No New Clothes for a Year

I've been a bit remiss in posting about our shopping ban so I thought I'd give you a quick recap. Christmas actually went pretty well with a few exceptions on the No China rule. Of all the gifts we bought (and there weren't that many) only 2 sweatshirts (Annie and Wils) and a quilt (Annie) bore the dreaded Made in China label.

We searched several stores and given the limitations of our kids tastes and the complete lack of any other country of origin (seriously... PacSun must just send a tanker over there and load up) we ended up the aforementioned items on clearance (hey, at least we got a deal :)

I posted earlier about the Made in USA wine glasses we bought for Brad....and there were several video games for the boys (hard to tell how many hands are involved in that process but the ones we got were Made in the US )...several other sweatshirts and t-shirts (El Salvador and Mexico) and candy in the stockings.

This is where the whole "we don't have money so we can't buy much" helped us out. We came away with a fairly good feeling of having at least made an effort and we're reading labels way more often than ever before.

The no clothes ban posts are going to get monotonous....we just don't miss buying new clothes (mostly because the No Clothes only applies to Steven and I). I did rip a pair of my everyday jeans and will need to patch them so they don't become yet another pair of 'work jeans' but that's OK; with my weight up (again!) the thought of dressing rooms is terrifying. Oh and did I say 'I ripped' my pants?...I meant the PUPPY ripped them. He gets rather affectionate when we come home from ...anywhere ...and likes to nip. He has VERY sharp teeth and he is blissfully unaware that I can't replace these jeans.
Gotta love 'em.

So, the buying diet is going fine for now. We do have 8 months to go and I'm sure we'll have issues come up, but so far so good. The other side benefit of these restrictions is that I tend to not want to buy anything. I find myself with the mindset that I can't ...that it would be against the rules to spend money...at all! Right now I feel comfortable buying food, seeds, books and anything on our preserving list. That is not a bad thing!