How many of you have things lingering in your home that were bargains too good to pass on.
You know…
- that pair of shoes that really are a size to big but they were only $10 (you wore them once and they gave you such terrible blisters that you will never wear them again)
- the set of cutlery “they were just about giving away” that will come in handy when you have a dinner party for 12 even though your dining suite won’t accommodate more than 8.
- the tent that was half price at the camp shop (when you actually went there to buy a travel jacket) that you had to have for when you go camping one weekend soon (that was 4 years ago)
- that DVD you got for $5 on the clearance heap that you barely managed to tolerate the first ten minutes of which has been relegated to the deepest depths of the DVD drawer
Need I go on? There are no end of stories like these that I have heard or fallen prey to. There is a lesson to be learned here.
A bargain isn’t a bargain if you get little or no use out of it.
These things become like a house guest that won’t leave who’s just taking up space and not paying rent. You know they are there but you can’t bring yourself to tell them to leave but you feel guilty about letting them stay every time you come across them.
A couple of ways to avoid this trap are:-
- Don’t read the special catalogues
- Don’t check out the clearance bins in the shops
- Only go to the shop if there is something specific you are shopping for and stick to the plan.
- Never stop at garage sales
- Avoid seasonal sales
Sorry to all you shopaholics out their but admitting you have a problem is half the cure.
This is the DVD I mentioned above. Sorry Adam I really am a fan but not of this one. I love Mr Deeds though.
This is so true! Fighting myself from nabbing those ‘great deals!’ is a hard habit to break.
Hi Deanna, I know what you are saying, I still love a great deal but only if it is on something I was intending to buy. My plan of attack on avoiding all other temptation is DON’T LOOK, I find I don’t miss what I didn’t know was there in the first place.
If you can get about a half hour into Click, it gets really good. Unless you also didn’t like Spanglish. Then you won’t like Click either.
Thanks Emily, but one of my golden rules of de-cluttering is “don’t try to convince myself that maybe I will get use out of something I have already decided to let go”. That is a recipe for disaster when it comes to de-cluttering. There are so many other movies out there to choose from (and that I can borrow free from my neighbour) that I don’t need to persevere with this one.
My husband was just talking about a guy he knows through a card club. This week he was wearing size 14 shoes in a bright orange. We know his feet aren’t that big, so he MUST have gotten them through a special deal. But why?!
Special deal alright! Bright orange shoes, why do companies even make such a thing. But God bless him for making use out of something that no-one else would want.
Oh but I love the clearance bin at the shops…LOL…I picked up a hand soap pump container for 25c at kmart the other day in the clearance bin and now I can just buy the refills from aldi. It’s just a plain container with no branding on it so I don’t have to look at a company name every time I go in the bathroom!
I use a hair mousse in a foaming bottle (not aerosol) that has a removable label and the bottle itself is a very attractive frosted white with an olive green top. At this point every sink in our house now has an attractive and repurposed foaming hand soap container filled with a really nice, natural peppermint soap (Dr. Bronners, in fact).