Do you feel you have too many clothes, but find you can’t stop shopping? We have a challenge for you.

If you find your wardrobe overflowing with stuff, often stumble upon an item of clothing and go ‘hey, I didn’t know I had that!’ or can’t stop frequenting malls and coming home with loads of clothing you don’t know if you’ll ever wear, we have the perfect challenge for you.

In the spirit of “The Great American Apparel Diet”, where a hundred ladies have decided to go on a fashion diet for one year, we’re doing something similar, only it won’t be for a year, it’ll be three months. The idea of the challenge is to get you to live with what you already have, spicing up your outfits creatively.

The rules are as follows:

1) From April 1 to June 30, you will not allow yourself to buy any new clothes. This doesn’t include underwear, footwear, bags and accessories (like jewellery and scarves.) Tops, dresses, jeans, pants, skirts and the like are no-nos.

2) You are allowed to swap clothes with friends and family members.

3) You can accept gifts of new clothes from friends and family, but you aren’t allowed to request for clothes as gifts.

4) Every week, you will write a log of your activities. For example if you happen to go with a friend on a shopping trip, and felt so tempted to buy something and resisted, talk about that. Or if you saw a pair of shoes that you had to have, and they were on discount and you succumbed, write about that. The log doesn’t have to be very long, and pictures are welcome. Every week talk about the different challenges you went through.

It’s just clothes, see? And it sounds completely doable. Think about it – you’ll save money, time spent on shopping and you might discover things in your wardrobe you haven’t worn in ages.

Also, you may find that having only what you already own to work with, you may actually come up with creative ways to dress yourself. And since accessories and scarves are allowed, this will give you a good chance to experiment.

Swapping clothes with friends will also give you a chance to play around with different styles that you may not have been open to previously. Think of all the fun you’ll have with ‘new’ clothes, without even having to shell out a single cent!

If you feel like you’re up for this challenge, send me an email at nasa@thestar.com.my.

To read about The Great American Apparel Diet, click here http://www.thegreatamericanappareldiet.com.