How to Stop Buying Clothes – No Buy Year

by Carley Lake | Last Updated:   May 11, 2020

So you want to know how to stop buying clothes and maybe try a no-buy year? Let’s go! With these tips and resources, you won’t miss the mall, your online shopping habits, or your old credit card bill. The planet and your wallet will thank you.

1. How to stop buying clothes? First, break up with fast fashion.

Unsubscribe from their newsletters and unfollow their social media channels. The temptation is strong but we can help avoid it. Now let’s change our habits and embrace what we own.

You can also get inspired by seeing how Eva from @EvaGoesThrifting broke up with fast fashion and created cool looks with thrift finds.

2. Do an inventory of your closet. Try out different outfit combinations. You may already stop asking ” how to stop buying clothes?”

I’m all about wearing the same outfit over and over again. However, if you already have the items (and maybe your partner’s items too…) take the time to pair items together to create outfits you haven’t tried and go through your closet to see what items you actually own. This is a great easy step to answer how to stop buying clothes. Take polaroids of the outfits you create and once the quarantine passes you can bring out that dress you haven’t worn since college graduation now that you realized it looks good with your boyfriend’s old sweater you *mended!* with your 8th grade vegan Dr. Martens combat boots.

Trying out new outfits, and mixing and matching: I’m wearing my boyfriend’s old sweater, a $15 dress I have yet to wear that I got at Goodwill San Fransisco, my childhood headband, same old Lululemon socks, and my blue suede Dr. Martens I bought in middle school.

3. Learn about capsule wardrobes and try one out.

London boutique owner Susie Faux came up with the term “capsule wardrobe” in the 1970s to describe a minimal wardrobe composed of 30 to 40 high-quality, versatile items that will meet your needs for a given time amount of time. Capsule wardrobes help show you can make hundreds of outfits with only a few items making a no-buy year doable. Constraints do help your brain to be more creative!

Learn more about how I built my capsule wardrobe, if I enjoyed it, and read the top books on a capsule wardrobe and how to create your own.

Want even more inspiration on how to stop buying clothes and this technique? See how Lo from the Capsule Closet builds her minimalist and capsule wardrobes.

Read the top books on a capsule wardrobe and how to create your own.

4. Mend and repair your clothes.

Mending is easier than you may think and it will help give a new life to the clothes you already own. Now that you have seen what is in your closet see what you can fix instead of adding to the donate pile. For example, fix a button of a jacket that has been sitting in your closet, unworn for the past year. Cover a hole in your sweater with a cool cross-stitch. Take an old pair of jeans to sew on different fabric patches. No buy year, here we come! I hope you now know how to stop buying clothes at this point. 🙂

Check out this class “Intro to Visible Mending by Hand: Fix Your Jeans – Simply and Beautifully” on Skillshare.

In this class, you learn how to fix a hole in the knee of your jeans by hand, with a few basic tools, in a few simple steps. You also don’t need to know how to sew to take this class.

The class is taught by Nina and Sonya Montenegro, a sister design and maker team living on an organic farm outside of Portland, running their creative studio called The Far Woods.

They focus on getting you comfortable with two basic hand-sewing stitches: the whip stitch and running stitch.

You can also learn a few mending techniques in my interview and mending guide with Lucie Chaptal of @wemadetogether, who uses her skills, time, and love for mending clothes to help others take care of their items and rethink the value of their clothing and see my full list of the best sewing, embroidery, and mending classes online.

Get started with this visible mending technique. Hand drawn by Lucie. WeMadeTogether©    

5. Host a clothing swap or find a clothing swap nearby or online.

Now that you have optimized your items and discovered new outfits you may have also realized some items don’t bring you the joy they once did or you may think one of your friends would love something you found in your closet. Therefore, make a pile of clothing items to swap with friends. Once you can hang out again have a clothing swap. Or!!…You can even send a fun care package to a friend with the item and a note to give them some quarantine joy. They can wear it around the house and then send it off to another friend and keep the love chain going—Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants style. (Don’t tell the other tips but this is my favorite answer to how to stop buying clothes.)

Check out my article on how to host a swap and where to find virtual and offline clothing swaps near you.

6. Try a clothing rental service or a clothing rental app.

Nothing makes you realize you have too much stuff like moving to another continent. Maybe if I rented a bit more I wouldn’t have had overweight suitcases for my move to Amsterdam. (You are welcome for my baggage fees, Tap Portugal.)

Renting especially makes sense for outfits for weddings and other fancy parties you may only attend a few times a year. Instead of buying a fast-fashion dress, you plan to wear only once—rent.

Before diving into the top options its good to know a bit more about renting and its environmental impact. According to sustainable fashion journalist and author Elizabeth Cline, despite some rental platforms advertising themselves as inherently green, there has yet to be an in-depth environmental study of their operations. There are a few environmental pitfalls in the business models—the proliferation of energy-consuming dry cleaning facilities to carbon-spewing deliveries and returns.

With these issues, renting is still a step in the right direction as it can help with overproduction and overconsumption. It’s better than buying new and supports your no buy year.

So need a dress for your second cousin’s wedding in 2021? See my top renting service picks here.

Need more help figuring out how to stop buying clothes for your no-buy year? Before buying new try thrift, used, or vintage clothing.~

Try: Check out used clothing stores near you and online.

Secondhand means owned by someone else. I like the idea the clothes have had a whole life behind them—they come with experiences, stories, and hopefully no stains. (Always good to double-check before you buy!)

Why buy secondhand?

First, it will save you money and make you can money when you sell your clothes too.

Second, It is more sustainable. Because you are buying used clothing instead of new, the chemicals and water to produce the clothes aren’t getting used, reducing the climate change impact of manufacturing. The less new clothing produced, the better the environment.

Check out my list of offline (local and national) near me and you and online secondhand stores.

You can also find secondhand shopping guides for cities around the world here. Cities include Amsterdam, Los Angeles, Mexico City, Atlanta, Baltimore, Madrid, Las Vegas, and more.

Photo from the Palm Springs guide.

Try: Sustainable + used clothing monthly subscription boxes

My mail is pretty lame. It’s credit card offers, water and power bills, sometimes my college alumni magazine, but rarely anything too exciting. I try to avoid online clothes shopping and reduce my Amazon purchases (Repeat after me: “I do not need another facial serum. I do not need another sheet mask for my feet.) So I went on a hunt to see what companies can bring me joy via my mailbox while keeping me away from overconsumption and focused on my slow fashion journey.

Meet the companies bringing sustainability, secondhand, used, and thrift to the monthly subscription box world.

Try: Clothing brands turning waste into fashion

The fashion industry has a waste problem. Here are some not-so-fun-facts:

• The supply chain is broken. Around 35% of materials in the supply chain end up as waste. (1)

• We over-consume. The world now consumes about 80 billion new pieces of clothing every year. This is 400% more than the amount we consumed just two decades ago, despite only ~50% population growth. (2)

• We throw a lot of our clothes away. More garments are bought and discarded than ever—57% of these go to landfill. In the US, that means 11.9 million tons of textile waste a year. (3,4)

Innovative designers are taking this waste problem and transforming old airplane seat covers, deadstock fabrics, donated items, and even items found in their local dumpster into one-of-a-kind pieces.

Want to support small businesses but don’t want to contribute to creating more waste? Check out the top 30+ upcyling and recycling brands.

In conclusion, you can do this no buy year! Want to see what no buy year sustainable fashion act is right for you? Take my 30-second quiz:

Share with others who may be looking to start a no-buy year: