40-Day Challenge: Do Without Stuff

I know it is boring to talk about what you are giving up for Lent, because it becomes nothing about the altruism and all about the ego and that's neither very holy nor actually, very polite. Except I wanted to tell you what I am giving up for Lent because I also thought it would be an interesting challenge coming off the back of my success on the Whole 30 again in January (did I tell you how much I enjoyed the Whole 30? I liked it so much I did it twice!). So given that I've got roughly six weeks, I'm planning to give Make Do and Mend a real go.

So the rules for my experiment are to stop buying anything except groceries: that means no new clothes, no new makeup, and absolutely positively no clicking "buy it now" on cheeky little Amazon sprees (a nasty habit my Prime membership has enabled me to indulge these past few years). I'm going to make do with what I have and remake it, re-read it, re-do it. If there is anything I really, really want, I will have to wait until after Easter to buy it. This will allow me to, what? Learn to live without stuff, think more carefully about making purchases (is this something I really need, or am I just buying it to fill a gap in my day), and most importantly, save money on things like takeaway coffees or bought lunches that I could very easily bring from home. I'm expecting this to be especially hard at a time of year when the garden requires attention and could benefit from new plants...but I know I've got perennials that self-seeded from last year, and a whole crate of un-used seeds from previous planting projects, so I'm going to sow those and see how they do. I know it's going to be the start of a hungry month. Wish me luck!