My No Buy Year Reflections

Last November I made the decision to begin a “No Buy Year.” For me, this meant that for one year I would not buy any new clothing purchased for the purpose of social-wear or work-wear. I already own plenty of these things, and I wanted to wear what I already had and allow it to be enough. 
 
My clothes fall into two categories. The stuff I actually wear, and the clothes I want my ideal version of myself to wear. The clothes I want my ideal version of myself to wear are things I bought in hopes that it would make my life easier or make me look better. Clothes I thought would make me feel more put together. I also bought books I thought smart Terra should read. 
 
For the past eleven months each time I come across something I’m not wearing, and don't want to wear, or a book I don’t have any interest in reading, I’ve been asking myself. Who did you buy this for? The person you are? Or the person you hope to become? 

In the past I seldom purchased clothes that I needed to wear right away. My habit was to purchase clothing to fulfill future possible needs. I also stocked up on books I might want to read some day. 

Now I'm paying careful attention to my values and my aspirations. Confusing these two was the reason I’ve bought for my ideal version of myself in the past, and not for the person I am right now. 

I’m happy to report that I’ve let go of lots of clothes that I have little interest in wearing, and books that I no longer want to read. And I have reached my goal of not buying any new clothing for the sole purpose of social-wear or work-wear. Yet this didn't really feel like a No Buy Year. Instead, it has turned into a Mindful Year of buying clothes and books. Because I did buy new jeans and a few more flannel and linen shirts, because that’s what I find myself often wearing. I also bought a few books that I wanted to read immediately, and I did read those books. 
 
I’m enjoying this process of buying less, with a focus on mindful purchases based on my daily needs. I’ve learned good lessons by giving up my habit of buying for an imagined future filled with illusions of what I might want or need. And I plan to continue on the path with another Year of Less through 2025. I’m saddled up and ready to ride.

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