My First No Buy Month of 2020- How Did I Do?
January was the first no-buy month of 2020 for me. I am doing one month on and one month off this year, alternating between a no-buy month and a low-buy month (I am allowed to buy 5 news items - not including restocking of essentials). I have to say… I think I did pretty well. I did re-purchase a few items that I use on a daily basis - which I am allowed to do according to my updated rules. The purpose of my no-buy month isn’t to not purchase anything but to not purchase the items that I tend to spend the most amount of money on: new makeup & skincare, clothing and home items. None of which I purchased last month.
I started Project Pan in January as well and one of the items that I included was a favorite perfume of mine, Dead Sexy 06 by Tokyo Milk. The atomizer was broken and unusable and so I did purchase a new perfume atomizer on Amazon to allow me to actually use the perfume. It was my one non-essential purchase of the month. BUT - it didn’t fall under the category of prohibited items and I needed it for my project pan item and so I am giving myself a pass on this.
How did my no-buy month feel? At the beginning it felt alright. I wasn’t feeling the itch to shop -even though I saw tons of things that I wanted I wasn’t feeling compelled to purchase anything. But January felt like it was three months long and by the last week I was feeling it. All of the makeup brands started releasing promo of their new Spring collections, Anthropologie dropped their Spring home decor… I was counting down the days until the first day of February. I knew what I was going to buy. I had a coupon that I wanted to use and on February 1st I purchased the Nars Afterglow palette that had been on my wish list since December. So far that is all I have purchased that can be considered a “new” item. I reordered my cleansing and a serum I use everyday at the beginning of the month, but those are allowed and don’t count towards my 5 item limit.
All in all I am feeling good. My wish list has grown very long though. Deciding what/if I want to purchase from it has been interesting. I know that I want to invest in a really good makeup brush set this month and I have allocated 1 of my allotments for that. The other 3 I am taking my time to decide on - I have the rest of the month to do so.
January no-buy felt very much like a slog and like a “thing I had to get through”. Perhaps the subsequent no-buy months will feel differently.
