New Year, new you?

Do you do that thing of making New Year's Resolutions?  If so, what is your resolution for 2014?

Last year, I embarked on a year of "Swishing".  My new year's resolution was this:

• to give away 2 items of clothing to charity each month, and
• to not buy any new clothes, but instead buy from charity shops or reuse/recycling shops or websites

Like many people, I often find that within a few weeks I've forgotten all about my new plans and resolution, but not last year.  I cleared out my wardrobe, sorted out plenty to give to charity and not only that, my daughters both cleared out their wardrobes too.   So as far as the first resolution is concerned I smashed that target.

As for the second, not only did I manage to keep to the resolution, I loved doing it too.  I bought quite a few new clothes, but spent less than £100 in the whole year.

I found that both the giving aspect and the buying aspect, spread too.  During the summer holidays, with the assistance of my two daughters, we decided to embark on a big sort out.  We set ourselves the target of reducing the amount of stuff we have around the house.  We have lots of storage space, so it is easy to think that we can just keep everything - just in case it might be useful.  But we were getting to the stage where every bit of storage was full up - every shelf, every cupboard crammed full of stuff, that might be useful to someone, someday.  Time for a clear out!

We decided to go for the 'One Room at a Time' approach, giving everything a good clean as we went and mending anything that needed mending as we came across it.  But it was slow going and frustrating because we still seemed to have packed shelves at the end of the process.  I just wasn't being ruthless enough!

My perusal of charity shops on various occasions throughout the year, though, had definitely sparked a shift in thinking.  I started to tell myself that if ever I needed something again I could just borrow it, or buy it second hand.  And that got me thinking...I needed a target!

So, that's when we set ourselves the aim of parting with 80 bags of stuff to take to the charity shop.

It took me two months to go through each room, fishing out toys, games, books, clothes, bags, rags, buttons, jewellery, shoes, belts, boots, hats, art and craft stuff, CDs and DVDs.  I managed to fill 80 carrier bags to give away.

Here are 3 principles that helped us fill our 80 bags:

• We didn't want to part with all our games, as we do use some of them when we have younger visitors.  How to decide which to keep?  We decided that if all the parts were there and the box was perfect, then it went to the charity shop.  But, if there were bits missing, or it was a bit tatty, we kept it.  Why?  It was fairly easy to see that the games in perfect condition were the ones that had been played less.  The ones that we'd used over and over again, seemed to be the sensible ones to keep.  The better the condition of a game, I thought, would mean it more likely to bring in revenue for charity.  We often found that the tattier games had makeshift pieces, so we'd clearly played them despite their condition, so we'd be more likely to play them again.
• We set up boxes for each person, so that I wasn't making a decision to give away something that wasn't mine, but could still feel like an area had been cleared and finished with. Each person was then able to go through their box as and when they had time.  I'm sure much of what was given away, would have been kept if it had just been left where it was out of sight out of mind!
• If it didn't fit, it had to go.  This helped, for instance, with DVDs and books, where we had stuff double stacked.  It made us go through them and part with a few that we thought we wouldn't watch/read again.

If it didn't fit, it had to go!

So, is my house minimalist and organised now?  Far from it!  Despite our clear-out we still have a lot of stuff.  It did fire a desire to free up more space, to acquire less and to clear out more.  I had a big clear out in my office, when I decided to minimise the paperwork I had stored over the years.  I recycled more than my body weight of paper by setting myself a twelve week clear out programme.  But there's lots more that could go, so the summer sort out might be repeated in 2014.

And New Year's Resolution for this year?

I plan to continue my efforts at reducing food waste, reducing packaging, buying from charity shops or choosing considerately up-cycled goodies.   But my big giveaway this year will be…

BOOKS!

Here's the rules if you want to play the game too!

• 10 books per month to be given away
• No new purchases of print books unless for work
• Borrow from the library whenever possible.   

Eight months in

Well, I'm now in month eight of my swishing year.

What have I achieved?  What have I spent and how does it feel?  I thought I'd ask myself those questions.

Firstly, what have I achieved so far in my swishing year?  Well, one of the things I pledged to do was to give away to a charity shop two items from my wardrobe for every month.  I started the year picking out two things each month, but by May I decided it was time for a real wardrobe slim down, so I went through the whole lot and gave away well...  I think the list is something like this:
6 scarves, 3 belts, 3 skirts, 3 pairs of shoes, 2 dresses suitable for weddings, 2 sun dresses, 2 jumpers, 2 shirts, 1 pair of trousers, 1 hat, 1 pair of shorts.  And that's just the stuff I can remember.

My wardrobe is now organised and I can see what I've got.  Things aren't getting creased from being overcrowded.  And I've found a few old faves that were lost or forgotten.  RESULT!

Charity shop prices vary enormously, but a conservative estimate for my donations would be around £40.  RESULT!

Secondly, what about the buying?
I think I've bought more clothes than ever before!  But, I've just done a quick tot up of my spending and I've spent around £70.  This has bought me 1 skirt,  1 jacket, 1 dress and 7 new tops.  I feel as though I have a whole new wardrobe!

At my Dustbin Diet workshops I was able to make sure that I wore at least one thing each session, that I had either been given second hand by a friend or that I'd bought from a charity shop.

The shirt is second hand from a friend and the skirt was from Oxfam.

At my first session my swished outfit consisted of this quirky black and white blouse which my best friend gave me several years ago and it has become a firm favourite, teamed with a pale green long line M&S cotton cardigan/jacket bought for £9.99 (not pictured - it was hot under the lights on that stage!) and a pale green, black and cream dog-tooth checked Hobbs skirt, which was a whopping £17.99 both purchased together at Oxfam.

The skirt may well be my most expensive charity shop purchase.  It is beautifully made, I loved the style and colour and knew I'd get plenty of wear from it.  So I felt it really was money well spent.  I've worn it on both my Dustbin Diet pilot workshops,  to a waste reduction workshop / book signing at the lovely Octavia's bookshop in Cirencester, and to a Dustbin Diet workshop in a primary school.  So far I've also worn it several times to work, to meetings, out to lunch.  You may have heard this saying, that the cost of an item of clothing is its price divided by the number of times you wear it.  So, of just the times I can remember wearing it, I make that already less than two pounds a wear.  I have several more 'costly' items in my wardrobe!

But not only that, a quick look at the Oxfam website tells me that it spends '84p out of every £1 saving lives, improving lifestyles and campaigning for change'. So, adding in my other Oxfam purchases this year,which include the Fat Face top (pictured below) which makes up another of my Dustbin Diet swished outfits, a short sleeved lime green Jaeger jumper and a brown tie front lace cardigan, amounting to just under £50, means that I've contributed £42 towards this work.

Fat Face cotton top purchased from Oxfam

I've made a couple of purchase from other charity shops included this fab top (below) bought from my local community shop for just 50p.

I love this Monsoon top bought for 50p from my local community shop 

I also came across  Swishing.co.uk, a great website that allows you to swish online, using virtual money credits. This summer my daughters and I have tried it out.  You upload photos of clothes you no longer want onto the website and the Swishing team will let you know if they'll take it. There are guidelines on the Swishing website that tell you the kind of thing they will take, but it is pretty obvious and pretty much anything of suitable quality. Your items are then 'approved' and they will give you a 'virtual' price.  If the price is right to persuade you to part with your items and enough to cover postage then you post them off.  Once they are received, you get a credit on your account and you can spend the money on something new (well, new to you!). It is a great place to hunt down something for a party or a wedding. How many of us have an outfit that we've already worn in all our social circles and so it's now redundant in the wardrobe, because we don't want to go out wearing the same thing again?  Well, the answer is to Swish it for something else!

I added three new tops to my wardrobe, all of which I love, and all for a fraction of the cost of anything similar in the shops.  I think it is a great site and I plan to have a regular browse.  I've also decided that it's a much quicker way of finding an outfit for special events.

So...what have I achieved, what have I spent and how does it feel?

I've reorganised and reinvigorated my wardrobe.
I've donated around £100 to charity - from giving and buying.
I've gained around £350 worth of new to me clothes for around £70 (plus a bit of virtual swishing money).
I've had fun with my daughters helping them to go through their clothes and helping them to choose some new stuff on Swishing.co.uk - quality time with daughters - always priceless :)
And it feels so good, I'm not planning on giving up my new purchasing habits at the end of the year.  Eight months in and swishing has become a lifestyle choice I love.  Why not give it a try?