I did it! For the second year in a row, I attempted the #nospendjanuary challenge and this year I was finally successful.
Let me preface, I did not include "eating out" or "happy hour" in my #nospendjanuary challenge because for me as a single person that is a huge part of my social life and sanity. I don't have a family to come home too so meeting up with others for dinner or happy hour is part of my routine. I will say I invited others to my house more in January and the weather did cause a few hiccups so in fact less money was spent dining out.
The second preface is, I did book a trip in January but I decided that wasn't really part of what I was trying to focus on. My focus of #nospendjanuary was to cut down on all the extra junk, crap, shit, that I tend to pick up at the grocery store, CVS or just online shopping seeing something cute that I think is a need instead of a want.
I also did not include gifts. I had to purchase a few gifts in January and those were not included because they were not gifts for ME! Ha ha!
January in KC was a miserable month weather wise, and so is February thus far. Because of this I was home more which I think generally leads to boredom and engagement in lifeless things like surfing the web or shopping the web. What I noticed is because I was focused on beating the challenge this year, I went back to using apps that weren't necessary shopping related. I rediscovered my love for Pinterest and finding recipes or things to make. I started doing more Instastories on Instagram, and I read more blogs. I did a little bit of organization around home and simplifying things, I worked a lot during down time and reconnected with friends through texting to satisfy boredom and stay engaged. When I talk about simplifying things, I unsubscribed to a bunch of emails which meant I didn't know who was having a sale or what was new and it was actually nice to wake up to 10 emails versus 100. It was hard to unsubscribe because I like knowing what is going on and what things are new or what is trendy and I also know the power of unsubscribe since I run the back end of of the MGA Constant Contact and can see who unsubscribes! ha ha!
I made the quickest trip into Nordstrom I've ever been on and I had one near crisis in Aldi. 🤣 I love after Christmas sales and finding things for the next year. I also love the smell of Frasier Fur. When I passed their holiday clearance and saw they had Fraiser Fur room spray, diffusers and candles I started putting them in my cart. And then I slowly took them back out of my cart and put back on the shelf. I took them off again, smelled them, quickly put them back and pushed my cart away! I originally thought I'll go back in February and see if they are still there but at this point I don't really care. Interesting how that happens.
I noticed I wore clothes I hadn't worn in forever during the month of January which felt like they were new again since I hadn't busted them out. Old becomes new. In 2018, I shopped in bulk for some necessities like toilet paper, Kleenex, soap at Boxed.com and that eliminated trips to Target or CVS for items like that which was good!
One other observation is I went back to making a grocery list. I used to go to the grocery store every week and it was kind of a free for all. What looked good, what sounded good, what was on sale. I couldn't believe how much I stuck to that list and bought just what I needed.
So there, now you have a little recap of #nospendjanuary. What a fun feeling when you succeed!
