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Confessions of a Retail Therapy Devotee
Jan. 27th, 2023 03:22 pmSo, in response to someone else's post about excess spending I have been thinking about my relationship with money and desirable things.
First of all, I have zero internal sense of "how much" a particular amount of money will buy. I have a deeply held belief that if I have one hundred dollars, I can buy as many things as I want as long as each thing is less that $100.00. They might all each be $99.99, but since less that one hundred, I can have them all. Yes, in my head that is stupid and obviously logically ... well it doesn't even get to be invalid because it is so far from logic there is no getting here from there. But in the mushy emotional wishful place that I live, it is *true*. (Consider that to be a big pink set of puffy letters, pulsing with sparkles.)
So, as a young poorly paid woman, living with freakish interest rates for her student loans, I fell afoul of easy credit. I had parents to help me out (consolidated all the debt into one payment to them), and have been mostly okay since. Lorne and I did have a squeaky period of low cashflow, but again through good fortune we climbed out and made big efforts to stay out. Successful efforts.
I now have a fairly constrained relationship with shopping. I subsume my shopping impulse into grocery shopping as much as possible. Going into stores for Christmas or birthday shopping is dangerous.
So.
What do I get from shopping?
There is the pleasure of choosing. Having an array of desirable goods before me, and determining that this particular item would suit me best is very happy making. As I have discovered when I get things home, I don't even really need to *own* the thing - and in fact there is seldom any further pleasure in ownership - to get the pleasure from choosing.
I even think that when there is pleasure from owning, it is usually in the context of showing off the thing to other people and imagining their approbation of my choosing skills/talents/flair.
This one is odd, but there is something pleasurable about pushing around a buggy or dragging around a basket of chosen things while still in the place where more choice can occur. No, I don't get it either, but I can definitely feel it.
Another pleasure of shopping is appearing to conform. Given my age and upbringing, I feel that I "should" want to entertain in my home with dinner parties and cocktail parties. I have, over the years, bought a lot of matching cutlery and glassware and paper napkins and cloth napkins and tablecloths and little matching nibbly bowls and blah de blah de blah. I still have some pleasure at opening my china cabinet and viewing my glassware all lined up and beautiful - and never touched by human lips.
When I shop for teatowels I feel that *any* *moment* *now* I will become the super hostess my upbringing has determined I was meant to be. It could happen even now. When shopping for teatowels I am not struggling with societal expectations, I am relaxing into them, resting my weary head on Mother Nature's apron-clad bosom.
Another pleasure is the fondling of things. I am a sucker for a beautiful bowl. I love the hand of a 100% rayon dress. Leather wallets - let me wuffle that aroma just a little longer. The flutter of the pages of a perfectly bound book. And for some reason I want all the springform pans. Especially the itty bitty ones that are of no practical use whatsoever. Spunging the clasp on a springform pan is so do-again-able.
And the big pleasure of shopping, which is obvious once spoken, but not named while experienced, is that when I am choosing, I am not having to think about the real parts of my life that are perhaps a little too much to bear at the moment. This is especially true when one's actual choices are zilch.
As I say, while I am not immune to buying crap I will never use, I do try to drive all my shopping into groceries or thrift stores (pretty bowls).
I am finding that online grocery shopping is *excellent* for my shopping addiction. In a physical store, if I have put something in my buggy that I determine later in the shopping experience that I do not want, I keep it because I am not going to walk back to put it back - and I am usually too ashamed to abandon it on a random shelf. Now I can kick it out and put it back and kick it out and put it back and kick ... well, you see. Also, my online grocery store allows me to favourite some things and then they come up first when I am shopping so I don't have to hunt for them. I can get some of my choosing pleasure from placing them in the favourites - and not buy them this time. I am shopping at a more expensive store and spending less money.
But I still think that my hundred dollars will buy all the not-as-much-as-a-hundred-dollars items I want to buy. I mean: it's *obvious*!
First of all, I have zero internal sense of "how much" a particular amount of money will buy. I have a deeply held belief that if I have one hundred dollars, I can buy as many things as I want as long as each thing is less that $100.00. They might all each be $99.99, but since less that one hundred, I can have them all. Yes, in my head that is stupid and obviously logically ... well it doesn't even get to be invalid because it is so far from logic there is no getting here from there. But in the mushy emotional wishful place that I live, it is *true*. (Consider that to be a big pink set of puffy letters, pulsing with sparkles.)
So, as a young poorly paid woman, living with freakish interest rates for her student loans, I fell afoul of easy credit. I had parents to help me out (consolidated all the debt into one payment to them), and have been mostly okay since. Lorne and I did have a squeaky period of low cashflow, but again through good fortune we climbed out and made big efforts to stay out. Successful efforts.
I now have a fairly constrained relationship with shopping. I subsume my shopping impulse into grocery shopping as much as possible. Going into stores for Christmas or birthday shopping is dangerous.
So.
What do I get from shopping?
There is the pleasure of choosing. Having an array of desirable goods before me, and determining that this particular item would suit me best is very happy making. As I have discovered when I get things home, I don't even really need to *own* the thing - and in fact there is seldom any further pleasure in ownership - to get the pleasure from choosing.
I even think that when there is pleasure from owning, it is usually in the context of showing off the thing to other people and imagining their approbation of my choosing skills/talents/flair.
This one is odd, but there is something pleasurable about pushing around a buggy or dragging around a basket of chosen things while still in the place where more choice can occur. No, I don't get it either, but I can definitely feel it.
Another pleasure of shopping is appearing to conform. Given my age and upbringing, I feel that I "should" want to entertain in my home with dinner parties and cocktail parties. I have, over the years, bought a lot of matching cutlery and glassware and paper napkins and cloth napkins and tablecloths and little matching nibbly bowls and blah de blah de blah. I still have some pleasure at opening my china cabinet and viewing my glassware all lined up and beautiful - and never touched by human lips.
When I shop for teatowels I feel that *any* *moment* *now* I will become the super hostess my upbringing has determined I was meant to be. It could happen even now. When shopping for teatowels I am not struggling with societal expectations, I am relaxing into them, resting my weary head on Mother Nature's apron-clad bosom.
Another pleasure is the fondling of things. I am a sucker for a beautiful bowl. I love the hand of a 100% rayon dress. Leather wallets - let me wuffle that aroma just a little longer. The flutter of the pages of a perfectly bound book. And for some reason I want all the springform pans. Especially the itty bitty ones that are of no practical use whatsoever. Spunging the clasp on a springform pan is so do-again-able.
And the big pleasure of shopping, which is obvious once spoken, but not named while experienced, is that when I am choosing, I am not having to think about the real parts of my life that are perhaps a little too much to bear at the moment. This is especially true when one's actual choices are zilch.
As I say, while I am not immune to buying crap I will never use, I do try to drive all my shopping into groceries or thrift stores (pretty bowls).
I am finding that online grocery shopping is *excellent* for my shopping addiction. In a physical store, if I have put something in my buggy that I determine later in the shopping experience that I do not want, I keep it because I am not going to walk back to put it back - and I am usually too ashamed to abandon it on a random shelf. Now I can kick it out and put it back and kick it out and put it back and kick ... well, you see. Also, my online grocery store allows me to favourite some things and then they come up first when I am shopping so I don't have to hunt for them. I can get some of my choosing pleasure from placing them in the favourites - and not buy them this time. I am shopping at a more expensive store and spending less money.
But I still think that my hundred dollars will buy all the not-as-much-as-a-hundred-dollars items I want to buy. I mean: it's *obvious*!
