A Swishing Update

Junior daughter went to school today wearing her lovely jacket she swapped on Swishing.co.uk.    That got me in the mood to write about my clothes purchasing habits this year.

In 2013, I set myself the challenge of not buying any new clothes for a year.  In August that year I wrote an update about what it felt like, what I'd bought and what I thought I'd saved. I finished the article declaring that 'eight months in and swishing has become a lifestyle choice I love'.  By the end of the year I had acquired quite a few new clothes - probably more than ever before - but I'd spent less than £100.

Nearly a year later, I've taken a look back at how my Swishing challenge has affected my buying habits longer term.

Firstly, I'd say, I have hardly spent any time in clothes shops.  The 'clothing outlet' I've spent most time in this year is probably The Blue Cross charity shop in my nearest town as they have a habit of putting really nice outfits in their window that lure me in.  I have asked a few times to try on the fab outfit but have been, so far, unsuccessful in finding one that fits.  On one visit, though the dress that got me in there was too big, I did find a nice green t-shirt at the grand sum of £3.50.

Other than that, I've made just three more purchases and I think I made those purchases very much with the thought about how the clothes and the sellers are impacting on the planet.

My first purchase, early in the year, was a 'buy my own' birthday present from my grandmother.  I chose this lovely tunic from Pre:Loved run by Jackie.  Jackie sells a combination of secondhand (pre-loved) and new clothing clothes from her shop in Towcester, but she will also post out items to customers who contact her via her Facebook page.

My second purchase of the year was a pair of bamboo leggings.  The more I learn about sustainable living, the more picky I get about everything I buy.  I have previously bought bamboo clothing because  it is a fast growing crop that has a much lower water footprint than cotton, and it produces a lovely soft fabric.  In researching the ethics of bamboo clothing I found that there's a 'standard' for organic bamboo just like there is for organic cotton, the Global Organic Textile Standard.  So that's what I was looking for - GOT organic bamboo leggings.  In my search, I found these thermal bamboo leggings.  I'm not quite sure what happened about the organic bit, but the leggings are proving to be fab.  Since taking to my bicycle this year as my main mode of transport I am finding that leggings are the most convenient winter clothing for getting about by bike and it is certainly helping that they really are very warm.

My third and final purchase this year is this wonderful jumper hand made by the Woolly Pedlar, Sue Reed, from reclaimed materials.

Sue turns unwanted knitwear into funky clothes, soft furnishings and accessories.  Much of the knitwear Sue uses has been rescued before going to landfill. It may have been ‘ragged’ by charity shops or wholesale textile merchants, because of felting or holes. These can be cut around and used in patchwork designs. Sue also buys top quality second hand jumpers and uses these for the bodices of jumpers and sweatercoats. She makes sure there's no waste from her designs as she passes on any scraps that she doesn't use herself for crafts such a proggy matting, which is a 'time honoured north-east tradition'. Sue chooses to work with wool as it is a totally natural product, totally renewable, biodegradable and has excellent insulation properties.  She says:  "Each new creation is very much a ‘serendipity’ moment, with each design depending on what jumpers I have been able to find. No two items are ever the same."

I find, as we near the end of the year, I've spent around £120 pounds on clothing and I'm confident I'll have lots of wear from these items.  I'm also pleased that two out of my four purchases have have been supporting two wonderful women, who are creating sustainable businesses in the textile industry.  This has also opened my eyes to the fact that I can and will raise my standards in terms of what I buy.  From now on I want to support the hand-made, the ethical, the reclaimed.  That's my way forward in clothing.

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?

Swishing

New Year's Eve 2012 - As I sipped my champagne cocktail, awaiting the midnight fireworks, wearing my new favourite dress bought for me, as a birthday present, by my two lovely daughters,  I wondered what my New Year's Resolution would be.

All the usual things came to mind - you know the ones... eat less, exercise more, reduce the alcohol intake!

But I had another idea, inspired by two tips sent in for my book which I thought would be fitting with my mission to get the waste reduction message across.

I decided that I would buy no new clothes (nor shoes, nor any other accessories) for a whole year. I outlined my plan in a blog post in February - in brief, I would buy only second-hand, repurposed or up-cycled items in an attempt to reduce my carbon footprint and save money too.

Fast forward to May 2013: I decided that I would try to wear only second-hand, repurposed or up-cycled items when I piloted my Dustbin Diet workshops and gave talks in schools, and so I took a look at my wardrobe, had a good mooch around my local charity shops and put together a few outfits to fulfil that goal.

Photo: My Eco Activities Day at the wonderful Octavia's Bookshop in Cirencester,
 wearing purchases from my local Oxfam shop accessorised with upcycled necklace by Laura Hounam.

I also came across this fantastic website called swishing.co.uk which will be a great help when I get my workshops in full swing later this year.  With Swishing.co.uk you get to trade in clothes and accessories you don't wear for virtual money credits which you can use to buy clothes from the website that you will wear.

Here's how it works:

Click on the picture to open it fully 

I spoke to the team at Swishing.co.uk and they have set up a special offer code of rosie306 which will get you £1 of virtual swishing money to start you off. They will also give £1 of virtual money to my Dustbin Diet project for each person who registers with the rosie306 code by 30th June this year.  This will be a great help towards being able to encourage some of the young people to think about a more environmentally friendly approach to fashion, so I will be very grateful for your support if you sign up.

I'm now in my 5th swishing month and I've probably bought more clothes than I do normally, but I have certainly reduced my overall spend. In these tough economic times, I'm sure lots of us are trying to do just that.  There couldn't be a better time to take up some new green living money-saving resolutions, don't you think?  

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.