I’ve posted a couple times now already about clothes, and how much I’ve gotten into the habit of getting new clothing from clothes swaps with friends rather than buying new things.
One of my favorite acquisitions is a pair of light blue jeans from about 2 years ago. Ironically, I would have never purchased light blue jeans for myself, but anytime I wear this, people keep telling me how fabulous I look. Not only did I get free clothes out of that swap, but apparently, also a fashion lesson.
Anway, so the thing is, this particular pair of jeans had to be repaired after a couple months use – the seams on the back pockets kind of gave up. Honestly, I was quite losing hope, as the rip was so big, I didn’t think the jeans were gonna make it. Nevertheless, I asked the nice lady in the street who fixes clothes for a living to have a look, and for a whopping 1000 HUF or so (3.5 USD) she fixed it perfectly.
This was over a year ago, and I’ve been wearing the pants ever since.
Now, a couple weeks ago, I was again wearing these wonderful jeans, and at one moment, I kneeled down to fix something with my bike, and I felt a huuuuge rip – at the knees.
‘oh-oh’ I thought, ‘this is it.’ I really thought that this wonderful pre-loved pair of jeans made it only so far. However, I have so gotten into the habit of attempting to fix any piece of clothing I own that I took it to the seamstress again, and she said, ‘Ah no problem, I think we can keep fixing this pair of jeans forever and ever, as all the seams will just keep making it cooler.’ And believe it or not, but she managed to fix it, for a similarly whopping amount as before.
I HATE, really really HATE shopping for clothes, especially for pants, so I really really do hope that we can keep fixing these jeans forever and ever. It’s holding out so well so far.
I hope this post inspires anyone who read it at attempting to fix any piece of clothing they own when they break – chances are, you can wear it for waaaay longer than you think. Wanna bet? đ
In previous posts, I expressed disagreement with the whole idea of having to purge all your belongings according to some arbitrary rule – like if you haven’t worn it in a season, dump it. I believed that this would just feed into the vicious loop of the fast fashion industry, and all the terrible social and environmental consequences it has. However, I’ve come to realize another aspect of the purging that I do seem to be able to relate to.
I haven’t changed my stance fully. But I’ve come to recognize purging to be possibly a useful initative to take in some cases – not necessarily for the sake of simply cleaning up your closet, but more for the sake of becoming conscious of your own lifestyle, including consumption, decision-making, and how your possesions influence your life in general.
What do I mean by all this. Well, in the past year, I have fairly rarely purchased clothes in a shop. That wasn’t a deliberate decision, and it’s not super shocking either, as I just genuinely don’t enjoy shopping too much on the one hand, and on the other hand, I have been regularly attending clothes swap events – which, believe it or not, actually became my primary source for new clothing. I am actually very happy and proud of this – not only because it’s ecologically and financially absolutely awesome, but also because I’ve come to really love some items and the gatherings themselves, so it’s been really fun to attend these events every couple of months.
However, along with it came a problem I would have never anticipated. Being exposed regularly to a vast supply of free clothes, surrounded by friends or friendly strangers saying ‘wow that looks great on you’ snowballed into a situation where I started to have more clothes than I’ve ever purposefully owned. I would go to these events with 2-3 IKEA bags stuffed with things I deemed discardables, and come back with exactly the same amount – of ‘okay’ stuff.
Because, when stuff is for free, it’s much easier to be like ‘oh, well, I’m not sure, but I’ll take it anyway and see, and I’ll just bring it back next time if I figure it doesn’t work.’ Well, as it turns out, this is something I have been doing fairly often at these swaps- I shop so rarely, that in these gatherings I would often just say ‘yes’ to clothes that I would normally not spend money on – simply because I can, because it costs nothing to do so.
It hasn’t gotten to cosmic proportions just yet – my clothes still fit into my wardrobe, but I’ve noticed an increasing amount of clothing I don’t really wear or need. And I’m slowly starting to realize, that the clutter is affecting me – it’s cluttering my life too. Frankly, it’s plain annoying. And it is in this moment, that I welcome the idea of the purging – for my own peace of mind.
I do want to stress here though, that for me the idea of purging is a process about becoming conscious in my decision-making. Not just for the discarding itself, but also for anything new I obtain or let into my life.
Today, I spent 2 hours just going through my dresses, shoes and pants – and I ended up filling 3 pretty huge bags of things that I will dispose of – NOT in the trash, but either by giving it to friends, or at a clothes swap (the one with my friends won’t be until spring, but I just found a publicly organized one on Facebook close to my house, it will be next week, how convenient!).
Let the purging begin!
For each and everyitem, I thought back as to why and how I got that piece of clothing, how I felt about it, and whether I would still want to own it. Mind you, I didn’t only ask myself, ‘would I ever wear this again?’, because more often than not, I could imagine a scenario, in which I would. Once, in 10 years, for sure. But just because there is a slim chance you might end up using something very rarely, doesn’t mean you actually *really* need it – and I feel like that’s a huge distinction to make about each and every of our possessions. Which is exactly what I attempted today, looking at everything, one-by-one.
Filled first bag! Wow, so many hangers emptied…
I’m hoping, that with this exercise, I will gain more knowledge on who I am, what I like, want and need in my life – and hence be also better at not letting myself get cluttered again with just ‘things’, things that I don’t want or need, but for which I simply have the luxury of being able to obtain and ‘have’ it.
Honestly, it was a super tiring process. But I do feel the psychological effect of it already – having cleared some of the clutter has cleared some space in my mind too.
All things that once served me well, but not anymore.
Maybe this is exactly why and how purging was so advocated for by folks, and I just never understood because in the past 10 years I moved so often I couldn’t afford to have much stuff piling up, so maybe I just have not bought/owned enough clothes to comprehend the real purging vibe.
So do purge, but do it mindfully – not so that you can fill up the empty space with more new stuff you don’t need, but so that you can mindfully create yourself the space you want and need, filled with the only items that do bring you happiness.
I believe we all have things lying around in our homes that we don’t know what to do with really.
Some of the stuff is easier to deal with than other ones. For example clothes can easily be disposed of in the dedicated donation containers, and the more expensive items you can try selling via Marktplaats or in Facebook groups.
But what do you do with the more ambiguous items, like those 5 euro slippers that turned out too small, or that travel book about Brazil you’ll never need again? I personally never throw things out that are still in usable condition, but sometimes it’s just really hard to find a new owner for these one-off items. I have taken some to thrift shops, but sometimes the hassle seems too big for some smaller things. Currently I have a dozen of earrings I don’t need that I even tried putting up for free on Marktplaats – and still nothing happened.
The good news is, I think I might have found the solution for these situations: Weggeefkast to the rescue!
This ‘Give-away cabinet’ you see on the picture above is exactly meant for this purpose – as you can see the items placed there range from children’s toys to bathroom scales. Have something at home you don’t use but you think others might be happy to have? Put it there!
This particular closet is close to Squash City by Amsterdam Centraal, if you want to check it out:
It is the only one I bumped into so far. But I’ll be sure to place my earrings and other usable items here when I pass by!
If you have seen any other similar cabinets, please share!
In the last couple weeks I wanted to buy some things: nothing fancy really, just simple stuff like a holder for paper, pens and stationery, and a trash can to pimp my recycling station (because even though the plastic and ikea bags from my first setup are very functional, but the messy look of them makes me want to empty it everyday, which isn’t optimal).
With this little shopping list in my head, I decided that I will take care of this in a more sustainable way: instead of going to Blokker or some other household store, I will get these items second hand. I have been shopping some items second hand before, but it’s the first time I document it and write a blogpost about it hoping that it shows other people that it’s not that hard đ
So as a first step, I went to Marktplaats, the biggest online marketplace I know of in the Netherlands where people try to get rid of ‘stuff’ and other people try to get ‘stuff’, and started searching and practicing my Dutch. Af-val-bak….
Sure enough, after 2 minutes of browsing, I found a medium, 60l plastic trash can, perfect candidate to be my future plastic recycling bin. The price, 3 euros, and it’s 5 minutes biking away! Perfect. All that’s left to do is schedule an appointment with the seller.
Then as a next step, I started looking up big second hand stores in Amsterdam – I felt like the other small items I need would be too problematic to hunt down one by one via Martkplaats. I found a website listing major thrift stores, so all that was left was to find the nearest one to me – 8 minutes bike ride, same area as my ‘trash-can-rendez-vous!’ Fantastic! This is going as smooth as can be.
I figured I might not want to go around shopping while carrying a trash can, so I headed off to the thrift store. I was new to this particular store, so I wasn’t sure what to expect. It’s called Rataplan, they have several locations – this one is a really big place, 3 storeys with a lot of stuff.
 Â
I would definitely recommend coming here for Dutch languaged books, clothes and kitchen ware – the latter were in really perfect condition too.
The stationery section wasn’t as extensive as I had hoped, but I still managed to find some things, for altogether 3.50 euros.
And then on the way back I picked up the trash can for 3 euros.
So, when I add them up,
I spent altogether 6.50 euros in total for these second-hand items.
Purchased new, the same (and/or similar) items would have cost more than 5Â times as much.
How do I know? Because I checked đ
Here is a detailed breakdown:
The price savings is a very pleasant and awesome byproduct of the whole process. The cherry on top of all the sustainability benefits. There are many green aspects to shopping second hand, just to quickly name a few: by purchasing used items they will be used for their intended purpose a bit longer instead of rotting in a landfill or breaking into pieces in the ocean. Or just think about the packaging that all these items have when bought new, whereas second-hand that’s not a thing. And then a top of it, you save money with it too?? Sounds almost too good to be true. But it is true, I just proved it đ And it wasn’t even that difficult, was it?
In the end, it really is a win-win for everybody. Think about this next time you want to buy something đ
step-by-step sustainability 