April Resolution : Rule of 5

Spring maybe a great time to start a new years resolution. There is renewal and regeneration all around. ( The dread of mid-winter when trees are bare & mood is influenced by lack of sunlight + cold bones is not my choice of prime time to start something challenging. ) If Winter is the middle of the night, Spring is the sunrise. April also hosts my birthday. I feel a sense of a year gone by deep in my bones. A sense of renewal kicks in just because I got to eat cake with friends. The blooms from our ceanothus, de la mina verbena, pink jasmine & Japanese cherry blossom were the real birthday present I truly wanted. We worked 2 long years to plant this garden. It took 6 years and teamwork across tenancy of the land to repair the soil. 2 years worth of winter storms to get us out of the water deficit. Handfuls of mycorrhiza gifted by friends at native plant society and oak leaf litter gathered from my hikes, went into the understory. We treated it like a habitat restoration project, not recreational garden design. Root depths were considered to balance competition for nutrients in the soil for long term chance of survival. Winter food for the pollinators were prioritized over spring/summer blooms for the human eyes. This is our way of returning some land back to the natives. Every single plant made it and is in bloom. The land is buzzing with insects, mushrooms and birds. We also indulged in some gorilla seed sprinkling along the roadside along our walks. ( Rumor has it that the Spanish Missionaries who first colonized California would sprinkle mustard seeds along the trails they paved. The yellow flowers were meant to lead you to the path of salvation. Hundred years later, we now have a big invasive species problem. Death to Black Mustard ! Go Native ! ) My puppy’s walking path is a now a California poppy wild flower trail in bloom. A true spring indeed !

Let me use the wait time for the next spring bloom to take on a challenge : The Rule of 5. I wasn’t ready on January 1st. You don’t wake up on the New Years Eve and start running a marathon. You plan and train for months before you even sign up for the race. You remake your identity as a runner who enjoys it, if you want to continue running after the race day. Shopping as a habit is no different. I needed to learn some neuroscience on dopamine, dopamine sickness and log myself out of Instagram first. Only then could I calm down, think, plot and plan. Else, there was too little understanding of the problem, too much reliance on motivation that ebbs and wanes, too much consumption of inspiration, too many influencers broadcasting shopping lists, too many big denim shapes of interest and too many wish lists swirling around in my head. Living in that highly stimulated virtual environment and expecting a calm state of mind that can take on anti-consumerist challenges, was asking too much of myself. I wont set myself up for failure. The last few months helped me prepare. Let’s solve this problem.

THE WHAT

It’s the Earth Day. Let’s talk about the solutions to ~80 percentile harms that need to be addressed by sustainable lifestyle bloggers : Live in dense neighborhoods. (Fighting NIMBY-ism to up-zone existing residential neighborhoods. Recognize the harm done by car-centric sprawl.) Using public transit and driving less. (Fighting to direct more funds towards public transit and away from road expansions/maintenance. Without density in housing, it impossible to build transit at cost. ) Eating a plant based diet. (Are you still seeing pictures of humans showing off their steaks on Instagram amidst a climate crisis ? ) Less flying. (Fighting for funds to be invested in high speed trains. Staycations. Local vacations. Slow travel. Deep travel. Cultivating a sense of place. Loving and improving your place. Stop bragging about your flying since it’s contagious. ) Less consumption of mined metals (gadgets, jewelry, electronics, appliances, McCars, …). Electrifying your home (solar, battery, induction stove, heat pump, EV, kill-the-lawn). The rest is systemic changed enabled by policy and law making. VOTE for the planet we want !

On earth day, I do not want to read blog posts about tote bags or plastic straws from grown adults. Leave the little plastic wrapper activism to the young kids who cant vote on policy yet & have no say in the lifestyle choices of their parents. We the woman bloggers, seem to spend disproportionate amount of effort talking about ~5 percentile harms while being oblivious to the 90 percentile harms. Tiny climate hacks rooted in domestic labor is not all we are capable of. Lets learn about climate solutions from the IPCC reports, join a local Org and move the needle. With this disclaimer out of the way, allow me to talk about a personal optimization I am working towards : my fashion consumption.

Behavior change is hard, esply when it comes to subtractive solutions. Buy XYZ for climate sells better than don’t buy X, Y & Z since they are excessive. However, behavior change is made easier when culture reaches a tipping point. I found a subculture I want to be a part of. A group of women have joined forces to answer the climate call in the fashion sector. The Rule of 5 is a pledge to try to get through a year with buying less than five garments a year. This is the group I will be leaning into for support, since I am not likely to succeed in isolation.

Read more : The Rule of 5

THE WHY : AUTHENTIC PERSONAL STYLE

For the sake of not being a hyper consumer during an ecological crisis ofcourse! But there are personal reasons assuming I don’t care about any one outside myself.

1. To save money. Since I no longer buy from cheap fast fashion stores, paying a significant amount of money for a garment takes a lot of contemplation from me. I spend time thinking, having internal monologues, discussing with girlfriend and justifying a purchase to myself. Outside fashion, I am not a spender. If I wasn’t spending this money, it would have been saved and invested. More financial security for an uncertain future and high cost of living in California.

2. “Greed breeds a perpetual sense of inadequacy, erodes integrity and values, and robs one of the opportunities for genuine fulfillment and happiness.”, writes Jen Hitz of 5 big ideas. Agree.

3. After learning that Princess Diana had an eating disorder, I found it unethical to pin her photos in my style boards. Someone harmed herself for complicated reasons beyond my understanding. I can’t take the results of the harm inflicted and promote the visuals. With personal style, I have a similar corollary. When you steadily consumed too much and are now showing off these newly formed outfits on the internet during an ecological crisis. It is not ethical. There is no honor in that outfit. One shouldnt be rewarded online with likes, money, praises, titles on stylishness, adoration and shares. One shouldn’t be rewarded offline with praises of being well dressed for constantly buying and wearing new stuff. In my book, I have “no right” to brag about my outfits or talk fashion shop, while unethically consuming clothes.

4. When your standard of living is high, you will find fewer simple pleasures pleasurable. Ecologically-harmful exclusivity-promising luxury consumption becomes the only way to treat yourself and find a release from the everyday. The happiest people I know, work to keep their standard of living in check. The hyper-consumers I know have overdosed on everyday consumption need to consume a LOT higher on the material chain to treat themselves. Nothing simple and accessible is considered a special experience anymore. That’s a scary hamster wheel to be on. As my lifestyle crept up, I seem to want more expensive and luxurious products.

5. My most worn clothes in 2023 were the 30 garments I purchased in that year. Going by the past, I am on track to buy another 30 garments this year to pair with 2023 purchases and ignore the 2022 purchases. In 2025, I am on track to declutter what was purchased in 2020 because they have been ignored for too long. If I dont declutter, I would be hoarding them, probably wearing them once a year and patting myself online for wearing my old clothes. This is all … ick ! Not buying 30 garments this year, will definitely break this pattern.

6. I am interested in style journeys and ootds that have growth and time complexity. I choose the trees to learn from. Each year adds a ring to the tree trunk. When you snapshot a slice of the tree trunk, you see a lifetime of growth in it expressed by these layers. We can study the rings to tell a lot about what the tree experienced in that year - droughts, wildfires, stress, insect attacks, … Only wearing the clothes from the last 5 years, is like a tree with inner most rings thrown away. A tree with a hollow trunk. If you shave away these innermost rings as new rings form, you have created a bigger hollow by the year. A tree without its heartwood ! You create shallow surface level style instead of authentic personal style. While it’s too much to expect every outfit to bear traces of the entirety of my life lived, I do have some expectations. While being caught in a whirlwind of what-to-buy-next, I cant create this depth I so crave. How many brains are capable of frequently reaching for a garment from 15 years ago in a 100 item closet when most of it is from the last 5 years ? There are not mends that indicate wear, love, care and longevity. No cobbler has touched those shoes and blessed them with his craft. No intimacy from 100 wears. The garment hasn’t travelled your land enough and neither have you in it. An insult to the clothes and travel. Your best of friends don’t recognize it nor do they say “I have always loved this garment on you” nor do they recollect an experience you shared when you wore it. Ick!

7. Only writing about what I am not doing, the subtractive solutions to the climate crisis, is not what I set out to do. Buy less, yes. Live well, yes please. I want to write about this wonderful land and my little life in it. However, I seem to be in waiting. To live more sustainably to be worthy of sharing my life. Will I always be in waiting ?

8. I really like myself in my oldest faded worn-in clothes. There are places where I would be looked down upon if I wore these clothes, but not in the Bay. Out here, you see people wearing their old clothes with no care in the world. You will see duct-taped backpacks from high school on grown adults with tech jobs. Sustainable handbag isnt buying a luxury handbag secondhand, but the bag you already own worn through and through. On BART, you will see shoes made for walking on people who choose sustainable mode of transportation. They are un-glamorous sneakers from years ago and being worn. You will see free corporate t-shirts not wasted but worn-in. You will see so much denim everywhere that it’s the unofficial workwear of our city. I see vintage denim being worn by elderly Asians going about their day with envy. “That pair would fit me well”, I often find myself scanning and wondering. They didn’t buy it on Etsy after vintage denim became trendy. It’s their pair from the 80-90s still being worn. “We are all gold miners. We have no chic city style and are here to work in the data mines”, a friend confessed last weekend. In contrast, I feel shallow, silly and excessively shiny in my newest clothes. Why cant I stop ?

9. I have very little drive to address my repair pile. With constant incoming goods, outgoing goods are not the loss they should be. I hoard my repair pile for years and eventually declutter from it. Outside of shoe soles, very little gets repaired in my closet. Today, I am wearing a shirt with a missing button hoping that no one gapes into my shirt. I didnt keep the extra buttons that APC gave me when I bought the shirt because the idea of me doing any mending felt overtly optimistic. Only in the craft of wear, can I find the confidence to believe that behavior change is possible.

10. Writing it down, helps me think better. Else, it’s thoughts and prayers that appear and disappear quickly. Making this challenge public, will make me accountable.

THE HOW : Control the inputs, not the outcome.

I have tried shopping fasts several times over the past years. They were akin to starvation to loose weight. All it did was make me hungry and binge eat after the fast expired. It made me hyperfocus on food during the fast. Behavior change, not a flash diet. This time around, I want to tackle the root causes and build habits that result in less shopping. The point of this is reformation, not a temporary shock to the system.

Define distraction.

If you asked me last year to get off instagram and rethink influencers, I would have said I don’t want to. I dont need to. There is no correlation and they are not the problem. I was enjoying myself too much. I overstated the benefits and the losses were willfully not recognized. Distraction is distraction only if you know what it is distracting you from. ( My goals. ) I didn’t think of certain fashion content as noise back then. It was the signal, never noise, given my interest in clothes. Women opening up their closets and their innermost thoughts about clothes they wear, felt like a privilege to peek into. The feeling of wanting and procuring, fit in my with ideal of moving upward in life and achieving what you set your mind to. Today, achieving is tied to other aspects of living, not acquiring more stuff. If you ask me now, the signal is sustainable living and joy from craft of use. Being hyper-stimulated by clothes and media content surrounding it, is noise. This is the problem we are trying to solve for.

The Scroll

I was off Instagram during Feb & March. I now sometimes visit it and seem to have lost the ability to scroll. Context switching irritates me. Infinite Scroll was invented during my time in a social media research lab and I saw it as progress. Variable reward during the scroll was a brilliant idea when it comes to the algorithm. Now that it’s being used on me, I am angry. The platform mined my data for a decade, my kind of people wrote algorithms and worked hard to help me build the scroll habit. It will help me revert back to effortless scrolling if I spend enough time on it again. I wont.

None of my mobile devices currently have the app. Only my work desktop computer where I have to sit with my back straight on a hard chair, has it’s login details. I am never relaxed and ready to scroll when sitting at my desk. 5 min usage per day and voluntary exit, is where I am currently at. I am surprised that years of scroll habit can be broken after reading exactly ONE scary book on dopamine addiction. It made me reframe dopamine as a dangerous drug and me weening off it as legitimate addiction recovery. Libby, kindle and audible are what I replaced my scroll with. iPhone has a grayscale mode that I use 24*7 to make the device unattractive. Our devices aren’t supposed to be shopping malls. All these measures are helping. My screen time bottomed out.

The Real Real

I have enough Fear of Missing Out, to get off it. Every fabulous thing I own bought on a scale of affordable, is from TRR. I treasure hunt in there. I make enough returns to be on their first strike. I got the taste of luxury without having to pay the retail prices. Take the second hand option away and I will hit the brakes on buying. I have wanted to change the password and hide it for a period of time, to help detox. I couldn’t let go of instagram and TRR at the same time. It would have been too much void to fill and too big a detox. Now that Instagram has been addressed, my TRR fast has started. I now have enlisted my husband to help me hide the password. I am completely off it for 6 months. If I miss out, I have to make my peace with it. All the money saved, would be good for my family. Not making returns, will save me time. I must do this.

{ 7 days in : I feel the void in its place but also a sense of calm. I assumed I will be agitated and itching to scroll something. Instead, I am in a restful state. Will this last ? What comes next ? I dont know.

12 days in : I still feel a sense of calm but it’s now coupled with fear of missing out on the treasure hunt. “Excess clothing at great price is not a treasure”, is what I chant to myself when I miss seeing the clothes. }

Vipassana :

Mind tends to ruminate on desires. Have you found yourself thinking about a garment you want, over and over again ? Check on it. Stare at it. Fixate on it. Pin it. Recollect it at inconvenient times. Wanting and not having is not fun. Constant wanting is misery. I sometimes buy to eliminate the pain of wanting and to reclaim that energy I am expending wanting it.

Moving on, is a skill that needs to be learnt. Our minds aren’t born equipped with this skill. Vipassana meditation cultivates it. Mindfulness addresses it. The monks who meditate can handle desire differently because they have hours and years of practice at it. The thing about meditation is : knowing the theory / someones experience / my own past experience meditating wont build or keep my muscles strong. I have to meditate. There is no other way to arrive at this skill. This year, I am committing to 15 minutes of vipassana per day.

Bringing up meditation seems a bit extreme when talking about seemingly irrelevant - clothes. But I don’t see it that way. Say you play basketball, most of your training happens outside the game day. Resisting an object that you can afford, after you find it at a great price, is an equivalent of a game day on-court move. What you do on court during a game is culmination of a lifetime of training. Your body would have built muscle memory and behaves accordingly. Vipassana is this off-court training that will benefit everything else we do outside the meditation mat. Training the mind to resist a beautiful garment doesn’t happen in the store or in the heat of the moment of passion or when inspired or when highly stimulated. It is definitely not a skill you just summon. This fundamental skill has to be developed off-court. Neuroscience is available to help us citizens process our desire just like it’s being used by marketing departments to instigate desire. They have the upper hand ofcourse. But we are not without tools.

Consumption of inspiration

In my case, consumption of information is proportional to consumption of subsequent stuff shown as inspiration.

My media diet was filled up with folks who benefit from selling me stuff. They figured out that if we see an item often enough, on someone admirable who doesn’t aggressively market it but will show it to us often, we will eventually want the item because we normalize it’s presence. Bloggers used to be my go to source to sample fashion. I have lived long enough on the blogosphere to see this slow transition of bloggers from being {a person with a hobby} to {a business entity posing as your peer}. To see a human you considered your peer consume 30 to 100 garments a year, can do things to your head. If it’s not disgust and distrust, you are in trouble. It can make you think that it’s okay to do so. Or it can make your excessive consumption tame/justifiable in reference to their hyper-consumption. To see them show a handbag collection, can make you think it’s normal for every woman to have a set of unused handbags hoarded in well organized shelves in houses large enough to hold all this stuff. Fancy hoarding became aspirational ! It is not okay.

To clean my feed, I ask this question : “Are the visuals of her style a materialistic value or an artistic value?” What artistic value does her style stand for ? Is there community development and personality development ? Or is it a matter of clothes paired together from a large large stream of garments. Does she have a McCloset full of things to style from ? Am I being entertained ?

Angharad Jones and Lizzy Hadfield are the only professional influencers I have kept on in my feed. Their outfit choices help me think about proportions, color, fit and styling. I will continue to let them sample the industry for me. Treat them like I would a magazine, not my peer.

I have since reverted to street style images & offline people watching for inspiration. How much inspiration do I need ? Not a lot unless I want to be drunk on dopamine. I dont. I want a calm and boring life where I can do deep work. Fashion is not my primary creative outlet. I need ‘just enough’ of it to sample the industry periodically and pair my clothes well. I need enough menders in my feed so that I aspire to it. I need enough stylist folk who wear their old clothes in my feed, so that I normalize it. I don’t want excess stimulation and too much content from any single person. Nor do I want to be that petulant child who needs new entertainment all the time.

Update my spreadsheet

Gratitude, is the missing link. In the years when I diligently updated my wears-per-garment spreadsheet everyday, I consumed less. The focus went into distributing wear across everything I own. The love of clothes, was projected inwards into my existing closet. Not outwards towards the stores. I made an effort to wear every garment during a calendar year. It felt like there were plenty of clothes waiting to be worn during the season, waiting their turn. There was gratitude for what I had. Is it really that easy to change my focus, I wondered. Then, I declared myself reformed and quit updating my journal. The problem has resurfaced. When I have a true and tried solution, I shouldn’t abandon it.

With the scroll gone, I have this itch to go check out clothes someplace. By default, it would be some store online. Given that I have an app blocking distractions as a part of my dopamine detox, I am not allowed to without jumping through some hoops. To cure this itch, I look at my spreadsheet and pick out what I want to wear tomorrow. I can scroll through my inventory. Maybe its 1/100th the dopamine dosage as staring at new clothes but it seems to satisfy me for now.

Control the outcome too : Rule of 10

Going from casually buying 30 garments in the previous year to 5 garments, is a lifestyle overhaul. I am trying. There is a strategy and action, not just words and motivation. This is going to be hard for me and I wont pretend otherwise. Before I run the full marathon, I will run the half. Keep fashion purchases to under 10 garments for the year.

Internal monologues

“The restlessness is surfacing again. It will pass”.

“It’s only for a year. I am not committing to forever. If I am miserable doing this recovery, I am still free to go back to my old consumerist ways next year. They wont put me in jail for ecocide.”

“It is alright. I will make a note and buy it next year. Or the next. I needn’t buy everything this year. Leave something for next year to aspire to acquire. ”

“Years have been going by so quickly.”

“Her clothes are stunning. She is stunning. Let her go. Dont go digging for what she is wearing. Conserve your energy for your own work. She used her energy for her work. ”

“I don’t know where to browse. Oh RealReal ! “

“I don’t want to use up my budget of 5. Not for this garment.”

“Put on those lovely sneakers and go for a 10 min walk. Honor the quality and craftsmanship in their making by walking everywhere.“

“I will get a dopamine hit if I buy this garment. I will get the same dopamine hit if I go for a walk right now”

Saw a post with title “N things to buy for the house in spring”. My house is full. My closet is full. My mind is needed elsewhere. I can only do one thing well at a time. I have the opposite of ADHD. Leave me alone.

Saw a post “10 must haves to buy this spring” : so you think you know what I need huh ? Followed my anger. GOMI.