Accountability

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Shopping Priorities & Purchase Update – October 2016

A little over a month ago, I posted a long overdue update on my wardrobe and shopping goals for 2016.  That update covered my budget, item limit, frequency of wear, a basic overview of what I bought, and my goals for the remainder of the year.  I had also planned to review my progress with the shopping list I created back in February, but the post just got too long. As I feel that it will be helpful to look at my shopping priorities and how I have or haven’t addressed them, that will be the focus of today’s post.

shopping priorities update

How have you done with your shopping priorities for 2016?

A Cautionary Tale – Don’t Do What I Did

Before I delve into a discussion of my shopping list and what I’ve bought, I want to say a few things. First of all, I think that if we go through the trouble of creating a shopping priorities list, we really need to be reviewing it on at least a monthly basis.  That way, we’ll be much less likely to get off-track with our purchases.  Of course, it’s perfectly understandable that we may need to make some revisions to our list, as many things are subject to change in our lives, including our bodies, our lifestyles, and what we are and aren’t wearing.  I would never be one to advocate rigid adherence to what one planned many months ago.

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August 2016 Wardrobe and Shopping Goals Update

It’s been a long time since I’ve done an update on my 2016 wardrobe and shopping goals. I used to do monthly accountability updates (you can see them all here), but after three-plus years of doing them, I simply got tired of the lengthy process of putting them together.  However, even though I wasn’t going to keep doing blog posts about the topic, I should have continued to keep track for myself.  As I shared in my last post, I neglected to track my purchases for over four months and that definitely impeded both my awareness and my progress.  Now I could beat myself up about this – and I certainly have, but that wouldn’t ultimately serve me well.  Instead what I need to do is determine where I am with my goals, recommit, and recalibrate if necessary.

The truth

It’s time to tell the truth about my 2016 wardrobe goals.

In today’s post, which will be a long one, I will review the following goal categories and my current status:

  • Budget
  • Item Limit
  • Frequency of Wear
  • What I Bought – Clothes, Shoes, Accessories
  • Goals for the Remainder of 2016

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Why Tracking Purchases is Important & How to Do It

Last weekend, I spent several hours updating my purchase list for the year. This task took such a long time because I hadn’t done it in over four months and had to hunt around a lot for the pertinent information.  Since I had put off the update for so long, it ended up being a much more surprising – and depressing – experience than it should have been.  This has highlighted the importance of updating the list regularly, at least once a month, in order to increase awareness and hopefully prevent myself from getting out of control with my purchases.

purchase tracking

Tracking your purchases can help you control your shopping. 

Even though I update QuickBooks (what my husband and I use for our accounting) every one to two weeks, I still have a tendency to keep myself “in the dark” in terms of what’s going on with my shopping. I may know the financial numbers and even be able to stick to a budget, as I’ve done for three plus years now, but I often lose sight of how many items I’m buying and how they are or aren’t working for my wardrobe and life.

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How I Shopped the 2016 Nordstrom Anniversary Sale

For many years, the Nordstrom Anniversary Sale (NAS) has been my absolute favorite sale.  I’d look forward to the sale all year and go online to check out the offerings shortly after midnight on the first day of “pre-selections” for Nordstrom cardholders.  I would usually make multiple purchases before the sale was over, both online and in the store. Over the years, I’ve spent far too much money at this sale and have often bought things that I later regretted purchasing.

2016 nordstrom anniversary sale

Do you shop the Nordstrom Anniversary Sale every year?

NAS Blog Posts Over the Years…

Every year since starting this blog, I’ve done a post about NAS.  The first year (2013), I opted to skip the sale entirely, which was empowering for me at the time and proved to myself that I could successfully resist shopping temptation.  The following year, I went back to the sale with good intentions, but encountered some of the same difficulties I had in the past, spending too much time, energy, and money on the process.

My NAS post last year was about FOMO and the marketing messages that Nordstrom used to trigger our fear of missing out and get us to shop more.  I shopped the sale last year, too, but ended up returning the lion’s share of what I bought.  Fortunately, however, I spent a lot less time on the experience and didn’t feel that I overdid it, even in the face of the intense marketing messages directed toward Nordstrom shoppers.

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A Year Later: May through July 2015 Purchase Review

Earlier this year, I started a new feature in which I review my purchases a year later to see how well (or not) they have worked out for me.  Although I periodically reviewed past purchases previously, I got the idea to review things from a year ago from Mette of “The Yogastic Shopping Planner” (see her most recent edition HERE).   Sometimes my purchase updates will cover just one month (as my last one did – I bought a lot in April 2015), but most of the time they will encompass two or three months – or even longer, as was the case with the 2014 review I published last week.

2015 Year in Review

Today I’m going to look back at the items I bought from May through July of last year. Those were fairly moderate shopping months for me, so it made sense to cover them all together.  I will share some basic numbers, let you know what I still own, and reflect on which purchases were good and bad and why. I’ll close this update by encapsulating the lessons I learned from reviewing the items I purchased a year ago.  I hope that reading this update will inspire you to take a look at your purchases from a year ago to see how well they’re serving you.   Taking the time to do such a review can be quite eye-opening and is well worth doing.

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