💵What I Learned From a “Buy Nothing Year” in 2025 and My Advice for Mastering One Yourself.
Here’s an example of the “Does this count against the Buy Nothing Year” conundrum? Did the NYC marathon this year and while I paid $$$ in registration fees and ran on my old sneakers and no special new running gear. I did have to get special new socks which did keep me from getting any blisters. I managed to come home with armfuls of free swag. And then I got these cupcakes just for showing my medal.
I highly recommend everyone be like me. Specifically, attempt to do a “Buy Nothing Year” in 2026. I did it in 2025 and it wasn’t perfect. You will likely fail at doing it 100% right. It’s kind of impossible to get around not pulling your wallet out ever. But! You will buy less crap and rely more on your community to get what you need. Maybe you’ll actually save money and make a new friend. It’s kind of a game with yourself where you make up a lot of rules and frequently bend and break them.
But a Buy Nothing Year is a fantastic meditation on why we choose to look at objects and why we take them into our possession. What it means to keep something in rotation. And why we need “newness” in our lives.
Four lessons learned from a Buy Nothing Year:
Everything you want already exists out there. And you can get it for free. You just need patience to locate it or rework what you already have to make it exist.
So much stuff naturally accumulates in your life across a year. The gifts, the screeners, the hand me downs, the “I’m cleaning my place out do you want this (actually really cool thing)”? Because I work in arts, I am innundated in swag and promo materials. There’s so much that shows up without the process of me trying to buy it. Much of it will be regifted. Shamelessly regifted.
There’s a whole world of people who want to give really incredible, expensive stuff away for free to people who will give it an amazing new life. Most of these people with these riches are cleaning out the homes of their deceased relatives and want to see stuff have a good home. Many of them hold onto a guilt of wanting to see items have a life of “usefulness” before they go to the landfill. And if they know you are doing a Buy Nothing Year, they will attempt to give you their shit.
Nothing feels better than NOT getting to keep something forever. I think I became such a clutter magnet as a kid because having extra stuff made me feel safe. It also felt like I could live forever through the mementos I collected. That vacation could feel longer, or a friendship could live on through every scrap of paper I held onto. But now, I’m really enjoying not being surrounded, physically, by tokens and keepsakes. Buying nothing helps me develop an attitude of trust. If I need something, I need not hold multiple extras of it. I can trust that I can borrow it, or access it via my community.
Kristina’s 12 Tips at Mastering a Buy Nothing Year:
Decide why this would be important to you.
I’m facing the reality that when I die, my stuff isn’t going to be meticulously catalogued and preserved for some sort of feminist Asian American museum collection– it’s going into a landfill. The next generation already has way too much “vintage” and mass manufactured crap to pick from that they won’t dode over and frantically preserve my stuff either. Our stuff will outlive us and live eternally on this planet, and yet, nobody really wants it. In fact, the statistics say we have enough clothes on this planet to clothe the next 6 generations. After spending the first half of my life (assuming I’m going to live til 95-100) accumulating stuff, the only things I really need to collect now are memories, intellect and ideas. The focus is on de-cumulation.
I have a cluttered house, I am running out of room and it is getting harder to find my actual important archives. Because I was running a mask sewing group in the pandemic and the Covid-19 era brought a considerable fear of germs, I had online ordered a lot of new crap into my house in the span of two years. Unfortunately, many of these “Covid safer” purchases only made Jeff Bezos richer. It was a much needed “newness” in a very unmoving, virus filled time. And now, I’m unburying myself from it.
At the top of 2025, we were entering an era where billionaires had clearly figured out how to take control of government and further disenfranchise the poor. The less I could participate in systems that made the rich richer, and the more I could participate in mutual aid, the more I could assert some sense of control in an out of control time. A Buy Nothing Year meant maybe experiencing what a circular economy could look like– one where items have a continued lifecycle and what money that is spent goes around locally to mom and pop businesses.
2. Choose the parameters for your “Buy Nothing Year”.
Yes, you can still buy medicine, food, and pay your utility bills and rent. You can go to shows. You can replace the moldy sponge on your sink. Some people go hard core and cut their own hair, grow their own vegetables and use newspaper to wipe their butt. I’m not that hardcore. In fact, my spouse and I just got Costco memberships last week which feels completely counter to this commitment to buy less.
For me, I really wanted to curb how much non-biodegradable stuff made its way into the house. I especially wanted to use up a lot of office supplies, cosmetics and toiletries already in my home. I also wanted to cut way the hell down on textile waste and figure out what the heck it is has been in my home this whole time.
3. Join your local Buy Nothing Group or Free Swap Event.
The same shopaholic that would get seduced by Shein ads and Black Friday sales, now scans the Buy Nothing Group for my "accumulation fix”. It’s seriously so fun to get and give stuff away from the neighborhood. I also loved discovering the Radical Clothes Swap in LA. How novel! Just swap stuff!
Some of the things I got from my local Buy Nothing Group this year? Food, hangers, a snake terrarium for my friend Alma who lost her home (and her snake’s home) in the fire, sewing supplies, a silicone lid for cat food, a wedding dress and non heat hair curlers.
Some of the stuff I gave away? A bike, a drink mixing kit, food, a bedframe, show programs.
4. Go to free repair fairs or fix-it places.
Volunteering at the Echo Park Repair Fair this year gave me a sense of accomplishment like I never felt was possible. All these neighbors lined up with clothes that needed a simple mending stitch or a button. I couldn’t solve the big problems of the world, but I could help people with a dozen small ones.
And there is a whole world of dying fix-it shops— cobblers, watch repair, alterations people who want to extend the life of your stuff by longer. I see them as magicians.
5. Use your library card.
It’s not just books you get for free, I was able to cancel my New York Times subscription, get free movies to screen and free audiobooks. I even got free legal templates for contracts. I even get free New York Times Cooking via my library cards which I used to pay for. Los Angeles Public Library apparently has sewing machines and tools you can borrow or use with your card. I’ve yet to try it.
6. Ask yourself three questions before buying something.
Do I already have this or something like this?
Likely yes, and it’s worth doing an inventory of what’s in your home before you go shopping. Because not doing this is how I ended up with 5 containers of bug spray in my home, and all the other multiples. It’s so important to do an inventory of your pantry and kitchen before going grocery shopping. You can save hundreds eating something you forgot you had.
Does someone else likely have this and is not using it and can loan it to me?
Also yes. You just need to put very specific feelers out there. Someone borrowed a paper shredder from me this year. I borrowed coolers for ice. And it was great to return them becuse they took up so much space. Sometimes posting photos in the ballpark of what you are looking for helps get it loaned to you faster.
Where is this going to be in six months?
Likely, not in use.
7. Shop your closet.
This year, I re-wore a fancy dress I hadn’t worn since pre-pandemic. My gut bulges differently in it. I styled it differently. And I still got compliments on it. I was almost pissed like “Wait! You don’t remember when I wore this on the red carpet over ten years ago?” No, nobody really remembers. So wear it again.
8. Take photos instead of buying souvenirs.
Sadly what has killed the mom and pop souvenir vendor is the advent of digital photography. But, you don’t need that keychain which probably is made in China when you aren’t even traveling in China. Just take a pic of wherever you are. Say a memory aloud that you will keep with you. Write in a journal. That’s all the stuff that needs to come home with you.
9. If you do need to give gifts, souvenirs, or party favors, make them consumables.
Nothing says actually useful and sorta zero-waste like the gift that goes into a mouth, out the butt and flushed down the toilet. Tchotchkes are cute but they don’t taste as good as local chocolate.
10. Be that weirdo who takes more food home from the potluck than you brought.
The last few years of tracking grocery spending has taught me that food waste is everywhere. Especially at parties and potlucks. Last weekend I went to a potluck where 100+ people showed up. Everyone brought enough food for five more people than themselves and most of the dudes who showed up ran into the deli section of the grocery store, grabbed a container of premade whatever and dropped it on the table. The result? I came in with five bratwurst dogs and left taking 2 of the dogs back home, a whole container of chicken and two sealed pies.
Pro tip? Be that Auntie who brings empty containers with you to parties.
11. Is it a pain in the ass to not get what you need immediately? Yes. But enjoy the stories and conversations.
I happened to get married this year. A wedding on a Buy Nothing Year? How would this be possible? A wedding, even a small one, means piling tons of crap into your house. And how does one borrow their ideal wedding dress? This was my challenge.
Would it have been faster if I just bought my wedding dress at a store? Of course. But the transaction of money for clothes isn’t as meaningful as being in communication with that friend who loaned it, hearing the history of how it was shared.
Did asking Facebook for help finding a free Chinese wedding dress (in my insanely large-for-a -Chinese-woman-size aka US Size 12/14) lead to exponentially more unhelpful advice? Yes, and it was annoying.
But it was heartwarming to see so many Buy Nothing Group moderators rally to help me repost my “ask” in different neighborhoods of high Chinese populations. I was running into people at events who were like “oh I found out you were getting married because your request got posted to my neighborhood BNG”. It was building a whole social component back into my life to reconnect with the people who did lead me to the three dresses I ended up wearing for my wedding.
12. Need a fancy outfit you haven’t been photo’d in? Rent, borrow, or tailor what you have or what someone else will give you.
In 2022 (when my career hopefully didn’t completely pique after the success of Kristina Wong, Sweatshop Overlord), I was being honored and awarded at a lot of functions. It was post-pandemic and after being in pajamas for two years and not knowing who I was stylistically, I was trying to find my “look” again while being photographed and walking red carpets.
In preparation for these events, I panicked in the garment district, trying on “wholesale” but still overpriced fancy dresses that haven’t gotten their full value out of. I scanned websites for dresses. I was convinced that I needed to “debut” something new each time. I wish that I had thrifted and borrowed more of them. I wish I had figured out networks of people to borrow funkier fun stuff from so that I could return to them and never have to store these dresses for as long as I’m storing these babies.
Party dresses tend to be the most space consuming historical archives in my home. When prompted with the possibility of wearing a fancy outfit, my new method of BNG styling is:
–Shop my closet for a fancy dress that I’ve ignored for a while. Can I restyle, tailor or remake it? I’m very much a clothes horse so there’s a lot of hidden things in my closet I can often put on.
– Check Nuuly (a clothing rental site) which I find very affordable with reasonable loan terms. Since their deal is 6 items that can be rented during one month for $98+tax (about $16+ an item), I try to time my rental around a month where I know I have either several back to back events, or will be photographed a lot in a certain period. Note: I’ve only used them once because I now ask myself “Do I really want to spend $16 to wear this dress once or do I have something I’ve ignored that I can wear for free or thrift for the same price?”.
– Ask facebook groups and friends if someone has something and post some inspo pics in my style. This is how I ended up with three Chinese wedding dresses for my nuptials!
– If all of the above fail, I go to the thrift store.
Good luck on your low consumption journeys my friends!