Shopping Strategies

Why I Buy

I don’t shop so much lately.  Certainly not in comparison to the rate and regularity I was shopping at before I started my year without clothes shopping in mid December 2009. And my shopping has not only changed in terms of how often I shop, but why I shop, when I choose to do so. Good […]

Charity Store Shopping, Part 2

In Part 1 of this post, I shared with you my observations of charity store shopping, in the overall context of non-mainstream shopping. In this, the second and final part of this article, I’m going to share with you the pros and cons of this kind of shopping, and my top tips for making the […]

Charity Store Shopping, Part 1

The only kind of stores I’m even vaguely interested these days are almost always the non-mainstream kinds.  And sometimes this means they aren’t even stores, but perhaps stalls at the local artisan market. Mainstream shopping environments like big department stores and women’s chain clothing stores usually hold no personal interest for me – I find their […]

Does Size Matter?

Many women worry about the size in the label of the clothing they buy, and have in their wardrobes. It’s like the size on the labels of our clothing is some kind of report card.  The bigger the number, the lower our score. I’ve asked women at workshops, on social media, and at bubbly lunches […]

Limit of Two

Some stores just lure us in, don’t they? Everything they stock seems to call our name.  Like a kid in a candy store, we can find ourselves feeling powerless in the face of all this desirable merchandise. It can feel like we have to have it.  All of it. Now I’m not talking big department […]

What Are Your Shopping Conditions?

Many of us shop on auto-pilot.  Our brains and bodies are not fully engaged in the process, and our awareness of what is happening around us, and within us, is often quite low. I call this shopping with your brain in neutral. A dangerous pastime.  Firstly for your wallet, but also for your overall state […]

More Ways to Avoid Senseless Online Shopping

I wrote recently about keeping your cash and avoiding senseless online shopping. I’ve since come up with a few more strategies to help you keep your cool, your head, and your cash, when your eyes are agog with all that you see in cyber-land to be purchased. Three more top tips to keep your cash […]

Keeping Your Cash: Avoiding Senseless Online Shopping

It’s easy to shop these days. Stores are open longer – I remember when Thursday night trading started, oooh way back in the 1980s.  What a revolution in shopping that was considered to be!  All those working mothers who could shop after 5pm – what an innovation! And nowadays, some stores are open 24 hours, […]

Shopping Smart in Open Air Markets

It’s summer here in Australia and open air markets abound!  I’m lucky that where I live, there are lots of open air markets from the Saturday farmers market through to the local artisan markets. In summer, we get additional markets, often evening or twilight markets. They are a lovely way to be out and about, […]

The Art Gallery Method

One of my favourite methods of shopping mindfully is to use what I call the Art Gallery method. This is a simple shopping strategy where you pretend you are in an art gallery instead of a store, and you treat the items in the store as though they were objects of art in an art […]