Not Much of a Shopper

I’m not much of a shopper. In fact, I hate to shop so much that I am practically never able to get things on sale. I just can’t stand the jostling and bumping of the crowds. I’m not good at watching ads. I don’t have the patience to dig through piles of whatever to find a matched set. One of the women that I work with can furnish an entire room on $150 and it will look like a magazine cover. She buys broken or unfinished or mismatched and, with a glue gun or paint, she makes it look fabulous. I really admire her for it. That is not me.

For people like me the Internet has been a blessing. I especially like those suggest a gift sites that you can keep putting in filters and key words until you’ve eliminated 138,000 possible items leaving the perfect gift for your favorite nephew or a great friend. Plus, they’ll gift wrap it and ship it for you. I love it.

Still, I find that I end up with a surprising number of things for me that, truly, I could live without. If you remember George Carlin’s riff on stuff, you know what I’m talking about. Craig Wilson writes about a year of not buying anything. I’m intrigued by the thought and am considering adding that into the mix of 2006’s edition of the NEW ME. Already I’m thinking of ways that I’ll have to qualify it. Of course I will still need to buy gifts for birthdays, Christmas, graduations, etc. So I’ll exclude buying gifts for others as part of the not-buying-anything rule. Then, if my weight loss/get fit resolution works out, I’ll simply have to buy new clothes. But that will be ok because that will be necessary buying; I can’t go to work naked.

Other than those few exemptions, I think it would be an interesting experiment. Already I recycled the latest Chef's Catalog even though I really want to get a few of those Scanpans. And I’m totally ignoring the shoe sale at my favorite store. Although that is not too hard since no one makes comfortable, yet utterly cute shoes anymore. But I’m also a gadget junkie and I’ve been eyeing one of those Garmin Forerunner GPS devices for when I start running to get in shape for one of the other ’06 Edition of ME items: a marathon.

Yes, this will be something to think through before signing up. But I like the concept. There is way too much consumption in my life. I wonder if I can stay off of Amazon for an entire year.