Real Life: Clothes That Fit My Lifestyle

It has been four months since I began my "No Buy Year" of not buying anything I don’t need to wear on a regular basis on any given day, weather permitting. What I can tell you thus far is that my closet is now filled only with clothes that match my needs and moods. Everything purchased before I moved, that didn’t feel right for my new ultra-casual lifestyle in a new climate—has been removed, given away. I still have plenty, a bit more than I would like to own, and I have a desire to continue paring down. Yet the good news is I no longer open my closet door and stand in my underwear, in the cold, searching for this or that. No more decision fatigue. It’s 45 degrees. Do I want to wear my green flannel shirt? Or my blue and gray plaid flannel? 

Or, is it a day when I need to be a bit more dressed up? Easy. I have a couple of put-tother polished options too. I have a few outfit formulas depending on what the day calls for, some variety, but not so much that it overwhelms me, and everything plays nicely together, with the weather, and where I need to go, and what I’m planning to do. 
 
Maybe I should have called this a “Low Buy Year.” Because this month I have again purchased a few items, including another flannel shirt and another pair of comfortable knit joggers, and a couple of books that I was not able to get from the library. But I have not purchased any clothing that sits abandoned in my closet waiting for a turn to go out, purchased on sale, waiting for the right season, or the right occasion. This was my goal. 
 
I’ve also noticed that I’m buying way less overall. Spending less money at the grocery store and have lost the desire to browse anything that I don’t actually need. It’s now March 30th. Yesterday when I checked my bank account balance, I discovered I had more money than usual left over this month. Which means I was able to put the money into my savings account. This was also a paramount goal with this “No Buy Year” to save money for car repairs, and those other necessities and emergencies, and to have a bit to spare for humble vacations. 

Happier with Less Follow along with me.
Copyright Terra Trevor 2015-2026
Theme: ,
When you write, you lay out a line of words. The line of words is a miner’s pick, a wood-carver’s gouge, a surgeon’s probe. You wield it, and it digs a path you follow. Soon you find yourself deep in new territory. Is it a dead end, or have you located the real subject? You will know tomorrow, or this time next year. —Annie Dillard


We Who Walk the Seven Ways is Terra Trevor’s memoir about seeking healing and finding belonging. After she endured a difficult loss, a circle of Native women elders embraced and guided Trevor (mixed-blood Cherokee, Lenape, Seneca, and German) through the seven cycles of life in Indigenous ways. Over three decades, these women lifted her from grief, instructed her in living, and showed her how to age from youth into beauty. 

With tender honesty, Trevor explores how every ending is always a beginning. Her reflections on the deep power of women’s friendship, losing a child, reconciling complicated roots, and finding richness in every stage of life show that being an American Indian with a complex lineage is not about being part something, but about being part of something. 

University of Nebraska Press | Barns & Noble| Bookshop & IndieBound | Amazon

“Terra Trevor’s memoir is a gentle invitation to journey with her across decades, an invitation to notice with her as she seeks healing and finds belonging. There were phrases and sentences I underlined, places where I wept, passages that will remain with me as they drew me to insights I’d previously struggled to name. I closed the final pages and knew that in reading this book, I had been the recipient of a generous and much-needed gift. While I can certainly finish a book in a day, I chose to move slowly through this one, letting each idea, each paragraph, each reflection gently spill over me, allowing the pages to alter me in some way.” —Patrice Gopo, author of Autumn Song: Essays on Absence

 "Terra Trevor’s Pushing up the Sky is a revelation of the struggles and triumphs packed into the hyphens between Korean and Native American and American. From her, we learn that adoption can best be mutual, that the adoptive parent needs acculturation in the child’s ways. With unflinching honesty and unfailing love, Trevor details the risks and heartaches of taking in, the bittersweetness of letting go, and the everlasting bonds that grow between them all. With ‘Pushing up the Sky’, the ‘literature of adoption’ comes of age as literature, worthy of an honored place in the human story." —Robert Bensen, editor of Children of the Dragonfly: Native American Voices on Child Custody and Education