Shopping habits to break:
Rewarding myself shopping - just like Brooklyn said - I often buy lipstick in this situation. How many red lipsticks does one person need - probably not over 10! Note to self: shopping fast also includes buying lipstick, nail polish and eyeshadow fast.

Buying what I don't need - I can make do with what I have in my closet. It may not be the latest and greatest, but I can get dressed appropriately. I do not NEED to buy something new for a special occasion. Enjoy the occasion and enjoy what I currently own. I am attending a work conference in November and this is the sort of thing that previously I would buy a new outfit or capsule for, but not this month. I will shop my closet for this 4 day trip.

La Ped, I think this is going to be a good challenge for me!

Bras and fun are absolutely different categories FashIntern-quite far apart on the spectrum:)
Re capsule shopping, ill get round to writing a proper post about it, but 4 of my most successful purchases this year were bought together. Pants +2 blouses + cardigan that go together.
What i dont want to do anymore is to buy orphans without buying them a partner at the same time. Just because something looks like it should go doesn't mean it will.

Thanks for your thoughts on duplication, Sterling. It sounds like you've landed on some ideas that work.

I like duplicating basics and hard to fit items like pants but haven't duplicated enough yet to see where the weaknesses are. I hear you re: color . . . some colors in styles I've duplicated have become beloved and others are just confusing. It's been an informative process!

What replacement behaviors are people trying to institute? I have literally hundreds of tabs open on my phone, most of them from before I realized I needed glasses, just thought (repeatedly) that my mind was too foggy at the moment to be able to handle reading whatever it was. That led to me thinking I was losing my mental capacities, and then I discovered it was only my eyes that are declining (at that rapid pace). I got readers and now I am trying to work through that backlog every time I pull the phone out to browse while I wait for a subway, or my son or whatever.

FI, that's a great question. I just closed all the shopping tabs on my laptop. Instead I have three Google Docs to work on. I'm also organizing and editing photos from the past few months (want to get it done in time to get some printed as holiday gifts). So basically, finding screen-based things to do that are more productive than browsing. Online is definitely the issue for me, not brick-and-mortar. I might also unsubscribe from a bunch of retailer mailing lists. And if I ever have time (won't be before election day), I'll do some closet sessions where I try to remix older, less-worn things.

Oh, those emails!

This is a very interesting challenge and thought provoking. I follow the October de-clutter one and actually did a huge purge of my closet which allowed me to understand better my current preferences and my also current bad habits.
What I am trying to understand now is the difference between bad habits and what is just my preferences. For example, I love blazers and tend to buy and wear them no matter my life style and will wear them for years no matter what is the current cut because I will choose blazers that flatter me. So if I buy another blazer is that a bad habit or just part of my style identity?(Same goes for coats BTW)
I tend to buy way too many dress pants(that is, pants for work) because pants are not an easy fit for me and I have the illusive goal of finding perfect fitting pants.Same goes for skirts.
Meanwhile I buy too many blouses but seem to always be missing a casual cardigan or a sweater(not that I don't have them they just didn't seem to fit my needs.
One thing that I notice though , is that I feel attracted to the items when I see them in stock photos and decided to use Finds to keep my love for the items I currently have and to create ensembles. This seems to be working really well.

celia, for me, if the things I buy get lots of wear, then it's not a bad habit. It's when I start adding things that languish, or cause old favorites to languish, then I feel I have too much and it's time to re-evaluate.

KM, I have the same "add to cart" habit. Like you, I let things set there for weeks or months before I'm able to make a decision. I'm such a slow shopper, which is part of why it feels like such a time consuming habit!

La Ped, if it helps her analyze, eliminate, and pare down her purchase, I think KM’s strategy of parking the cart for a while before taking it to the register is more a solution than a bad habit. But the trick now is to use those spreadsheets in evaluating contents of the cart.

I just unsubscribed from tons of retail email because I’d either compulsively browse to entertain myself or I would shop due to boredom, chronic illness issues, avoiding social media, like you, La Ped ... etc ... blah, blah ...
Or, like Cindy, I sometimes would get a mini obsession with certain items. If one is fun, four must be super fun.
It all ends up making me less productive, less likely to enjoy what I have and more stressed about having too much.
So, I am definitely in on the November challenge!

My worst shopping habit is not being willing to spend money on better quality items as they have the same fit issues as the less expensive items so I settle for the inexpensive because I don't want to spend the money on something that doesn't fit.

My other bad habit is not buying something I really want because I think "I can make that" and it will fit better then I never get around to doing so. That is less of an issue now that I have more time to sew.

Lynn, if they fit equally well, and the less expensive isn’t cheaply made, why should you get the more expensive?