It’s obvious that clothing is essential and necessary in most settings, so why would it need to be something to discuss when it comes to planning for your budget? Much like food, the costs of staying stocked or full can be justified based on the so-called need.
It is typical for Americans to have far more than we need; we have closets and storage units full of excess–so if this is the case, how do we scale down to what is considered the essential wants or needs? Maybe even more importantly, how do we prevent purchasing something that we don’t need in the first place?
I would follow a three-step approach to this:
- Scale-down
- Budget Essentials
- Buy what you value
When looking at scaling down, this may be especially painful being that you may connect the item of clothing to something sentimental, or you remember what you paid for the item, or you like the thought of having more as a means of options or valuing the excess from the standpoint of status.
The closets in your home may be a great place to start getting organized. As seen in the Marie Kondo approach of Tidying Up, clothing is the first line of attack to downsize, streamline, and ensure you only keep what you actually use.
Once you have paired down what you own to what you actually use, what adds value to you, or what is specifically sentimental, you would then look at your Plan to Spend or Budget. How much do you need to allocate each month for the clothing items that are essential to you?
Setting a Budget
Setting a budget will ensure that you are not only limiting how much you buy and therefore forcing intentionality around not going back to having packed closets but that you can then buy what you value.
Oftentimes we don’t think through what we value most in our homes, lives, and day-to-day rhythms. This causes us to always look around for validation of what other people are doing. This trap can and will cause you to own stuff you would never buy just to appease people not affected by your purchases.
Now with clothing, it seems like there are people on both ends of the spectrum, those who are frugal and thrive on hand-me-downs or thrift, and those who get some retail therapy by spending full-price on the newest trend. No matter where you fall on that spectrum is not the issue. Instead, you are purposeful in only buying what you deem essential within your budget.
CTA:
My call to action is to go through these three steps to clean out, budget, and buy only what you value most.
