DON’T YOU DARE TRY IT ON!

We have just made it through our first weekend on the 30-day closet diet. For me, it did get difficult. My weekends consist of a part-time job as a sales associate at my favorite retail store. Knowing what’s been marked down, locating items of interests, and the worst, having a key to the fitting rooms where I can try on anything and everything at my disposal became my obstacles. This is a cocktail for disaster.

Prevention is key to the success of this diet. You have to know where your weaknesses are and how to outsmart them in order to feel progress. Here are some tips I find truly useful when I begin a cleansing process.

Preventative Measures

En route. If your daily trip to work includes s chance to site-see sales of your fav retailers, change how you get to work. Changing your route to work not only helps you to evade the clutches of sale signs but it also offers a chance for some unintended spontaneity.

Pocket Change. Having cash on you, instead of a card, helps to assuage the urge to buy. You can’t own if you do not have every last cent to pay for it.

Cold hard facts. Print out your bank statements from the last three months. Over a glass of wine or sedative, highlight all of your clothing and accessory purchases. Find the total amount purchased and write it in big bold numbers. Post near your closet door or put in purse. This is my shock therapy.

DO NOT TRY ON.  It is rare I will ever say those four words. But diet times call for diet measures. It is hard to avoid the calling of temptation at every corner. So if for some chance you find yourself in a store having a major sale, just browse. Do not start accumulating a try-on pile or a can-they-hold-this-for-me pile.

• Trying on may satisfy the craving, but it may just be your lucky day and pieces look great on you. Just save yourself the agony and don’t get trapped in the fitting room.

• Sale is only usually held until close of business that day. And the last thing you need is a deadline to purchase something.

I hope many of you are finding success in the initial phase of the diet. I hope that you are finding outfits in your closet that are beginning to inspire you and remind you of who you are. With that, just remember the only accessory you ever need is confidence (and trust me, it isn’t going to be on sale for 50% off)

Jey