My Low Buy – What I bought in January

If you caught my last blog post about my goals for 2021, you may have seen that I have a goal to save money and a goal to reduce my skincare, makeup, and clothing. As a part of those goals, I am focusing this year on buying less. I am finding myself on a path of wanting to have less belongings as I find myself overwhelmed in my home by all I own. I love to try new things, but I have not been diligent about things like finishing a skincare item before buying a new one.

I have seen many people do low buys where they set really specific rules for themselves, but I am keeping mine somewhat loose right now. I may end up setting more clear rules for myself, but for right now I am finding my loose strategy to still be successful for me.

So in today’s post I wanted to talk about what I bought for myself in January using my budgeted personal spending.

The first thing I spent money on for myself was my 6 month subscription to Beauty Heroes. I’ve had a number of beauty box subscriptions over the years, but this is the only one I have active right now. I’m not sure what will happen when it rolls around for the next six months, but for now I am really happy in keeping this subscription. They do only send a small number of items in the box (2 to 3 usually) so that also isn’t too overwhelming when I have my goals of using up skincare. It is also usually skincare or body care items, which are easier for me to use up vs. the boxes with a lot of makeup that I have had before (like Ipsy or Boxycharm).

The next thing I spent money on for myself was a pattern for sewing a quilted coat called the Gibson Coat from the Etsy seller itsallinthestitch. I have not sewn the pattern yet, but I have been wanting to make a quilted coat and am happy to have a pattern now for when I am ready. Also it was on sale so I took advantage…

I also purchased a piece of clothing in January. I had been looking at this dress for a while, and did not buy it in December when it was on sale because it did not really fit in my budget then. I think the dress is beautiful with its embroidery, pleating, gathers, drawstring, colors… So when it went on sale again in January I bought it! I have worn it and gotten a ton of compliments on it as well as really feeling comfortable and happy in it. I can’t wait to wear it a bunch more times.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CLgBPFVndIQ/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

The last things I spent my personal budget on for myself was lunch at work once, ice cream for myself and a coworker once, and my membership to Beauty Pie. All low expenses that I was fine spending on in January.

What did you spend your money on in January?

Goals for 2021

Setting goals for myself has been a struggle lately. The goals I set for 2019 were not defined well enough for me to feel success with them (in my opinion), and last year I don’t think I really set any goals. This could either be a good thing, as I then didn’t fail a number of goals because of the circumstances, or a bad thing because it didn’t push me to stay motivated and work towards goals. This year I’ve sat down and brainstormed my goals, and am working to turn those into actionable items.

I have about six goals I am working on for this year:
1. Save $30,000
2. Read 90 books
3. Reduce my skincare, makeup, and clothing
4. Exercise
5. Post online
6. Take courses or do activities to learn new things

Some of these are more obviously defined, but others are not. Reading 90 books is pretty obvious as a goal, but ‘exercise’ is more vague. For those things that are more vague, I am currently planning to make more defined goals per month until I am in a place where I am ready to set a longer term goal.

My plans to address these goals in January were as follows:
1. Save $2500
2. Read 8 books
3. Sell 5 items
4. Exercise 9 times
5. Post at least once a week online
6. Do Artist’s Way activities
Extra: work on craft projects

I also talked about how I was working through goal setting in a recent YouTube video:

Do you have any similar goals or did you set any goals for the year?

2021

Well I thought back in May 2020 that I was going to be posting more here, but it turned out that didn’t happen. Perhaps my big plans were the problem? Or perhaps the general state of the world and how difficult that made it to be too productive at the time.

In case you don’t recall, I was planning to talk about my sewing projects, small brands I was enjoying, and various product reviews (to summarize the big plans as much as possible). Today I’m not writing a post with any big plans for posting again, but just getting started. I will maybe do all those things I had planned to do, but probably will also post a bunch of other things!

Anyway, here is to 2021. I have some goals for the year and will talk about them more next time. See you then.

Sheltering in Place…

Today is May 13th.
I began sheltering in place in my home on March 17th.
I find that although I am not often going out excessively, it is still quite different to spend all my time at home.

So I am going to get back to posting here. During this time in terms of clothing I have been sewing, continuing to look at smaller and sustainable clothing brands, and buying things secondhand.

In terms of skincare and makeup I’ve been purchasing less, and working on using up more items.

In the coming weeks I currently have a lot of plans for posts.

A quick list of some things coming up:

• sewing up my first and second pair of pants with an elastic waistband
• current plans of sewing projects
• breakdown of some items from small brands I own
• breakdown of items I am loving from small brands
• empty products reviews
• comparison of different pants from everlane
• sunscreen reviews as we head into warmer weather

 

Anything you’re interested in seeing?

My Favorite Outfits from May

Today I wanted to share some of my favorite outfits from the May 30×30 challenge.

I really love my thrifted reversible jacket. I wore it both ways during the challenge, and with a few different outfits. It is moderately lightweight and a bit oversized, so it is a good layer when it isn’t too cold or if it is colder as a ew different outfits. It is moderately lightweight and a bit oversized, so it is a good layer when it isn’t too cold or if it is colder as a layer over other things.

One of my favorite ways I wore it was with all black underneath. Here it is with my black tank (affiliate link for Nordstrom rack) and black wide leg pants (thrifted, from everlane)

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Sarah Turchan (@sassylifestory)

 

I also liked wearing my wide leg black pants with my high top vans. I wasn’t sure when I first paired them together, but I feel a lot more confident about the pairing now and enjoy it. My pink tank that I thrifted also has some nice detailing I enjoy.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BxStfQ6nfAW/

 

I didn’t end up wearing my blazer I included as many times as I hoped, but I liked this outfit I did share with it. I was wearing my wedgie jeans, but the addition of heels and the blazer made me feel like I was pulled together. I think I only did weekend errand running in this outfit, but it was fun anyway.

The blazer was thrifted from Goodwill, and I don’t think it had ever been worn before as the pockets were still sewn shut. Heels from target.

 

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Sarah Turchan (@sassylifestory)

 

For my final one of my faves, I combined my reversible jacket, pink tank, wedgie jeans, and high tops. I love all these items on their own and together they felt comfortable and brought me joy for the day.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BxnFS4nHcD2/

 

Thoughts on my outfits?

What I picked for my 30×30 clothing challenge

Today I am going to start some blog posts about the May 30×30 challenge I did. First up, I’m going to post my final round-up of items I picked. I had some items I had written on my list and eliminated, and some I added during the project. My final list had the following 30 items:

• 10 tops
  • Black tank
  • Pink tank *
  • Silk blue everlane button down *
  • Kiwi button down
  • Peach button down
  • White button down
  • blue/white stripe button down
  • three plain tops, green, black, white from pact and universal standard
• 8 bottoms
  • Wide leg everlane jeans
  • Wedgie jeans
  • Madewell skinny jeans
  • Black wide leg everlane pants *
  • Green slouchy everlane chinos
  • Mustard high-waist pants
  • Suede skirt *
  • White jeans *
• 1 dress *
• 6 shoes
  • nike sneakers
  • sandals
  • nude heel mule
  • black heels
  • red boots
  • high top vans
• 5 sweaters/jackets
  • reversible jacket *
  • green jacket from gap
  • blazer *
  • blue madewell cardigan
  • blue sweater from pact

I put a * by everything that was thrifted. I am an everlane affiliate, if you want to shop on their website through my links click here:

Here are pictures of all my items:

When I picked my items, I was excited to try some things in different ways. I planned to wear button downs open over my tanks, tucked in, over my dress, and tied up. I planned to wear my plainer shirts under the dress, and was just generally excited about the options.

Then May happened and things didn’t go as planned (as usual). I had thrifted the dress I included and got it right at the start of the month. I still haven’t worn it because I think that it may be not quite right for me and I’m thinking I might want to resell it. Then we ended up having some colder days than I expected and I added in my blue sweater and ended up wearing a lot of the same combinations to keep warm. I also had included some items because I wasn’t sure if I would want to wear them to an event I went to in the middle of the month. Looking back, I think it would have made sense to pick an outfit outside of the challenge for the event and include more things in the challenge that were varied and to make more variation in my outfits throughout the month. I also was sick one weekend during the month when I was hoping to be more interesting with my outfits (I’m not typically wearing very nice outfits to work because I work with kids and if I wear something different it inevitably gets dirty/ripped/etc.). It seems like I have a lot of excuses for my challenge not going quite as planned, but obviously life doesn’t always go as planned and I need to embrace that. I’ll share some posts of my favorite outfits and my plans moving forward next.  Thanks for reading!

Spring Capsule Wardrobe Challenge 30×30

Okay guys. It’s time to get serious. I am finding that I have been buying more clothing than I typically do now that I am not buying makeup and skincare. Although clothing is not a perishable like makeup/skincare and I have been removing items from my wardrobe that I am not wearing, I want to make sure to hold myself accountable on my clothing purchases. I am starting to buy secondhand clothing and make more ethical clothing choices, but I also want to buy less clothing.

As part of that, I am joining in a challenge that @petraalexandra is doing in May to choose 30 items in your wardrobe and create 30 outfits for 30 days. She wrote on her blog that this was started in 2010 by @kendieveryday and is similar to a 10×10 challenge (choosing 10 items to wear over 10 days). I’m going to do this challenge and plan that I am not buying more than one clothing item for the month as part of my challenge.

I also am going to start documenting what I’ve bought in the last four months since 2019 started so stay tuned for those posts as well if you’re interested.

I will post outfits here and on my Instagram, and if you’re interested you should definitely check out the hashtag for the challenge (#may30x30).

I haven’t finalized my list but so far I am thinking of these items:
10 tops (two tanks, four button downs, four plain tops)
8 bottoms (five jeans, chinos, skirt, black pants)
1 dress
5 shoes (sneakers, sandals, nude heel mule, black heels, red boots)
4 sweaters/jackets (reversible jacket, green jacket, blazer, blue cardigan)

This puts me 2 items under 30, but I also think I may have too many bottoms and shoe options I won’t wear. I will keep this list for now with two open slots to fill as the month goes on, and I’ll be evaluating at the end of the week if I think my options worked well for me or not.  It will only be five days into the month on Sunday, so I think if I need to make edits by then I can since this is my first challenge like this.  Anyone else out there done this before?

Friday night fun?

Have you ever had a moment where you just thought to yourself, “Wow, I can’t believe that happened to me”? I did this last weekend so I’m going to tell you all the story of what happened.

On Friday night I went upstairs and got in bed as I normally do, and my dog followed me up as he normally does to curl up in his bed. When my husband is ready to go to sleep he will call our dog to go downstairs and go outside before we all go to sleep. So he did that, but after they got ready to go outside and my husband pushed on the door handle the door didn’t open. Turns out the doorknob broke with the latch open and the handle no longer did anything. This goes up there on the list of things I never realized could happen. Things like an appliance breaking or a pipe bursting are in my repertoire of things that might go wrong in my home, but I never thought that I would be stuck in my home because of the latch breaking.

My husband ended up taking apart the knob and lock of the door, but he wasn’t able to get the latch fixed so our dog didn’t go out for the night and my husband went to bed extremely late. The fun doesn’t stop there though! We got to wake up on Saturday morning to the door being stuck still (obviously, no door fairies came to help us out in the night). So we woke up early and I planned to go out the window to take the dog out. Unfortunately this wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be. Our windows tilt inward to open, and they don’t open very far. The night before I had been thinking that I could go out the window no problem, but both my husband and I attempted to step out of the window unsuccessfully. Finally my husband had to pick me up and set both of my feet outside so I could slide out of the window and then he picked up and passed me the dog. I’m pretty sure Cooper was just thinking that he has been going out of doors for almost 11 years and that we were crazy for switching it up to this less convenient option.  We eventually got the door open after I went to Home Depot and bought a saw to cut the latch, but it was not a fun morning. So my hope is that no other latches break like this in my life, or if they do then I hope it is when I live somewhere with multiple doors to the outside.  Has this ever happened to you? If not, please share your craziest story of things you never thought would happen to you so I feel a little better!

Here is our sawed latch component in case you ever wanted to see what that looked like:

Makeup Inventory Video

Hey guys! If you’ve been following my page recently you will likely have seen my post about my numbers for my makeup inventory. I have posted a video on my YouTube channel showing all the products so check it out if you’re interested:

I’ll be updating on how my January went for my no-buy soon so come back in a couple days if you’re interested. Have a good day!

Skincare Inventory

Okay guys, today I am here to share with you my skincare inventory. I haven’t done one before so I don’t have numbers to compare it to like I did for my makeup inventory, but I do think it is useful to have starting numbers for my no buy year.  I have been posting pictures of most categories over on my Instagram as part of the AB New Year Stash Challenge, so if you want to see pictures of most things you can check there.  I do have some categories that have had items I’ve forgotten in the pictures, but most of the pictures are pretty accurate representations.  Anyway, here is my chart with everything: