I am noticing resistance to clothes shopping, and shopping online for other items I need whether it’s in general life, or for our upcoming road trip, or other projects I’m doing like, digital organization and backups, so buying an external hard drive.

The thing I’m struggling with is: I enjoy online shopping in general. I’m good at saving the links + appropriate notes and info I need to come back to something, but it’s with clothes shopping.

After joining scholars, I lost 75 lbs. Of course, when I got here to this size, I needed new clothes to fit my body. I read style statement and loved it and enjoy dressing myself in amazing clothes. But, it’s hard to find the time to shop for the clothes. Here are a couple obstacles (thought obstacles or regular obstacles):

• Scheduling the time to online shop for items, carving out that time in Monday Hour One
• Budgeting the amounts, allocating current cash toward certain items, making sure I have adequate funds in my “clothes” line item, or the amount for a certain item ready to be spent in my account
• I’m picky to shop for – my arms are somewhat short, I’m sensitive to certain fabrics and textures and fits like if jeans sit too low on my waist, super annoyed.
• I live in a very rural area, the closest town with clothes stores is 45 minutes away which I go to rarely, and even then, my two options that I like with adequate variety of clothes in my general style and in my budget are Kohl’s and Old Navy – Kohl’s I am phasing out because their quality sucks and I keep having to return things because they come with holes in them etc. I am 1.5 hours from a shopping mall. 2 hours from St Louis with abundant in-store options.
• I hesitate ordering things online because I usually need to try things on before I buy them because of the things I’ve already listed. And failing ahead of time by telling myself I don’t want to return it/I’ll prob have to return all of these items anyway because of any of xyz reasons, I may as well not even order them. So annoying.
• I’m a minimalist/don’t like to own tons of clothes just for the sake of owning lots of clothes – I don’t necessarily describe myself as someone who has capsule wardrobes, I just value versatility, quality, durability over quantity, and therefore, that makes certain items that fit my needs more difficult.

C: Shopping for my clothes online and ordering them
T: I’m super picky (and that makes me hard to shop for.)
F: Frustrated
A: • Resist scheduling time to shop online for clothes
• Create systems and regularly reoccurring routines for shopping, selecting, sourcing, ordering, etc (for instance, every friday for 30 minutes is shopping + sourcing time where I touch base with what clothing items I need/want, and my budget)
• Save links to items I want, with notes about their sizes, price, color, other relevant info “for later”
• Tell myself I need time to think about this particular item/set of items to make sure it hits all my marks for buying clothes
• I search online for an item (say, a pink athletic workout jacket), save the links, don’t decide something then and there, I come back to the links eventually, basically delay making a decision/pulling the trigger
• Generally overthink my choices but I justify it by saying see I’m sensitive to certain textures and fits, or I only like wearing certain colors, or my arms are short, etc.
• Re-search for the pink jacket on poshmark multiple times – tell myself “someone might have posted another one since the last time I searched!” and then I refresh my search
• Criticize my past self when I’m getting ready/picking out my outfit because my closet is so bare – tell myself “omg you should have gotten me some clothes in here by now, what have you been doing? Nothing apparently. Come on already, I want some clothes.”
• Resign myself to just picking up random basic pieces of clothes during my weekly shopping trip to walmart – in other words, I settle for walmart clothes
• Begrudgingly schedule time to drive to, and shop inside stores so I can see how they fit me
• Use willpower to actually sit down and pick out a jacket and make a decision and order it – (I feel like I’m dragging myself along to get it done)

R: I don’t buy clothes. (and I don’t enjoy the process of shopping and selecting items for myself)

Obviously. Who would? I’m mean to myself, critical of myself and my body/sensitivities. If I were my own personal shopper, it makes sense why she doesn’t want to shop for me.

But I do genuinely enjoy wearing amazing things I’ve picked out for myself – like those moments looking in the mirror like damnnnnnn girl you look GOOD (wink). I do have that, I just feel like this one area of clothes shopping is what’s catching up to that self concept/version of myself in the mirror.