Shopping ban imposed!

I have a confession to make. I have an addiction, and this addiction is called shopping.

In the last two eight? months, I went nuts shopping. Absolutely nuts.

I won't put the exact $ dollar amount here. Maybe it's nothing to some people and maybe it's absurd to others, but it's absurd to me! And to Nick, who has switched between telling me, "You shop too much!" and "You work hard! You deserve it!" ... It gets confusing!

Here's an example. In January I bought both a crock pot (even though my roommate already has one, but I didn't realize this when I purchased it because it rarely/never gets used) and a George Foreman grill - and have yet to use either. My visions of beef stew and homemade burgers have yet to be realized.

Ahead of our trip to Hong Kong and Tokyo in May, I am in a *SAVE* mode, sort of.

I'm imposing a SHOPPING BAN on myself for the next 3 months. No purchases of clothing, shoes, bags, accessories, jewelry, fun make-up for 3 months.

I can still buy daily needs, food, toiletries, and go out for dinner and drinks - but nothing outrageous or unnecessary, like if I'm just being lazy about cooking.

Realistically, this shouldn't be HARD. I don't need anything. It's the fact that I've gotten in such a HABIT of purchasing things. Stopping the purchasing habit will be hard.

(More after the jump.)


Have you ever seen the movie Confessions of a Shopaholic or read the book? At the end of the movie, she learns the important lesson that instead of focusing her energy into her things, she should focus her energy on her relationships with people and other more important aspects of life - at least that's what I remember. By the way, it's not a very good movie, I'm not actually recommending anyone watch this movie!

I need to put my time and energy into productive uses. Spending time with people! Reading! Exercising! Learning new things! Expressing myself creatively in some sort of outlet (this blog). Writing in my blog! Taking photos! Figuring out my life/career plan! Investing my money into the stock market and earning a return! Apartment hunting for me and Nick! Yoga! etc.

I'm not going to stop loving shopping/make-up - I'm a girl, I can't help it! I'm just going to try to be smarter about it. (And take a break for awhile.) In the future, I'd like to "invest" in nicer things (and less things) going forward.

This week, I have been unsubscribing to the insane number of retailer mailing lists that I'm on.

Wish me luck!