‘I’m buying nothing new (or second-hand) for a year’

As the last minutes of 2012 ticked over, Rachel Smith sat on a beach in Hawaii making New Year’s resolutions with her friends.

They were the usual kind of things – exercise more, work less, do yoga … except for Rachel’s, which was to buy nothing new or second-hand for an entire year.

In terms of resolutions, it was quite radical, but the reasons for this lifestyle experiment had been mounting up.

Not long before, Rachel had been reading a magazine in an airport lounge about an Australian family who had bought nothing new for an entire year. She had been on her way to Mumbai to participate in the BMW Guggenheim Lab – a mobile think-tank travelling the world to inspire new ideas for urban life and design.

The magazine story, and time spent in a Mumbai slum, were making her think twice about the level of consumerism in the western world.

“On the streets and in the slums of Mumbai I saw people with next to nothing who really and truly valued everything that they had and owned and to be bluntly honest it made me feel guilty and deeply ashamed about our western world consumption,” she says.

Unfortunately, four months into her vow, she pulled out her purse to buy “a pair of trousers which, ironically and ashamedly, I’ve worn less than 10 times”.

This year, Rachel is determined to last the distance. She says since shifting her mindset from a view of going without, to seeing the experiment as an opportunity, she’s finding it “super easy”.

Her self-imposed rules are that she is allowed to buy food and essential toiletries, along with experiences such as going to the movies, horse riding and dinners. Instead of buying material presents for her family, she buys them experiences.

Banned are any new or second-hand clothes, shoes, books, iTunes, computer equipment, newspapers, magazines, toiletries, kitchenwares or general “stuff”.

Rachel says she’s now drawing on all her resourcefulness, swapping clothes with friends, sharing books and using up numerous tubes of toothpaste and bars of soap from previous hotel stays that she discovered lurking in her bathroom cupboard.

While Rachel says she was by no means a shopaholic before this challenge, she did have a weakness for clothes, books and magazines.

“(Now) I’m making better of use of my existing assets,” she says. “I’m no Imelda Marcos but like most western women, if I’m honest, I only wear 5 per cent of the clothes that I own.

“So I got ‘them’ all out – the entire contents of my wardrobe that is – I looked, pondered, sorted, re-arranged and put it all back and now I’m wearing them all this year. “

She says in the beginning when people heard of her plan, they thought: “that’s what hippies do, it’s alternative, it’s weird – it’s stupid.”

But she’s since found plenty of interest in her experiment, and is hoping to eventually release a book and a 12-week online course showing others how to do the same thing.

While Rachel admits she’s always been frugal – her sister used to laugh when she made a three-month waiting list for any purchases – it’s not all about the money.

Rachel, who currently lives in Brisbane, Australia, has already paid off the mortgage of her flat back in Torquay, England, and says much of the money she’s saved she’s spent on having fun or furthering herself.

That’s so far included an entrepreneur course, massages, meals out and an upcoming horse-riding holiday.

Rachel says she feels generally happier for the experience.

“I think people are just so wrapped up in – ‘I’ll be happy when I’ve got this and this and this and this’,” she says.

“To be quite honest it just makes you realise how much stuff you’ve got that you don’t use anyway.”

Her only minor gripe is a few mismatching outfits.

“The only problem I have is that I’ve only got two pairs of winter shoes. I just think, you know what, it’s only a year and it doesn’t matter.”

To read more about Rachel’s challenge, click here.