Confessions Of A Rehabilitated Shopaholic

It is easy to get carried away with retail therapy. Here are the confessions of a rehabilitated shopaholic about their journey to better control!

I love to shop. With my mom, I can shop all day with no sense of time. (My husband and my father add ‘no sense of money’ too).

Retail therapy works wonders when one wants to spice up their regular lifestyle. Looks, clothes, attitude, and personality undergo a major change during retail therapy.  There is always a limit for every desire, though. After having been a shopaholic for a long time, I got my time to fight this addiction when I conceived. And that happened to be a time when none of my favorite clothes and shoes would fit me! However, I did come out of my shopaholicism, and now, I’m more judicious than before.

All that glitters doesn’t need to be bought

Sometimes, we are so carried away by the glitterati around us, we forget that happiness resides in simplicity. For a shopaholic, this is almost impossible to comprehend.  So, if you feel like buying something that you don’t need or may already have, you just need to ask yourself three questions…

‘Do I need it now?’

‘Is it worth the money I am spending on it?’

‘If I buy it, how much or for how long will I use it?’

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Questioning yourself like this may help you curb those impulses to buy everything that lures you!

The joy of giving

Many of us have an emotional attachment with things that make us nostalgic, which  prevents us from disposing them off, despite the fact that they just occupy space (and our memory) and add nothing much. It doesn’t really hurt to give away what we don’t need, does it?

Does our body choose to store our favourite food indefinitely only because the tongue loves the taste? No. So why not give away old clothes, toys, books, game boards and shoes that are no longer in use?

The result is rewarding. Not only do your closets become spacious and clean, but you will also realize how many of those things you had really put to use in the past. This realisation will now guide you to shop judiciously. So when you are out with your shopping bags and fat wallet next time, you definitely know what to buy and what not to.

Drop till you window shop

There is no doubt about the ‘look good, feel good’ factor that tags along with shopping. But the ‘be good’ factor is overlooked many a time. Sometimes, excessive shopping can lead to excessive spending and zero utilization of the items bought. It also leads a person to believe that their happiness resides solely in shopping. And that is where a person totally misses out on the logic behind shopping. In fact, if one were to sit and analyze the consequences of shopaholicism, the results are always the same and not very good: Absolute dearth of personal space and time, negligible savings, and no peace of mind.

Sometimes, excessive shopping can lead to excessive spending and zero utilization of the items bought. It also leads a person to believe that their happiness resides solely in shopping

Therefore, one can choose to window shop. You can see and feel all you want without pinching your wallet. And that is because all that you want may not be what you need. For this however, developing self control is very important. Easier said than done, I know. Self control is definitely not an easy habit to form. But it is the beginning that is always tough, and then the rest of the journey is a cake walk.

Shopping is an art and it is learnt by experience. There are times when we just spend money as if there were no tomorrow. It happens to all of us at some time or the other. But one has to be careful to not get carried away by marketing gimmicks. Moreover, one must apply one’s own logic to shopping by asking themselves the three questions mentioned above. I am sure you will get your answers right! And to enjoy shopping to the core, all you need to do is choose: Shopping as a need OR as a drug. After all, the take is yours.

Happy shopping!

Pic credit: tiny_packages (Used under a CC license).

This piece was first published on Narayani’s blog.

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