FYI: this newsletter might look a little different than usual. I recently moved to a new newsletter platform so give me a few weeks to make it look nice and pretty. 🤩 

No Buy 2025

A couple years ago, I realized that private crafting Facebook groups were a fantastic place to buy sewing materials. People around the world would sell each other supplies that they no longer needed: lace, fabric, sewing patterns, even hard-to-find mechanical things like vintage sewing machine parts. For about a year, I regularly purchased fabric and notions from these groups, amazed at the sheer amount of leftovers people had.

But something I saw in these groups has haunted me ever since. I regularly encountered family members of the deceased trying to offload completely unused items. A woman’s son would post pictures of the hundreds of different fabrics his mother never got around to using. Family members often didn’t sew, and they were bewildered as to how to sell or give away fabric, buttons, yarn, and more — I suspect many of them ended up just throwing everything in the trash. The thought of that happening to all my fabric, yarn, clothing, or anything else really and truly freaked me out.

For this and other reasons, over the last several years I’ve worked to intentionally reduce the amount of stuff I buy, whether that’s yarn or clothing, or something else. I’m clearly not alone: in the last few months I’ve encountered more and more people who are vowing to reduce their consumption in 2025 and beyond (there are, of course, a bunch of accompanying trend stories about this). There’s also Project Pan, a beauty and skincare version of a No Buy where people try to use up all of their products before buying new ones.

There’s of course a financial element here: some people are challenging themselves to this because they’ve dug themselves into tens of thousands of dollars of shopping debt. But there’s also, I think, a general sense of fatigue: it is tiring to be told all the new things we are supposed to want. There is only so much influencer content we can stomach before feeling sick on excess.

My own personal No Buy goals are very similar to last year: shop as little as possible, and buy secondhand whenever I can. No new yarn or sewing materials until I use more of my stash up. Repairing and mending old items and giving away of swapping pieces that I no longer want. But this year I want to better document my progress, and tie it together with macro trends happening, whether that’s a new viral challenge, changes in government regulation, or community efforts popping up with similar goals.

An important part of my No Buy intentions is to cherish what I own — to actually use and love what it right in front of me. To that end, my plan is to pull together all the stuff I’ve used each month in these newsletters, so follow along if you like crafting, fashion, culture, beauty, or just thinking about how and what we buy. I’m calling this mini series Inconspicuous Consumption (which I also used last year), and this is January’s entry.

What I used this month

Over the holidays I thrifted this cute vintage (probably 1980s) folding basket. They’re typically used for knitting or sewing projects — lightweight things you will be reaching for regularly. It was $2.19 and needed some love, like a wipe down and fresh fabric. Luckily I had 8,000 options.

I had random amounts of both the brown toile print and the hot pink lining. This was a deceptively difficult project because I had to sew the fabric on to the wooden frame — when it was first manufactured, I’m guessing the fabric was sewn separately and then the frame was assembled into it. I ended up having to do a lot of hand sewing which is not my favorite thing. But I really love how cute and quaint this looks now.

I’ve also been knitting a lot since it’s been so cold in New York recently. In January I knit a Challengers-esque shawl that can be worn in a bunch of ways using yarn I’ve had in my stash for at least three years. You know the feeling of finally finishing a task you’d put off for so long for no reason? That’s kind of how using this yarn felt.

And finally, I knit a vest also using yarn I’ve had for years — a beautiful, soft yarn that was named Tortilla, which I think is perfect. I’ve knitting this same vest pattern three times now — it’s so easy and mindless, in a good way. I knit this while watching the really bad stretch of season two of Twin Peaks.

Reading list

• One of the biggest stories for the foreseeable future will be Donald Trump’s tariffs (check out my explainer here). Here’s the TL;DR of what the Trump administration has been up to: tariffs for Canada and Mexico are on and they’re steep. Actually, we take that back. But we will close this one random loophole so Chinese companies can’t keep legally skirting tariffs on stuff on Shein and Temu products. Actually, we take that back.

• Tariffs have been off to a very chaotic start and the situation seems to be changing daily— but check out this video I did with The Verge’s video team about a little-known loophole Trump is trying to end, that will make online shopping orders much more expensive.

• If you’re a fan of Shein, Temu, or Amazon, it’s very likely that the price of all this stuff is about to go up for you. In December I wrote about Amazon Haul, the company’s Temu copycat, and how this era of ultra cheap clothing and home goods might soon come to an end.

• As a reminder: no matter what Trump tells you, China, Canada, and Mexico are not paying the tariffs. You are.

Do you have any goals for the year around making art, or shopping, or mindful consumption? I’d love to hear.