Dropping shopping

I tried to kick my retail addiction (I have 200 pairs of shoes) for 12 days. It wasn't pretty -- but I did have a drink with Norman Mailer.

By Melena Ryzik

Read more: Money, Life

March 28, 2006 | I confess: I like to shop. A lot.

It's not just that I like to look good -- though who doesn't. It's that I enjoy the process: the browsing and bargaining, whether at a boutique or a fruit stand. I savor the socializing and the feeling of discovery that comes from talking to sales clerks (even the bitchy ones), scouting out discounts, scoping out the bags of fellow shoppers. Like speaking French or doing shots, shopping is a skill -- one that I have honed with dedication.

So when I heard about Judith Levine, a writer who, with her partner, Paul, gave up the pleasures of retail for an entire year -- no more Starbucks, "must-see" movies, or sushi -- I was intrigued. I wondered if someone with my lifestyle (that would be the, uh, acquisitive lifestyle) could follow Levine's lead for even a fraction of the time.

Levine's project began not as an attempt at contemporary martyrdom but as a way of understanding the role consumerism played in her life -- an experiment she documents in her new book, "Not Buying It: My Year Without Shopping." But Levine, a 53-year-old with spiky hair and a dimpled smile, who spends half the year in a cheerful Brooklyn apartment and half in a house in rural Vermont, was never, by her own admission, much of a shopper. She doesn't care about the latest trends, prefers home-cooked meals to eating out, and is admirably immune to impulse buys.

I, on the other hand, never pass up a yard sale, 99-cent store, thrift shop, or designer showroom. I've outgrown any semblance of closet space in my apartment; accessories now double as dicor in my bedroom. Whereas Levine seems almost embarrassed about having a dozen pairs of shoes cluttering each house, I have that many sitting under my desk at the office. (As part of this story, I planned, for the first time in eight years, to count just how many shoes I have. But the project proved way too daunting, both logistically and spiritually. My educated guess is 200 pairs, give or take about 50. This will become important later in the story.) I don't go shopping so much as I am shopping, all the time.

Millions of other people have already taken on the no-shopping challenge as part of Adbusters' annual Buy Nothing Day, which has been going on for 15 years. Hell, even I can refrain from shopping for a day. But could I do it for a month? Or, more realistically, a week? A week and a half of not buying anything except for food and subway rides and any work-related necessities? My friends said they would have bet on the outcome -- except no one thought I could make it.

Quite frankly, even I knew I was too weak to make it solo. Levine had Paul; so I enlisted the help of a team of experts, counselors and, of course, Levine herself, who offered to act as my guru and guide while I tried to break my own shopping habit.

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"You're in the consumption business," Levine says when I tell her about the movie premieres and club openings I regularly go to (and dress for) for work. This serves as a comforting excuse -- attention, IRS: Shopping is my business! -- but also as a pretty hefty challenge.

Of course, it's impossible to go through a year without shelling out any cash. Levine and her partner had to buy food and supplies for work and pay for housing and utilities. Medication for their cat, gas for their car when they're in Vermont, Internet access (work-related), and the New York Times also came under the heading of necessities.

But other than that, they were fairly austere -- much more so than I could be, even in under two weeks. With the exception of bread, none of the food they bought was pre-made or packaged. The need for pricey haircuts was debated, and movies, theater and all other forms of entertainment were ruled out. A full year after the project ended, Levine says she still thinks of a slice of pizza as an indulgence.

I know I can't make those kinds of drastic changes in only a dozen days. But from Feb. 22 to March 5, I decided to cut out all elective purchases, from fresh flowers to booze to rock concerts. I do make an exception, though, for prepared food. I just don't have the kind of lifestyle where I can come home and cook dinner in between assignments. A colleague tells me this is a cop-out. "You could eat cereal," he says. But 12 days of bran flakes? I decide to stick with being a cop-out.

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Day 1
Working from home, as Levine does, will make this whole endeavor much easier, I think. There are no smartass colleagues, no wandering past storefronts or encountering sales when I run out to do "errands" on my lunch break. But my Web-browsing history that morning is nothing if not tempting: shopping site after shopping site after shopping site. In the afternoon, I leave my computer and go out for a walk. It just so happens that I walk by a clothing store where I see the Most Perfect Dress to wear to my boyfriend's upcoming birthday party (and maybe once or twice after that). I go in and check it out, but I don't try it on. At this point, I don't trust my self-control around bias-cut silk.

In her year of living economically, Levine paid off her credit cards, saved several thousand dollars and even donated five times as much as she normally did to charity. I take out $100, half my usual amount, from the ATM. Will it last a week?

Day 3
I go out with some friends to a bar that I'm writing about. I could probably score a free drink from the staff, but that seems wrong. After hearing about my project, my friend offers to buy me a cocktail. I decline. (This isn't going to be any kind of challenge if I become everyone's pity party.) A little while later, she offers again; I decline. (Note to college students: Fake poverty is apparently much more of a turn-on than real poverty.) Not long afterward, we leave. Bar-hopping is not that much fun when you're sober, and once everyone has gotten over the novelty of my newfound puritanism -- a story I am figuratively, and sometimes literally, dining out on all week -- I get a little boring.

"What you see when you stop purchasing things is how central purchasing is to having a social life," Levine tells me. No kidding. Aside from working and going to the gym, I can't do anything -- in my 12 days of willful pauperism, I decline invitations to see four concerts, one dance show, two movies and a play. While all the leisure time means I'm actually making headway into my bedside stack of books, the restlessness is killing me.

Even my conversations are becoming stilted. One of the curious things about shopping is how much people like to talk about it. What they bought, where they purchased it, how they got the deal or fell for the scam: These are the small things we turn to so we can shy away from more important stuff.

I begin having philosophical discussions with my boyfriend about what all my shoe-mongering means. He says something about being shallow; I begin mentally cataloging my earring collection.

Day 6
I'm having odd withdrawal symptoms. It feels like I have an itch I can't scratch. A slinky-dress-shaped itch.

To distract myself, I decide to talk to people for whom shopping is a true calling, who think about it even more than I do: stylists. But it turns out that when they're not buying for clients, some stylists can be depressingly un-consumptive.

Next page: To stave off boredom, I do the unthinkable: I ask my editor for more work