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

America bears from planet money and it is not too late to be part of this movement.

If you missed making a donation during public media giving days, do it right now. Show your support for a public radio that is by the people for the people at Donate.npr.org and thanks. You're listening to LifeKit from NPR. Hey everybody, it's Mary Al. 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? Or a week ago?”

An hour ago? After all, buying things is so easy now. We can drop a hundred bucks 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 zoo meeting because we definitely will start making cakes if we have a cake stand, right?

Of course, a lot of this stuff we're buying isn't stuff we need. Let's go through my purse. I have let's count one two three four five six six lip balms. This is Alicia Burman, an conversation with journalist Dacey Vanix 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. I have two hand creams, two perfumes. I have a lip liner, I have sunscreen, I have face spray,

basically a beautiful cream and like the Mary Poppins of beauty products.

All of these products are things Alicia bought almost a year before she talked to Stacey. 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 Alicia, she felt like she needed something more drastic. One of my goals for 2024 is to do a no buy year. This is Alicia's first TikTok post.

She started making the videos just to hold herself accountable.

“So right now, a lot of people are re-examining 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 journalists Dacey Vanix Smith to look into the viral no buy challenge. How it's going and what's some of the best advice is for people who want to start their own challenge or just to consume more mindfully.

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 buy in 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 Burman the push to try came from this one moment

when she ducked into a store in Brooklyn to buy gloves. I left the store with a $600 winter coat that I just didn't need and couldn't afford and yeah like I was so overdrafted that I did a balanced transfer into my account to pay for it like it was a mess so that was kind of my like breaking point. Alicia started to think about how much she was buying and she started to feel like it was too much. 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 had to get something pretty much every single day or like I was an addict. Alicia was also in a lot of debt. Her bank account was empty her closets were bursting and she had been reading about what over consumption was doing to the planet. The giant mountain of discarded clothes and 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 going to make a change. A big change. Alicia decided to try the no buy challenge. She'd seen it on social media. People's saying not going to buy anything for

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 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. 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. The community can be social media but there are also

all kinds of support groups from mindful consumption, minimizing waste, shopping addictions, summer in person, summer 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. 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 second hand, which is a challenge I did for myself. Other ideas? Do a low buy month or year where you set a

spending budget and stick to it. You can also try a 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 on lock ausheses, it's time for take away number three. 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 on to Instagram and other platforms, those ads that are being served to you. We're being tailored

based off of who you follow and who you interact with. We have all of these interesting tools in the internet that really encourage us to buy things. You look at address once and that address follows you around the internet haunting you until you buy it so it'll leave you alone.

You know, for Alicia Burman, modifying her social media was a game changer. I unfold 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'm gonna block them. Just because I'm 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. 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? I, oh, you just pulled it up on your phone. Oh, you, like, wrote, it's just like a treatist that you wrote yourself. I wrote myself. Yeah, I have a little treatist with myself. 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 by less of, AKA your no column. Tell me the no column. 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 are beach stuff. These are weird and highly specific to me. The nobody rules are going to be different for everyone. My area of over consumption was beauty and fashion. You know, there are people who may over consume books. 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? 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. Having things that you are”

allowed to spend on even splurge on is really important. That's because the dopamine hit you get from shopping is real. And when you stop buying new things, it can get really hard. I think you have to find alternative means of getting that dopamine. You can't just kind of expect to

Pilates classes, concerts, even budget travel. These are things a list of fields 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. We've got a really rethink what it is we're doing and what our intention is as you know, as human beings. Dilous Williams is the director of the Center for Sustainable Fashion at the University of the Arts in London. Dilous 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. Fashion tells us about

who we are. It's a it's a visual parameter 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.

We'll have more life kit after the break. Dilous's takeaway number five, educate yourself about where your clothes come from. There are some wonderful online resources, including sustainable fashion.com. That's sustainable dash fashion.com. That is where Dilous and her colleagues offer courses, discussion groups, and all kinds of free information about clothing and how it's sourced. Dilous 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 Shien and Tamu. They have taken things to an entirely new level. 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, outstores this. And what would have taken a few weeks now can take 10 days. But author and designer Ajaparber says,

"I need to change that mindset." 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. Take away number six, recalibrate your idea of what is normal when it comes to how much clothes cost. 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 were on the consumer

end to completely ignore what this system is doing to our fellow humans and our planet. Ajaparber says, "The way she thought about clothing and value changed profoundly in one afternoon." 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 storage with H&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. I should start it 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, the left were feeling empty.

“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 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 She-N. Where you can buy 100 items of clothing for $200. So why do I do that and share it on social media?

Ashes 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. 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 clothing and understand that no clothing made in factories isn't made by ferries. 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

I'll just say 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. Hans' Ashes Ashes, 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-by challenger, Alicia Burman, 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.

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

“I kind of had this like newfound mental clarity and I was like, what am I feeling?”

Essentially, I had gone through like detox and withdrawal from the dopamine that you get from chopping. As far as the extremeness of a no-by, Alicia says, yeah, it's tough. She says doing a low-by 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. It broke my no-by. I bought a pair of shoes that to be fair I have been wanting for

probably close to ten years. Kind of shoes with it. They're Alexander Wang, they're called the Sloan Booth. They look like Frankenstein Booth's most people won't like them, but I love them. The siren song of Frankenstein Booth's. Sometimes it just gets you. Alicia has broken her no-by 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 chain 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. Yeah, I broke my no-by. So I wanted these shoes since 2014 when I thought them on the runway and I just found these first such a good price and I am so happy. Alicia told review where 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. 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. So if you want to try a no-by or a low-by or just start consuming more”

mindfully, here are seven takeaways for how to get started. Take weight number one, find a community. Social media, support groups, find people who will make the journey and any changes you make much easier. Take weight number two, find a challenge that works best for you. No-by, low-by, vintage challenge, no-dress challenge, take your pick. Take weight number three, curate your social media. This will make changing your buying habits a lot easier. Take

weight number four, make a yes and a no list. What do you want to stop buying or buy a less of? And what do you want to replace it with? What are some things you feel good about spending your money on? Take weight number five, educate yourself. Find out which brands are doing a right and which ones aren't. Websites like fashion revolution, labor behind the label, clean, close campaign, these are all excellent resources. You can also check out sustainable-fashion.com,

it offers classes, community, and lots of information. Take weight number six, start to recalibrate how you value clothes. Maybe it's better to have a few pairs of really nice shoes then 20 pairs

of really cheap shoes that destroy your feet. And finally, take weight 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. That was journalist Stacy Vanix Smith. By the way, an update on Alicia, she says she's no longer doing the no-by challenge, but her financial situation is dramatically improved. Her debt is gone and she now shops much more responsibly and intentionally and she used to. Alright, that's our show. By the way, if you love life kit and you want it to be even easier

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is CJ Rikolon and our digital editor is Malka Gareeb. Beth Donovan is our executive producer.

“Our production team also includes Andy Tagle and Claire Marie Schneider. Engineering Support”

comes from David Greenberg. I'm Mary Alzagata. Thanks for listening.

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