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"It&amp;#39;s hard for Elizabeth Jayne Liu to pinpoint exactly when she knew she had a shopping problem--when her shoe collection grew so large it had to be moved out of her closet and onto the stairs; when she realized she subscribed to 111 different retail emails; when she started buying things she couldn&amp;#39;t even remember--but it was exactly one year ago that she decided to take matters into her own hands. She impressively instituted a ban on buying anything for herself (other than necessities like food), and it lasted 365 days, until she turned 31 just yesterday. Find out what she bought to break the boycott and learn all about her journey, after the jump.\nPinterestFacebook&amp;quot;I haven&amp;#39;t shopped for a year, but to be honest I still have things in my closet with the price tags on them&amp;#8212;that&amp;#39;s how bad it was,&amp;quot; Elizabeth tells us of her shopping problem (which she qualifies as a bona fide addiction). &amp;quot;I would go into my closet and be like &amp;#39;Who bought this dress? It&amp;#39;s hideous!&amp;#39; and apparently I did.&amp;quot; She decided to embark on a yearlong project to stop shopping, inspired in part by the book The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin, and in part by an incident that showed her just how bad things had gotten. &amp;quot;I had read that Shu Uemura was no longer being sold in the US, you had to buy it online. I don&amp;#39;t even use Shu Uemura, and I ran out and stockpiled all of it. And I came home and was like, I don&amp;#39;t even know what to do with half of this stuff.&amp;quot; She decided that she had been pretty happy before she started her samurai-like shopping trips, and could be just as happy again, so she swore off new stuff, and started a blog--Flourish in Progress--to keep herself accountable.\nThere were minor slipups along the way (hilariously enough, a Monchhichi doll proved impossible to resist, for nostalgic reasons), but little by little, Elizabeth started digging her way out of her closet and wearing the stuff she already had, and there was plenty of it. &amp;quot;If something was on sale it wasn&amp;#39;t enough for me to have it in black or a basic, I was like, &amp;#39;It&amp;#39;s only $19.99, certainly I need it in orange and purple too.&amp;#39;&amp;quot; She also got a good lesson in what&amp;#39;s worth shelling out for. &amp;quot;This year has taught me, after looking at the hideous things in my closet I&amp;#39;ve been forced to wear, that I need to be mindful. The things I bought that I consider investment pieces, like a beautiful pair of slacks that are well made, those have lasted me. The silly T-shirts I had to have in every color are already junk. So I&amp;#39;ve also learned to buy really, really quality pieces.&amp;quot;\nPinterestFacebookAlong the way, her readership grew, thanks to Rubin--Elizabeth wrote a letter to the author who first inspired her, and she was so smitten with her self-imposed shopping ban that she wrote about it on happiness-project.com, and supporters flocked to the blog. Elizabeth believes they&amp;#39;re there because they feel something totally relatable in her writing. &amp;quot;Part of the reason people come back to the blog is because I&amp;#39;m totally imperfect and maybe even a hot mess and I&amp;#39;m not afraid to share that with you,&amp;quot; she tells me. &amp;quot;I tell them, &amp;#39;hey guys, I f**ked up today,&amp;#39; and they&amp;#39;re very open and honest in the comments too.&amp;quot;\nYesterday marked the official 365th day--and Elizabeth&amp;#39;s 31st birthday--and she celebrated with what she calls a &amp;quot;very unglamorous purchase&amp;quot;: A sweatshirt, because the Los Angeles evenings are chilly, and she&amp;#39;s been suffering through them for the better part of a year. But she plans to move on (cautiously!) after that. &amp;quot;I&amp;#39;m going to treat myself to a lovely, sparkly totally unnecessary pair of heels,&amp;quot; she says. But that doesn&amp;#39;t mean she&amp;#39;ll return to her old shopping ways. &amp;quot;With an addiction you&amp;#39;re never really cured, but if you spend enough time away from it, it gives you new perspective on how you can deal with it. Just take yourself out of the tempting environment. Even though you yearn to do it, there&amp;#39;s more self-control. I feel like it&amp;#39;s permanently changed the way I feel about acquiring.&amp;quot;\nRead all about Elizabeth&amp;#39;s inspiring journey at her blog, Flourish in Progress, then tell us...are you a shopping addict, also? Do you find yourself scooping up impulse buys just for the sake of buying? Are you taking another look at your spending habits thanks to this woman? Discuss!\nPLUS...\n\nAnd the most expensive place to shop in America is...\n\n\nAlmost half of women say they hate shopping for clothes. Are you one of &amp;#39;em?\n\n\nDo you wear your new stuff out of the store? Kate Moss does! \n\nMore Ways to Get Glamour:\nChat with celebs, VIP fashion stars, beauty pros and more on our Facebook page! Visit Facebook.com/glamour for this month&amp;#39;s schedule\nGet the latest fashion updates via Twitter on @glamour_fashion\nCheck out our chic Tumblr!\nRead Glamour magazine on your iPad&amp;#8212;print subscribers, it&amp;#39;s now part of your subscription plan!\nLike freebies? Enter the latest Glamour sweepstakes!\nSign up for our fashion and beauty newsletters to get easy style tips (it&amp;#39;ll make your inbox 10x sexier, we promise).\nAnd, did you know you can read glamour.com on your smart phone?! It&amp;#39;s the ultimate boredom buster.\nWant even more STF? Follow us on Twitter!\nLatest Tweets!\nFollow us on Twitter!"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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