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?

The Swishing Challenge

I've set myself a little challenge this year.

I'm not going to buy any new clothes for the whole of 2013!

Do you fancy joining me?

We can't all do it, because we need someone to keep at least the more ethical parts of our clothing industry afloat, but if you want to take up a challenge, be kind to the environment and save money too, then here's the plan... For the whole of 2013 I will not purchase any new item of clothing. At the same time I'm going to consider what's in my wardrobe and what I actually wear. I am going to select two items every month and take them to one of my local charity shops.

So does that mean no new clothes at all? No 'new' clothes.  That's right.  But clothes that are 'new to me' are allowed. For specific occasions I'm opting for second hand or "preloved" items. The thing about preloved fashion is that someone loved it enough once to buy it and loved it enough to pass it on when they no longer had use for it. So all it needs is for someone to love it again. I like that!

It's funny how when you make a decision like this, things happen that fit perfectly into your plan.  They were probably happening already, but you weren't attuned to them and so they passed you by un-noticed.

I was walking down Watling Street in Towcester and a red dress caught my eye in the window of a shop.  I didn't allow myself to pay it too much attention because I'm not buying new clothes, remember!  But as I walked back past on the other side of the street the name of the shop caught my eye and I just had to go in. "Re:Love".

From the outside the shop, looked like an exclusive boutique, inside was a very warm welcome from Jackie and Caroline and some very inclusive prices.  This is just the sort of shop I love, somewhere you can find that piece that's a bit different, something that is really you rather than just this year's latest fashion, that everyone is wearing.

An old favourite I hadn't worn
for a while is feeling loved again!

So the first part of the challenge is going well so far.  I've managed two months and bought no clothes at all.

Down-sizing my wardrobe, is going to be a struggle, because I'm a natural hoarder.  I've heard all that stuff before - if you haven't worn it for a year then you should let it go.  But I often like to dig out an old favourite that's been lying long lost at the forgotten end of my wardrobe.

The thing is though, I do love a challenge.  So now it is set, I'm determined.



Despite my in-built reluctance to part with things,  I picked out two dresses in January that I haven't worn for a long time.

  They are ''occasion' dresses.  I've worn them both at weddings.  But I thought that next time I have an 'occasion'  I have newer favourites that are likely to be chosen over these two, or I might find something that is 'new to me'.



For February's charity shop offering, firstly I've picked a shirt I love the style of, but know it is not my best colour!

Secondly, here's a skirt I adore, but have only ever been able to wear it with a safety pin at the waist.  I have heard lots of people say they keep clothes that are just a bit too small.  I heard someone the other day refer to 'incentive jeans'.  But keeping something that is too big? Silly me!  I hope someone else finds it, fits it and loves it for me soon.

Charity Shop Chic(k)

I have two children, and children are constantly growing out of clothes, toys, books, games. I take all the grown-out-of goodies to my local community shop. This community shop gives out grants to various organisations. In the two full years that it has been running as a community shop it has given out £14,000 each year to local organisations such as the pre-school, the school, the Brownies, the cricket club, the playground, and many more. It is a fantastic resource for our village.

I have been making environmentally conscious decisions about what I purchase for a while now. Like most people, though, I feel I have been taking it a step at a time. I decided that over the coming year I'm going to change the way I shop for clothes. I felt that I hadn't really, up to now, checked out the ethics and sustainability of the clothes I buy. Time to change all that. From now on, I will make a point of thinking about where clothes have travelled from, what the lives of the people who make those clothes are like, who benefits from my purchase and who and what suffers from it.

I was out for the day with a friend in a nearby town last week and strolling down the quaint high street we spotted a shop called 'Resource'. The name caught my eye and we had a look. The shop was a 'fifty/fifty' style second hand shop where you can take along your quality second hand clothing and if the shop can sell the item they give you fifty percent of the sales price. I parted with twenty pounds for a lovely designer skirt. I'll admit I have no idea who benefitted or who suffered from the original purchase, but I did feel that as I was reusing resources it was a move in the right direction.

A skirt needs something to wear with it and a rummage through my wardrobe came up with nothing, so the next time I was out on an errand I checked out the nearest charity shop. For the grand sum of £3.75 I bought two designer label tops to go with my new skirt.

As my attention had been turned to charity shop clothing I decided it was time I checked something out that had been at the back of my mind for some time. I remember seeing an advert in the window of Oxfam advertising that they'd give you a £5 Marks & Spencer voucher if you brought in a bag of clothing or soft furnishings (towels, sheets, curtains, etc) containing a Marks and Spencer item. Sounds great, doesn't it. So what's the catch, I thought? I had several bags of children's clothes to take to my local community shop. However, there is an Oxfam in my nearest town, so I kept one bag back which contained a Marks and Spencer children's dressing gown amongst other bits and pieces and I took it along to Oxfam today. It was gratefully accepted and I was given my £5 voucher. The voucher can be used on clothing, home and beauty products when you spend £35 pounds or more. Fair enough, I thought. However, it is only valid between 1^st and 30^th of September 2009. Well, a fiver won't even cover the bus fare to my nearest Marks and Spencer and as I don't have a trip planned before the end of the month it is most unlikely I'll get to use my £5 voucher. Ah well! There had to be a catch.

But of course, forewarned, you'll know to hang on to your charity shop bag until you know what you're going to redeem your voucher on and when (or you could just enjoy the satisfaction of knowing that your unwanted items are being given a new lease of life and helping relieve poverty – there's no catch to that bit).