In print | Published December 4, 2008

I have a problem.

Maybe it’s the stress of finals rapidly approaching, or the pile of work crammed between Thanksgiving break and finals, or the thought that Puppy Club Bar still doesn’t make sense, or the sinking feeling that it’s now winter and the cold weather isn’t going to let up until April of next year, or …

Or maybe it’s none of the above.

Over Thanksgiving break, I came to the conclusion (though I’ve reached it many times before) that I am guilty of conspicuous consumption. Not only that, but I am a packrat, which means that when looking through my closets and storage bins, all of those “I-have-to-have-it” purchases are still there. It’s embarrassing to think that I fell prey to all of those awful trends like Juicy Couture tracksuits and Hard Tail fold-over yoga pants. Six or seven years later, I fear that I’m still doing the same thing. Only now I have my own (not very disposable) income and an eBay account, which means that whenever I have a hankering for, say, ridiculous red velvet holiday dresses with lace trim, I go on crazed searches that usually don’t end well. Or they end with my ordering three or four variations of the same thing. Either way, it seems like excess that can’t be contained.

This past summer I read a short article in Time Magazine about something called the 100 Thing Challenge. It started out as a personal goal of blogger David Bruno to pare down his personal possessions to just 100 things. This was when I had just moved back home from Swat and was more or less fed up with the amount of stuff that I had to schlep. I hadn’t really unpacked yet; all of my stuff just kind of sat in large scattered piles around my room. I didn’t want to touch or move any of it, and rather than making me feel satisfied, all of my stuff just made me feel really unsettled. Then I started to think that maybe this 100 Thing Challenge was what I really needed to finally make me stop buying stuff that I don’t need, mainly clothes. At the same time, I read Tim Gunn’s “A Guide to Quality, Taste, and Style,” expecting it to be entertaining and a fun summer read. It was nothing short of that (I mean, what can you expect from a man with lines like “it looks like a pterodactyl out of a gay Jurassic Park”) but it also confirmed my suspicions that any progress with the 100 Thing Challenge would have to start with my overflowing closet — evidence of impulse-buying spun out of control.

So I went on a crazy one-month purge of everything that needed to go. I got rid of all clothes that didn’t fit but that I still kept for no reason, clothes that I never wore and would never wear in the future, clothes that I had completely forgotten about (which really showed how much I didn’t need them) and clothes that I didn’t really need and could sell on eBay for a profit. One hundred Paypal transactions or so later, I had made a decent profit, but had somehow broken even by purchasing one too many random toy instruments. That’s the danger of spending too much time on eBay; unless you’re disciplined, you end up spending as much money as you make.

Then this semester started and the combination of stress, procrastination and convenience all led to online retail therapy. So I’m back to square one, with about as much stuff as I had before the purging of my closet. Maybe reading more than ten fashion blogs daily is not really conducive to trying to downsize. If Susie Bubble of Style Bubble fame has more than 278 skirts, why can’t I have that many dresses? Maybe I just can’t do the whole minimalism thing. Maybe I just don’t really want to.

I don’t know. Maybe I’ve just been reading too much Hipster Runoff lately and have fallen into a life rut of trying to find meaning but being unable to. I may be back next semester, I may not be, but for now let’s say adieu.

Ming is a sophomore. You can reach her at mcai1@swarthmore.edu.

« RETURN TO LIVING & ARTS

« PREV ARTICLE | NEXT ARTICLE »