A Vinted Rabbit Hole, Some Irregular Choice Shoes and Making Do

I appear to have fallen down a Vinted rabbit hole.

Technically, I joined about a year ago. I had a flurry of enthusiasm, listed some things, sold a few and then decided my account looked a bit empty. Obviously, the sensible solution would have been to list some more things. Instead, I put my account on holiday mode until I had enough stuff to make it look properly stocked and put everything I intended to sell in a bag.

Where it has been languishing ever since.

More things have been added to the bag over the past year and “sort Vinted” has periodically made an appearance on my someday list, but that's about as far as I've got. Then last week Vinted came up in a group chat with some friends. I mentioned ‘The Bag’ and one of them very kindly offered to come round for a cuppa and help me get started.

So, I’m off again. Except I've also discovered the buying side of it and have already bought a couple of dresses and a top by Scarlett & Jo, a brand I really like and already own several dresses from. I know I like the fit and shape and they're good quality, so finding dresses that would have originally cost £100+ for around 20% of that feels like a proper bargain!

I've also been living in my wide-leg Halara jeans recently because they're ridiculously comfy - IYKYK. I'd been looking at buying another pair but as I'm still losing weight and don't know how long they'll fit me, I’d decided to hang on. Then the exact pair I'd been coveting appeared on Vinted, brand new with tags and half the original price!

Reader, I bought them!

I can already see how people get addicted to this. I know my own modus operandi well enough to recognise the potential for “keeping clothes in circulation” to turn into me spending three hours looking for bargains I didn't know I needed.

But it has also got me thinking about making do. Which is interesting considering I literally wrote a book called Project FAB! -No More Making Do which is coming up to its 5 year anniversary.

When I wrote it, I was meaning making do being tied up with self-worth. It was that little voice saying, “That'll do” when something didn't really feel right. Putting yourself at the bottom of the pile, waiting until you'd lost weight before buying clothes you liked, or wearing things that didn't make you feel good because they still had some life left in them.

I wrote about wardrobes full of clothes that were too small and how hanging onto them as motivation could actually have the opposite effect, because I'd done it myself for a long time. My smaller clothes from my slimmer days weren't a carrot encouraging me to lose weight. They were actually a stick I could beat myself with every morning when I opened my wardrobe.

Fast forward to now and I'm experiencing the opposite problem for the first time I can remember; a lot of my clothes are getting too big. I’ve got some lovely things in my wardrobe that are still in really good condition but there's always been a bit of me that hates getting rid of perfectly good stuff.

It's the same bit of me that will use a slightly scratchy towel for years because there is absolutely nothing wrong with it. I really don't like waste and the idea of perfectly usable things ending up in landfill. I remember being genuinely horrified when I read that the equivalent of a rubbish truckload of clothing is landfilled or burned every second.

So I feel a bit of a conflict between “No More Making Do” and making things last but actually the difference is in what's driving the decision. There's a difference between making do with something because you don't feel worthy of anything better and continuing to use something because that choice aligns with your values.

So selling things on adds another dimension. If I sell a dress that's too big, somebody else might be sitting at home waiting for their parcel to arrive feeling exactly as excited as I am about my Scarlett & Jo bargains. And I particularly like that thought because finding nice, good-quality clothes second-hand can be tricky when you're plus size.

Knowing that somebody might find one of my dresses in their size, love it and get that little “Bloody hell, look what I've got for twenty quid!” buzz makes it much easier for me to let it go. However, my enthusiasm for keeping clothes in circulation does have limits.

Shoes - I've got a few pairs of Irregular Choice that I absolutely love.

Would I buy them now?

No.

Am I likely to wear them again?

Probably not.

Am I emotionally ready to accept that and sell them?

Also no.

And I think that's where my thinking has changed slightly since I wrote Project FAB!

My wardrobe weeding advice in the book was pretty ruthless. I suggested asking yourself whether you'd still buy something now, whether you loved it, wore it and whether it fitted. If things didn't earn their keep, out they went. I still think those are useful questions, but if you're not ready to get rid of the shoes, keep the bloody shoes.

I've always been about helping people make things work for them, but these days I care even less about style rules than I did then. Obviously, I still know all the stuff so if somebody wants to understand why a particular shape, proportion or colour does what it does, I'll happily explain it. But I'm actually far more interested in how they feel.

It’s all about dressing for joy – which doesn't necessarily mean wearing the brightest, sparkliest thing in your wardrobe. If I'm working from home and not seeing anybody, dressing for joy might mean comfy pyjamas. If I'm going to a drag show, there will probably be colour and sparkle involved and for a speaking event I might want drama, sequins or glamour. Something that feels absolutely right one day can feel completely wrong the next.

That's the ultimate test for because when something doesn't feel right, you hold yourself differently. When you're comfortable and confident and feeling the bee's knees, you hold yourself differently then too.

Maybe that's why I'm enjoying buying second-hand clothes. My body is changing and I don't want to make do with things that don't feel good. Buying something somebody else is finished with and passing on something I'm finished with feels like quite a nice solution.

Coincidentally there’s a thing called Second-hand September, which I'd completely forgotten about and also, I'm currently preparing for my talk at DeclutterCon in October, where I'll be talking about identity and our relationship with clothes.So perhaps it's no surprise this stuff is rattling around in my head.

Five years after writing No More Making Do, I still don't want to spend my life putting up with things that make me feel a bit shit because they'll do and I’m far more interested in why we keep things, why we let them go and how they make us feel while they're ours.

Meanwhile, I've got a bag of clothes waiting to be listed, several Vinted parcels heading my way and I need to drop stuff off at the post office.There is every possibility that by this time next week I'll have made £37 and spent £112. I'll keep you posted.