Thursday 2 July 2015

A Bit of Retail Therapy

I've been pretty good for ages now and haven't been out shopping aimlessly in a long long while. One day last week, however, I needed to get out of the house and get a few groceries from ASDA and because of I was feeling a bit low, I found myself craving a bit of retail therapy.

I'd had something on my mind for a few weeks and it had been causing me quite a bit of worry and stress. It involved a situation that had arisen at the gym, usually my place of refuge, but not recently, at least on one day of the week.  I won't go into details here, as the situation now appears to have been resolved, but for a while it weighed heavily on my mind and I found myself fretting about it quite a lot.

Now, going shopping when you're feeling a bit emotional isn't really a good idea, but I just needed a break, so I headed off to ASDA, where I treated myself to a set of three new jars for the food cupboard for £3.50.  (A little more expensive than at IKEA, but they saved me driving over 10 miles to my nearest store and they're very similar)  My only criticism of these when I got them home, is that I can't stack two on top of one another and fit them on my cupboard shelf, so I have had to mix and match stacking them with the IKEA ones to utilise the space fully. This will influence any future purchase of these.


I also treated myself to a glass ramekin to hold my earrings, which I reach for daily.  It cost £1.



On leaving ASDA, I decided to just go 'for a look' in TK MAXX nearby.  I should have heard the warning bells sounding, as 'just looking' in such a store is virtually impossible and it wasn't long before I found something that I just had to buy.  I didn't have a current candle to burn and I saw this one. It is called Clean Mist, is a lovely fresh scent, comes in a lovely large glass jar with a metal lid, fits with the decor in my living room and was only £6.  I'll call it a little treat to myself to cheer me up. Dangerous habit, I know. I figured that once I've burned it down, I could wash and use the lovely jar to make another one myself, which I would like to try to do at some point.  I've seen new purpose made much smaller jars of a similar design, on a website recently costing £4, so with the candle included I thought this was a good price, especially if it could be reused.



Finally, I also bought a new pair of flip flops.  I saw these on sale for £4 and they are Gandy's.  This isn't some high end luxe brand, but a social enterprise company that was set up by two brothers, who, orphaned in the Boxing Day Tsunami over 10 years ago, decided to set up a company that gives 10% of its profits to help orphans of natural disasters.  I remember reading about them in a magazine and admired their courage and positivity after such a tragedy. I couldn't think of anything better to spend my money on and I got a lovely pair of grey flip flops which double up as summer slippers. Win,Win.



So, it wasn't a totally mindless shopping binge, I tried to stick to things I needed, I didn't spend too excessively, I had an eye towards re-purposing and an eye towards buying ethically and charitably, as well as using less fuel, so this did help to lessen the guilt a little.  It could have been far worse, had I not reined myself in tightly. A bit of relapse, but sometimes shit happens and controlled treating of yourself when you're feeling a little fed up, can be very therapeutic.

1 comment:

  1. Sometimes a person really needs to do some retail therapy.

    Glad that the problem at the gym resolved itself.

    God bless.

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