Thursday 28 November 2013

Clothing Budget



At the start of the year I set myself a clothing budget of £10 per month.  I had good intentions of making more clothes from scratch as well as refashioning things already in my wardrobe.  With one month to go I confess I've blown the budget (£127.01 plus £50 on a pair of winter boots) but as I look carefully at my purchases I've come to realise a few things.

1.  I bought 2 dresses and 1 blouse.  I've never worn the blouse or pink and black dress (on the left above) but I did wear the rose dress to a wedding and Dad's 70th party. I love this dress!

2.  I've worn the tights endlessly.  Essential as an extra layer under leggings and jeans to keep warm

3.  I've never used the handbag as it's more of an orangey colour than the red I was expecting (perils of buying on Ebay I guess)

4.  I bought a dress pattern, more than 10m of fabric, 30m of knicker elastic and 5 invisible zips I haven't used.  I did cut out a dress to wear to the wedding but time/motivation and unexpectedly selling the house around the same time put paid to that.

So what have I learned from this? 

A £120 annual budget is absolutely do able but I need to shop smarter and plan better.  I bought the fabric with good intentions but clearly didn't need it at that moment in time as I already had more wearable clothes than I thought.  I've also realised that fabric buying online can be hit and miss as you can't judge the quality.

I still haven't unpacked all my clothes yet which would suggest I have more than I need!  So my task between now and the new year is to sort through them and see if I actually have any gaps in my wardrobe. Then I can decide if I need to make something from scratch or refashion something I already have.

2 comments:

  1. You've done really well :-)

    Your total budget for the year would be a lot of folk's monthly, if not weekly, budget.
    Maybe you should Ebay a lot of your excess clothing and thus give yourself a new amount of cash from old clothes that could form the basis of next years clothes budget.

    Then it will be a zero spend on clothes !!

    ReplyDelete
  2. I like your thinking Sue!! :-)

    ReplyDelete

I love getting comments but I will delete any spam and rude personal comments without hesitation. Thanks