a lot to do with the fact that I love the colour red, it has the power to make me feel better, instantly.

(2) dark gray anything - I am living in dark gray everything this winter, I have been doing this since last winter and I realise that I am growing to love the colour more and more. I am not alone in this, I know this because I find myself in colour-related conversations discussing my love for dark gray anything. My love for this colour is almost as intense as my love for red.

(3) black - I was never into black until I met le boyf whose collection was black everything, until he met me and started wearing a lot of... red. Need I explain more? The people you love often influence your sense of style because they like to see you in a certain way. Le boyf dresses better than me, and being with me has resulted in me being more experimental with the things I wear. His sense of style is very stable, whereas mine is more all over the place. People who see us tend to think that I dress sloppily compared to him, but I swear it's just a different style. Or to put it differently, I am not as classically inclined as he is during the weekends that we are seen together.

This weekend, while it is pouring wet, yet again, I am going through my closet and asking the question "Do I love it?" and if the answer is no, the item has to go. Funny how the universe has the ability to carve out some time in your schedule to make you one step closer to the vision that you didn't realise you have: every item that stays my closet, I want to love them because of their quality.

Happy weekend and stay dry. x

outfit: monochromatic (and some closet spending pattern analysis)

jacket: asos | shirt: saxony | jeans: uniqlo | shoes: nine west | sunglasses: prada

not shown - bag: the leather satchel co

borrowed from le boyf - scarf: asos

hey guys! 

(at the time of writing) it's been a productive weekend so far. wet, windy and cold weather is the best for decluttering and simplifying! further reduced the size of the closet by donating two massive bags of clothes and shoes. yes, shoes. these are the ones that were not comfortable to me. i have weird feet. i resolved to keep only the ones that i could actually walk in, without wobbling.

it still horrifies me that i have so much clothes, although perhaps at this point in time, i probably have reduced my closet by 30%. i've been tracking my clothing purchases since mid 2012, and i've been updating this spreadsheet in an attempt to understand my purchasing behaviour. so far, these are my observations:

(1) i always view myself as someone who exercises thoughtful spending just because i adhere to my budget all the time, but the data shows that i often buy things on impulse and most of these things are terrible quality that don't last longer than a few months. i hate to admit this: i waste a lot of money in the process. 

(2) i really really really do not NEED 90% of the stuff that i buy. if i were to be completely honest, most of the time i bought those things because it is too good of a deal to pass. ugh. FOMO much?

(3) i spent most of my budget during holidays. for some weird reason, my willpower goes out the window when i am in a different country. i love the things that i buy (and most of them survive the latest culling spree), i have worn most of them and love wearing them. can i buy them here? probably yes. if i were to do that, would i have gotten them for a better price? probably yes. so why couldn't i just wait? i dont know. 

those are my stories so far. yours? 

x 

is most of your spending rational, rationalised or simply reckless?

this post is inspired by this article by Gip Plaster, where he discussed when is it okay to buy something. this is a topic that is very useful when it comes to changing our purchasing habits. very often we think that if we've got the money, then it is okay, because at least, we are not turning upside down financing the purchase. i certainly adopt this way of thinking. i often forget that just because we can afford it does not mean that we are being responsible.

responsible purchasing is rational spending, we all know that. but why is it so easy to suffer from rationalised and/or reckless spending?

as someone who is intimate with spreadsheets, i maintain a spreadsheet for my wardrobe purchases. i thought that i have been thoughtful with my purchases, you know, practising the power pause, maintaining a lust list and deferring purchases as long as possible. despite all of these, it turned out that i have not been as thoughtful as i like to be.

because i haven't been rational.

i know that i have a lot of jeans and i know that i don't need another pair, yet so far this year, i bought two new pairs anyway because... errr i could? i could do so because (1) i liked them, (2) i could afford them, (3) i have waited for a while before i bought them, so you know, they are a meant-to-be.

if i was rational, i would have correctly pointed out that i did not need them and subsequently did not even consider purchasing them.

i was not rational when i bought my last pair of shoes. i definitely do not need a new pair of shoes. i rationalise this purchase by getting rid of 6 pairs of shoes, shoes that i didn't need when i bought them, and are now hopefully in the hands of someone else who would give them more love than me.

i don't know if i can be rational when it comes to shoes, but i will try to be rational with everything else in my wardrobe.

i bought shoes (shopping ban ends)

oh hi!

it's August. and i bought the above shoes. they have been on the lust list for a very long time. although given that they have been there for a long time probably mean love more than lust.

the story goes like this: this morning i browsed through asos.com (achilles heel) and came across these babies on 30% off. i took a gamble with the size, i either got it right, or a size too big. no matter. i can never tell with asos's size conversion to be honest, i wish they don't convert them and just say whatever the tag says.

long story short, i kept thinking about them the whole day and purchased them. shopping ban be damned!

but the real question is, did i get rid of 20 items?

answer is yes.

the funny thing after the great closet clean out is that i develop a more critical eye. i basically got rid of things that i thought i wanted to wear and have not worn for the past year or so. this is probably not a big deal for other people, but it is somewhat of a big deal for me.

because i realise that my style changes. i no longer want to wear those things, not because i don't like them, but because i don't want to do that style anymore. i used to like it and i used to think that it was 'me'. it is not 'me' right now.

i dont know how long this version of 'me' would last, i hope it would stick around for a while. i like changing my style, and i think it's good that it happens - but at the same time it somewhat means i don't really have a signature style.

i dont know whether this is a good thing or a bad thing, all i know is that, well, it works for me, for now.

other observations

timing - as soon as it hits August 1st, i got to the next stage of culling. i dont know if this is because i want to have the option to shop or whether i was in downsizing mode, or both. but i knew that getting rid of 20 items was harder when my closet was relatively 'clean' to begin with; yet a cleaner closet allowed me to step up to the challenge. in short, it was a ruthless exercise that is deeply satisfying.

process - a lot has been written about the process of decluttering, downsizing, shopping ban and the like. i dont have further to add at this stage other than to reiterate that it is an on-going exercise, and i don't think i will ever be done forever. i am happy with my closet right now primarily because it reflects my lifestyle and i am excited to refine it further in future.

the latest purchase (above) - these babies are the nike sky high dunk in black with snake skin effect. i wanted to purchase them at full price about six months ago, and did not because, errr... i was being Asian. they were on sale, of course, and so i gave in to temptation. i am stoked. like stoked. i don't know how long this high would last; i do hope they stick around for a while.

i consider this a great start to the weekend!

so why 20 items

we had our very first fashion swap event at the office yesterday. a lot of 'swapping' happened. it is so good to see someone else walked away with your stuff happy. it was truly a case of being happy making other people happy.

i took home 3 items. (yes, 6 items went out of the closet.)

why 20 items?

there is no concrete reason. i took that number out of thin air. i wanted to say 10, which would be a more realistic number, but thought that doubling that would make the experiment funner. that's all there is to it, there was no further thought involved in coming up with that number. or the twist in the shopping ban design (quantity instead of duration).

i admit that i like fashion, well, some what. i enjoy dressing up and all its associated process, including shopping and budgeting (side track: my neighbours are having sex and i can hear them through the wall!!), but fashion is something that i cannot take seriously. i cannot talk about this in real life without bursting into laughter one way or another. this is not to say that this is not a serious matter, because there are people who take this seriously; this is to say that this is a fun pursuit for me.

have a nice weekend - it is wet, windy and cold. talk to you through Twitter. stay warm and dry. xx