Shop less and save more with a 'no-buy challenge'

If you're struggling to save for long-term goals, find yourself lost in a sea of clutter or are concerned about consumerism and climate change, there are ways to curb your shopping habits. This episode, journalist Stacey Vanek Smith talks to writers, influencers and activists in the sustainable fashion industry about how to reign in overconsumption, rethink our power as consumers and challenge ourselves to buy less. This episode originally published Aug. 20, 2024. Follow us on Instagram: @nprlifekit https://www.instagram.com/nprlifekit/?hl=en Sign up for our newsletter here. https://www.npr.org/newsletter/life-kit Have an episode idea or feedback you want to share? Email us at [email protected] mailto:[email protected] Support the show and listen to it sponsor-free by signing up for Life Kit+ at plus.npr.org/lifekit http://plus.npr.org/lifekit See pcm.adswizz.com https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences. NPR Privacy Policy https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This message comes from NPR sponsor Viori with the Halo Essential Wide-Like Pant. Receive 20% off your first purchase at viori.com/NPR on any US orders over $75 and free returns. Exclusions apply. Visit the website for full terms and conditions.

• 0:17Marielle Segarra?

  You're listening to Life Kit from NPR.

• 0:22Marielle Segarra?

  Hey, everybody. It's Marielle. When was the last time you bought something, like a piece of clothing, or jewelry, or electronics, or makeup, or a kitchen gadget, or home decor? Was it a month ago, a week ago, an hour ago? After all, buying things is so easy now. We can drop $100 on a deluxe egg cooker while we're waiting for the subway, or buy sunglasses on flash sale while we're in line for coffee, even grab an adorable hot pink cake stand while we're in a Zoom meeting, because we definitely will start making cakes if we have a cake stand, right?

• 0:59Marielle Segarra?

  Of course, a lot of this stuff we're buying isn't stuff we need.

• 1:03Speaker 02

  Let's go through my purse. I have, let's count, one, two, three,

• 1:09Speaker 02

  four, five,

• 1:14Speaker 02

  six.

• 1:16Speaker 02

  Six lip balms.

• 1:18Marielle Segarra?

  This is Alicia Berman in a conversation with journalist Stacy Vanek Smith back in 2024. At the time they talked, Alicia was 35, working in fashion and beauty in New York. Trying new products and new looks was relevant to her job, but mostly she just loved shopping. And she ended up with a lot of stuff she didn't need.

• 1:35Speaker 02

  I have two hand creams, two perfumes, I have sun, oh, I have a lip liner, I have sunscreen, I have face spray, basically, oh, cuticle cream. I'm like the Mary Poppins of beauty products.

• 1:47Marielle Segarra?

  All of these products are things Alicia bought almost a year before she talked to Stacy, because she started doing a no-buy challenge, as in, she made a decision to join the no-buy challenge. No buy has been a movement on social media with millions of people giving it a try, most for 30 days. But Alisha, she felt like she needed something more drastic.

• 2:08Speaker 03

  One of my goals for 2024 is to do a no buy year.

• 2:13Marielle Segarra?

  This is Alisha's first TikTok post. She started making the videos just to hold herself accountable.

• 2:17Speaker 03

  No new clothes, no new accessories, no new beauty.

• 2:20Marielle Segarra?

  So, right now, a lot of people are reexamining how they consume because they want to get a handle on their finances, because they want less clutter in their houses, because they're worried about how all of the buying we're doing is affecting the planet. We asked journalist Stacy Vanek Smith to look into the viral no buy challenge, how it's going, and what some of the best advice is for people who want to start their own challenge, or just to consume more mindfully.

• 3:03Speaker 00

  Stay tuned for the following announcements and messages from our sponsors.

• 3:07Speaker 04

  This message comes from ADT. It's back to school, back to work, back to cozy nights at home season, and ADT is here for every moment of it. They make it easy with professionally installed systems you can access right from the ADT Plus app. If you need help, their reps are on call 24/7 at the most company-operated monitoring centers in the industry. You deserve some cozy back-to-home time. When every second counts, count on ADT. Visit ADT.com today. This message comes from NPR sponsor, Lynda Mood Bell. Lance was bright, but he struggled to read words. Michelle was the opposite. She could read words easily, but struggled

• 3:48Speaker 04

  to understand what she read. Like so many students, they struggled not only with learning, but with self-confidence. Personalized one-to-one instruction at Lynda Mood Bell Learning Centers changed that. Today, they read with confidence, and they understand what they read. Instruction is available online or in person. Learn more at lynda moodbell.com/npr.

• 4:10Speaker 04

  This message comes from Rula. World Mental Health Day takes place in October, making it a great time to take that next step in getting support if you need it. Rula makes accessing quality mental health care affordable, with sessions costing an average of $15 with insurance. So turn off the talk track that's keeping you from progress, and head to rula.com. That's R-U-L-A dot com to find a therapist the easy way.

• 4:37Speaker 05

  I've been covering business and economics for more than 15 years. And one thing that has always blown my mind is how much shopping is the lifeblood of our economy. Nearly 75% of the US economy, biggest economy in the world, is consumer spending, AKA, people buying stuff. It is not an exaggeration to say that you buying that coastal grandma cardigan on your lunch break is a main pillar of the whole world's economy. Consumerism is a vast and powerful machine, and opting out of it is not easy. For Alicia Berman, the push to try came from this one moment when she ducked into a store in Brooklyn to buy gloves.

• 5:20Speaker 02

  I left the store with a $600 winter coat that I just didn't need and couldn't afford. And, uh, yeah, like, I was so overdrafted that I did a balance transfer into my account to pay for it. Like, it was a mess. So that was kind of my, like, breaking point.

• 5:36Speaker 05

  Alicia started to think about how much she was buying. And she started to feel like it was too much.

• 5:42Speaker 02

  I got probably between 10 and 30 things a week. It was like, you know, there would be one big ticket item a week. And then maybe, like, lip glosses or a pair of socks, you know? But I, I had to get something pretty much every single day, or like, I, I was an addict.

• 6:01Speaker 05

  Alicia was also in a lot of debt. Her bank account was empty, her closets were bursting. And she had been reading about what overconsumption was doing to the planet. The giant mountain of discarded clothes in Chile, the one you can see from space, the piles of clothes that have washed up and overtaken the beaches in Ghana. She decided she was gonna make a change, a big change. Alicia decided to try the no buy challenge. She'd seen it on social media, people saying, "I'm not gonna buy anything for 30 days or 60 days," and then chronicling their no buy journeys on TikTok. Alicia decided to join in for a year. At the time she made her first TikTok, she did not have many followers. The videos were mostly for her. But almost right away,

• 6:45Speaker 05

  people started following Alicia in droves. She now has more than 100,000 followers, and they direct message her all the time, saying things like, "I'm doing a no buy challenge too," or "You inspired me to do a no buy challenge." Alicia says it's been incredibly helpful and incredibly inspiring. So that is our takeaway number one: Find a community.

• 7:07Speaker 02

  I was seeing that there was this community of people doing it out there already. And it's since kind of become almost like a support group.

• 7:17Speaker 05

  The community can be social media, but there are also all kinds of support groups, from mindful consumption, minimizing waste, shopping addictions. Some are in person, some are online. Pick whatever works best for you. Now, the community you choose should align with whatever your goal is. So maybe a no buy challenge is not for you. You can try something different. That's our second takeaway: Find your challenge. This comes from Aja Barber, designer, journalist, and author of the book Consumed: The Need for Collective Change: Colonialism, Climate Change, and Consumerism. Aja also runs her own online community oriented around mindful buying.

• 7:55Speaker 06

  This is something I do on my platform. I would challenge you to not buy a single dress new this year. That forces people to be a little bit creative, but it doesn't entirely limit them. I've challenged my readership to buy 50% of their clothing secondhand, which is a challenge I did for myself.

• 8:15Speaker 05

  Other ideas? Do a low buy month or year, where you set a spending budget and stick to it. You can also try delayed gratification shopping, where you save all the things you want to buy until the end of the month and then decide, so you're less likely to make impulse buys. You can also challenge yourself to mend your clothes. In fact, we have an episode on how to start up a mending hobby so you can extend the lifespan of what you wear. There's also the 75 Hard Style Challenge, where you document what you wear every day for 75 days, don't buy any clothes, and this can help you get a broader perspective on your style and what you feel good in. Once you have your challenge unlocked, Asha says, it's time for takeaway number three.

• 8:57Speaker 06

  Get a grip on your social media, and that looks like unsubscribing from email lists. And it also looks like looking at who you're following on social media, because when you get onto Instagram and other platforms, those ads that are being served to you are being tailored based off of who you follow and who you interact with. We have all of these interesting tools on the internet that really encourage us to buy things we don't need. You look at a dress once, and that dress follows you around the internet haunting you until you buy it, so it'll leave you alone, you know?

• 9:29Speaker 05

  For Alicia Berman, modifying her social media was a game changer.

• 9:34Speaker 02

  I unfollowed every single influencer who ever influenced me to make a purchase. Even today, if someone comes across my For You page and I see something that they're chilling, I blossom, just because I am opting out of that narrative, if you will. And then another thing that I did was I put like blocks on certain sites. So like, I can't, literally if I go try to browse certain sites, I'm not able to.

• 10:02Speaker 05

  After your social media is sorted, it's time for takeaway number four, setting the ground rules. What are the rules that you set for yourself? Oh, you just pulled it up on your phone? Oh, you like wrote, is this like a treatise that you wrote yourself?

• 10:15Speaker 02

  I wrote myself, yeah. I have a little treatise with myself, so this is...

• 10:17Speaker 05

  So there's like a no column and a yes column? Okay. Now identify your problem areas, the things you'd like to change, what you want to stop buying, buy less of, AKA your no column. Tell me the no column.

• 10:29Speaker 02

  So no new clothes, obviously, no new beauty products. I'm not allowed to buy any new perfume because I have so many. No jewelry, no new technology, no home decor, and no bathing suits or beach stuff. These are weird and highly specific to me. The no-buy rules are going to be different for everyone. My area of overconsumption was beauty and fashion. You know, there are people who may overconsume books.

• 10:54Speaker 05

  And now, onto the yes column. Think about what you do want to spend your money on and what kinds of things are allowed in your no-buy.

• 11:03Speaker 02

  In the yes column, I am allowed to get dinners with friends and my husband. I do allow fresh-cut flowers. I'm allowed to buy books. I'm allowed to buy video games. Basically, anything that enriches my life is going to be in the yes column.

• 11:16Speaker 05

  Having things that you are allowed to spend on, even splurge on, is really important, says Alicia. That's because the dopamine hit you get from shopping is real. And when you stop buying new things, it can get really hard.

• 11:29Speaker 02

  I think you have to find alternative means of getting that dopamine. You can't just kind of expect to deprive yourself and for it to work. Like, you will fail.

• 11:39Speaker 05

  Things in Alicia's yes column, Pilates classes, concerts, even budget travel. These are things Alicia feels good about spending money on. And when the hard moments come, Alicia says she tries to focus on what her long-term values are and whether whatever she's tempted to buy aligns with those values.

• 11:58Speaker 07

  We've got to really rethink what it is we're doing and what our intention is, you know, as human beings.

• 12:05Speaker 05

  Dillis Williams is the director of the Center for Sustainable Fashion at the University of the Arts in London. Dillis recommends choosing clothes and other products the same way you choose what you eat. After all, she says, food and fashion come from a lot of the same places.

• 12:20Speaker 07

  Fashion tells us about who we are. It's a visual barometer of what's going on in the world, and everything that we wear comes from the earth. So it's really powerful, and it's personal.

• 12:36Speaker 05

  We'll have more Life Kit after the break.

• 12:48Speaker 00

  Stay tuned for the following announcements and messages from our sponsors.

• 12:52Speaker 04

  This message comes from ADT. It's back to school, back to work, back to cozy nights at home season, and ADT is here for every moment of it. They make it easy with professionally installed systems you can access right from the ADT Plus app. If you need help, their reps are on call 24/7 at the most company-operated monitoring centers in the industry. You deserve some cozy back-to-home time. When every second counts, count on ADT. Visit ADT.com today.

• 13:23Speaker 00

  This message comes from Charles Schwab with their original podcast, Choiceology. Choiceology is a show about the psychology and economics behind people's decisions. Download the latest episode and subscribe at schwab.com/podcast.

• 13:38Speaker 05

  Dillis' takeaway number five? Educate yourself about where your clothes come from. There are some wonderful online resources, including sustainablefashion.com. That's sustainable-fashion.com. That is where Dillis and her colleagues offer courses, discussion groups, and all kinds of free information about clothing and how it's sourced. Dillis has been teaching sustainable fashion for more than a decade. Fast fashion has long been a part of her focus, but she says ultra-fast fashion, those are websites like Shein and Temu, they have taken things to an entirely new level.

• 14:12Speaker 07

  It's gone from fast fashion to now fashion. It's literally real-time, click on something, and the algorithms mean that they can just, yes, outsource this. And what would have taken a few weeks now can take 10 days.

• 14:24Speaker 05

  But author and designer Aja Barber says, I need to change that mindset.

• 14:28Speaker 06

  I always get people asking me, you know, oh, fast fashion's more affordable. It's not affordable for the planet, and it's probably not that affordable for you either. This system of constantly buying isn't actually that affordable.

• 14:41Speaker 05

  Takeaway number six? Recalibrate your idea of what is normal when it comes to how much clothes cost.

• 14:48Speaker 06

  We've come to be a society that has utterly devalued clothing. Because of its abundance and because also the supply chain is so murky that it's very easy for those of us who are on the consumer end to completely ignore what this system is doing to our fellow humans and our planet.

• 15:10Speaker 05

  Asha says the way she thought about clothing and value changed profoundly in one afternoon.

• 15:15Speaker 06

  I was living in my parents' basement. I was, you know, in between jobs. And for some reason, I had saved all of my receipts for one particular store, which was H and M. And I remember sitting down one day and going, let me add up all these receipts for just this year. I did that and I was absolutely horrified. I was horrified because here I was in my parents' basement, buying clothing that I didn't need to impress people I didn't even like, you know? I just knew that that wasn't how I wanted to spend my money.

• 15:50Speaker 05

  Asha started to wonder what it was about buying all of these mountains of really cheap clothes that she found appealing. And she realized in a really tough moment in her life, this was the one moment where she felt in control, where she felt abundant and excited. Ultimately, though, it left her feeling empty.

• 16:08Speaker 06

  I think people are leaning into fast fashion because we ultimately feel powerless. When you get to a point where you're like, okay, I am having a hard time finding steady work. And I don't think that I'm ever going to be able to own a house in this lifetime. And I've had to move back in with my parents and the planet is on fire. But the one thing you can do is you found this website called Shein, where you can buy 100 items of clothing for $200. So why do I do that and share it on social media?

• 16:42Speaker 05

  Asha says one thing she's found most helpful in recalibrating her price expectations around clothes is meeting the people who are making the clothes, demystifying and humanizing the supply chain.

• 16:53Speaker 06

  I'm doing a lot of field trips where we go to like a workshop of a designer that I know and they could see the clothing in person, putting faces and names to people. Who make our clothings and understand that no clothing made in factories isn't made by fairies. It's made by human hands who need to get paid the same wages that we need to get paid. When people actually know more of the backstory, I think that it makes a lot more sense that maybe I should actually save for a top from Phoebe English rather than, you know, just buying the same fast fashion stuff that lasts me a year.

• 17:30Speaker 05

  Aja says there are huge rewards to be had when you start to consume more mindfully. Yes, changing how you buy can feel like deprivation, but it can also connect you to the people and communities all around the world who make clothes, design clothes, and to the people who want to connect more fully to the things they buy. And says Aja, this can move the needle. The fashion industry is reportedly responsible for around 10% of carbon emissions. There are emotional payoffs as well. TikTok influencer and no buy challenger Alicia Berman says since she stopped buying stuff, she has noticed her relationship to clothes has changed profoundly. She still loves fashion and design, but she doesn't always feel compelled to buy the things she likes and admires.

• 18:15Speaker 05

  And her mental health has improved in ways she didn't expect.

• 18:19Speaker 02

  I kind of had this like newfound mental clarity and I was like, what? Like, what am I feeling? Essentially, I had gone through like detox and withdrawal like from the dopamine that you get from shopping.

• 18:32Speaker 05

  As far as the extremeness of a no buy, Alicia says, yeah, it's tough. She says doing a low buy challenge could be a better place to start. Her advice for anyone who wants to go all in like she did is her takeaway number seven. Give yourself grace because you will need it.

• 18:51Speaker 02

  I broke my no buy. I bought a pair of shoes that, to be fair, I have been wanting for probably close to 10 years. What kind of shoes? They're Alexander Wang, they're called the Sloan boot. They look like Frankenstein boots. Most people won't like them, but I love them.

• 19:06Speaker 05

  The siren song of Frankenstein boots. Sometimes it just gets you.

• 19:11Speaker 05

  Alicia has broken her no buy a few times, but every time she's posted about it on her TikTok right away. She didn't want to hide it or let herself go into a shopping shame spiral. She wanted to own it, open up about it, and let everybody know she's not a stoic and that backsliding is part of the journey too.

• 19:28Speaker 02

  Y'all, I broke my no buy. So I've wanted these shoes since 2014, when I saw them on the runway. And I just found these for such a good price, and I am so happy.

• 19:40Speaker 05

  Alicia told her viewers she would make good on this moment by selling a pair of shoes she already had, a one-in-one-out policy, which will also bring in a little money, keep her on track financially. And that, she says, is very important to her. But there's been another payoff too for Alicia, one of the biggest, and one she never really expected.

• 19:59Speaker 02

  So I am very proud of myself, which is not, I don't really, I never really felt very proud. I've seen a new level of dedication and focus that maybe I wasn't aware of. It's not that I didn't have it, it's just that I wasn't aware that I was capable of it before.

• 20:23Speaker 05

  So if you want to try a no buy, or a low buy, or just start consuming more mindfully, here are seven takeaways for how to get started. Takeaway number one, find a community. Social media, support groups. Find people who will make the journey and any changes you make much easier. Takeaway number two, find a challenge that works best for you. No buy, low buy, vintage challenge, no dress challenge, take your pick. Takeaway number three, curate your social media. This will make changing your buying habits a lot easier. Takeaway number four, make a yes and a no list. What do you want to stop buying or buy less of? And what do you want to replace it with? What are some things you feel good about spending your money on?

• 21:06Speaker 05

  Takeaway number five, educate yourself. Find out which brands are doing it right and which ones aren't. Websites like Fashion Revolution, Labor Behind the Label, Clean Clothes Campaign, these are all excellent resources. You can also check out sustainable-fashion.com. It offers classes, community, and lots of information. Takeaway number six, start to recalibrate how you value clothes. Maybe it's better to have a few pairs of really nice shoes than 20 pairs of really cheap shoes that destroy your feet. And finally, takeaway number seven, give yourself some grace. Change is hard. It takes courage, and failure is a part of it. Don't worry if you break your rules, just keep going.

• 21:51Marielle Segarra?

  That was journalist Stacy Vanek Smith. By the way, an update on Alicia. She says she's no longer doing the no buy challenge, but her financial situation is dramatically improved. Her debt is gone, and she now shops much more responsibly and intentionally than she used to. All right, that's our show. By the way, if you love Life Kit and you want it to be even easier to listen to, with curated playlists on popular Life Kit topics like sleep and personal finance, sign up for Life Kit Plus. Find out more at plus.npr.org/lifekit. This episode of Life Kit was produced by Margaret Serino. It was edited by Sylvie Douglas and Megan Cain.

• 22:32Marielle Segarra?

  Our visuals editor is CJ Riekele, and our digital editor is Malika Gharib. Beth Donovan is our executive producer. Our production team also includes Andy Tagel and Claire Marie Schneider. Engineering support comes from David Greenberg. I'm Mary El Segarra. Thanks for listening.

• 23:16Speaker 00

  Stay tuned for the following announcements and messages from our sponsors.

• 23:20Speaker 04

  This message comes from Google Workspace with Gemini. Ever notice how every new AI tool asks you to explain your business to it all over again? Google Workspace with Gemini skips that. You get Google's AI built right into the premium versions of Gmail, Google Docs, Sheets and more. No new tools, no extra logins, just one subscription that gives you personalized AI right inside your actual workflow. Try Google Workspace with Gemini at g o o dot g l e slash Workspace with Gemini. This message comes from Charles Schwab with their original podcast, Choiceology, hosted by Katie Milkman, an award-winning behavioral scientist and author of the bestselling book, How to Change.

• 24:02Speaker 04

  Choiceology is a show about the psychology and economics behind people's decisions. Hear true stories from Nobel laureates, historians, authors, athletes and more about how to make better decisions to help avoid costly mistakes. Download the latest episode and subscribe at schwab.com/podcast or wherever you listen.