My Year of No Shopping. April 2023.

April showers brought… grey skies, which highlighted my gray hair. Yes, friends. It’s time to go there. It is time to connect the dots between no shopping and no hair dye. Welcome in. Enter at your own risk.

Listen, let me begin this journey with some facts. 1. My grandpa (one of the sweetest humans I’ve ever known, a sub-fact) had a completely white head of thick, wavy locks by the age of 35. 2. My mom, in turn, inherited his white locks and ditched the dye when I went to college.

In high school, I was her colorist. Just kidding. I did not mix colors, but I did apply the store-bought dye monthly. I was quite good at it what with my systematic ways and attention to detail. I was thorough and exact. A salon stylist just wouldn’t do after the likes of me.

Kidding again. She didn’t want to pay for it.

But in any event, she was once like me, sporting dark, dark brown hair. And when she started dying her hair, it never really “took” the color so she was left with more of a blond-ish something mane.

And when she stopped dying it, and it went its natural white — it was, and still is to this day — so breathtakingly beautiful, you gotta wonder why she’d ever hide that mane.

But we know the answer. Society. We are taught to fear grey and white hair, to chase youth and its singular form of beauty, and to complain about aging/changing instead of focusing on the benefits.

Society be damned, her white hair - thick and luscious - was and is elegance personified.

When I turned 30, I pulled about twenty white hairs out of my head before heading to my birthday party. They sprouted along my hairline, the right side of my forehead. (I like to call it my Cruella de Vil stripe). I had bangs, and the whites weren’t really noticeable.

I had never dyed my hair before that day. I started dying my 99.9% brunette hair a darker brunette color later that year. All to hide those few wisps of white.

Unlike my mom, my hair always took the color so I remained dark brunette. But as I approached 40, I started getting the urge to ditch the dye. It was pre-Covid, so I wasn’t yet influenced by the wave of women who unintentionally stopped dying due to lockdown. Instead, I was just beginning to be honest with myself. Dying hair is time-consuming and costly (I chose the salon instead of the boxed options). Another fun fact: when you dye your hair dark, in three weeks’ time the white roots pop out at the hairline and part. (My attention to detail makes this unbearable.) I could see the road stretch out ahead of me: soon, I’d be sitting for hours in the salon every 3 weeks. The upkeep sounded exhausting.

But secretly, in addition to those items, there was another reason to stop. I think silver hair is gorgeous.

I read about a “temporary” dye and, like my mom, started in-home applications. Maybe I could dye it with this temporary gunk then wash it out one day and voila, I’d be done.

Four months in, I gave in to societal pressure and went back to my stylist. I wasn’t ready.

For the first ten months of Covid, I diligently returned to the temporary dye. Then I caved and returned to my stylist. Three weeks later, here and there the roots popped.

That was my final coloring at my stylist’s. I committed to the temporary dye. For 15 months. While doing so, I followed dozens of “silver sisters” on Instagram. Seeing so many women with silver hair - the color I’d always found beautiful - started normalizing it to me.

But still, for 15 months I wasn’t ready. The dye was messy and stained my pillowcase. I’d avoid washing it for days to try and keep the color longer. I tried not to get my hair wet in swimming pools in the summer. It was a hassle but I held on.

Then I woke up one day, and I was done.

And here, my friends is the plot twist. Turns out, it wasn’t temporary dye. It wouldn’t wash out. Sure, to some extent it did. And, I’d done such a horrible job applying it to the back of my head, I saw greys back there pretty early on. But I knew there were more. And they were staying brown.

The beauty industry prays on our fears and insecurities, they lie through their teeth, and they make millions off of us.

ANYWHO, all forms of color stopping in late June 2022. And ten months later, I am a silver sister. There is A LOT more white than I predicted, folks. In certain lights, it doesn’t seem so. In the white lights of grey skies (such as those that have covered my fair city for the better part of these last six months), it’s shocking how much white shines through.

But what, you ask, does this have to do with not shopping, Maura?

My color palette has changed. That’s what.

I remember it happening to my mom when she let her white shine through. After a lifetime of jewel-toned colors highlighting her beauty, now the pastels, the sky blues and periwinkles, the soft pinks, and even hot pinks - they suited her.

I, too, spent a lifetime leaning into jewel-toned clothes.

And now I’m ready for my pastel chapter.

But I’m not shopping.

And holy fuck am I squirmy.

I want a whole new wardrobe. I need a whole new wardrobe. The brighter the better. Pinks and periwinkles, mint greens, and maybe even yellow. I don’t know! It’s all up in the air.

Luckily last fall I’d collected 3 shades of pink lipstick. And that will quell my desires a smidge. I never was much of a lipstick gal, but here I am, leaning into cotton candy pink. And it’s really fun.

Halfway through the month, I took a hot pink t-shirt dress to my seamstress. I’d bought it second-hand last summer, subconsciously knowing I’d need hot pink in my closet. The Last Summer Me and the This Spring Me both knew that a t-shirt dress would never do a thing for my figure, so I had it turned into a t-shirt, sans dress, and I am momentarily abated.

I have to wonder if one of my mulligans will be clothing, not those crewel curtains that I so achingly lusted after in January.

Anyway, in addition to spring fever and silver hair making me gah-gah for pastels, another interesting development arose this last month.

I started making my own nondairy milks. (I see you. I see you question my definition of “interesting.”)

I am sick of recycling all the containers of nondairy milk that I go through. (DO they really get recycled? Don’t answer.) I add soy milk to my coffee, and I use almond milk for my smoothies. I drink lots of coffee, and I make massive smoothies. I go through a lot of milk, m’kay?

But let me back up. Somewhere in early April, Instagram got me. It just algorithmed me into wanting to buy “A Nutr Machine.” A what, you say? I know. Bold title. A nutre machine basically makes homemade nondairy milks.

In the moment between seeing the ad, clicking on the ad, and scrolling down two swipes, I was convinced this would solve all my worldly problems.

I even sent the link to my husband, telling him I’d found my first mulligan.

Then I paused, returned to more pressing issues, namely feeding my daughter and doing my job. The desire to acquire hung in the back of my mind until a few days later, when a memory of an old friend came to mind.

The image is so real, it’s like it was yesterday. I’m in the door frame of Halley’s one bedroom in L.A., watching her blend almonds and then strain them with a nut milk bag (careful not to call it a “nut sack” to your husband), making almond milk. It was arresting to me because the Halley I knew in Brooklyn ate out exclusively; she certainly didn’t make homemade almond milk to splash in her morning coffee.

That was 5 years ago. She continues the practice to this day. She owns a blender, not a nutr machine. (The jokes this name evokes, you guys… Phew! I mean, I’d say get your head out of the gutter, but I’m right down there with you.)

Guess what? I, like fair Halley, own a blender, too.

Do you own a nut sack - I mean, a nut bag - Maura? Yes. I do. Because five years ago, upon my return from her L.A. trip, I purchased it on Amazon lickety-split. And it sat, unopened, in my cabinets, for five years. I would have donated it if it weren’t for the fact that it took up only a smidgeon of space. That’s where willy-nilly shopping leads me. Nut sacks stored in cabinets for years on end… Which, in turn, leads to a year of shopping paralysis.

To make my homemade milks, I didn’t need to buy anything.

I have everything I need. (Dare this be my mantra?)

So I soaked and I blended and I strained. Soy milk required a few more steps, but I stepped those steps, and I’m very, very proud of self.

What began as an Instagram ad turned into a whole new routine.

I’m even finding ways to use the almond pulp. The soybean pulp is just going straight into the compost pile though, because that’d just be a bridge too far, don’t you think?

But let’s take a step back and see the larger picture. I’m finding time to make homemade milk. But it’s not hard to find. Because not shopping (and not sitting in a hair salon) is giving me the gift of Time. I’m living in the promise of the premise, and I’m tickled pink. (FULL CIRCLE pink reference.)

Nevertheless, I still discovered things I wanted. And below is my list. As ever, it’s humbling, to be me:

• Nutr Machine

• Milky Plant

• Christine Vachon’s book Shooting to Kill suspect it needs to live on my shelf but found a copy at the library)

• Riply Raider pant

• The Ayurveda Experience Body Oil

• Quilts-piles of quilts

• Shred w Em

• BelleBooty Belt (why this name, guys. why)

• Macro Book by Lauren Gleisburg (we all know this would go unread)

• Lit Axis Strength Trainer

• Feetup Trainer

• Arena Strength Exercise Card Decks (who’s in the mood to exercise, amiright?!)