This is a sequel of sorts to 9 Ways To Make Shopping Painful. In that post I talked about ways to build up a shopping gag-reflex! However there was the assumption that you agreed: shopping is annoying, unenjoyable, and unhealthy.
And it is! That’s just what this post is about.
This is a negative topic. But I think it’s important, and I promise we’ll be focusing on positives in the future!
Some people think shopping is fun. But really, our culture teaches us that shopping is fun.
That “fun” is manufactured fun. It’s stunted and lazy fun. It brings a tiny high, a quick rush of blood, and then it leaves you a little more broke, more weighed down with stuff, and a bit less eager for life. If you think shopping is fun, it’s because stores have taught you this. Teach yourself otherwise!
Fun is building and creating. Fun is laughing with friends. Fun is making music or reading a book. Shopping is a poor substitute for fun.
Enough preface! Without further ado, 9 reasons shopping isn’t nearly as enjoyable as you think it is!
How Do I Loath Thee? Let Me Count The Ways…
1. People.
People are wonderful. People are beautiful. You are people and your friends are people and I am people and we love people! But when we are shopping, we aren’t people—we turn into little beasts.
As shopping beasts, we become irritable, we are impatient and rude, and we feel entitled.
Customers see you as competition. Other people equal lines that slow you down. Employees are exhausted from standing for six hours at a time and dealing with all their little customer beasts. You’re just little beast number 327 that day.
People are wonderful, but not when they’re shopping. If you want lovely people, go to the park, grab coffee with a friend, go dancing!
2. You’re Going To Feel Guilty.
In a month, you aren’t going to use that Thing anymore. It’ll sit in your drawer, and every time you see it, you’ll think “gee, I really should use that Thing more often.” But you won’t, and you’ll shut the door until next week when you’ll feel guilty all over again.
The funny thing is, we pay money for the privilege of this guilt. Stop today!
3. Money.
People who tend to invest money on experiences are generally happier than those who spend it on stuff. Use your money—that’s what it’s there for—but invest your money in friends and memories.
4. Shopping Wastes Time
Shopping takes time. You think “I’ll hop over to the store for ten minutes to buy a new popcorn maker,” but what actually happens is this: You read reviews on Amazon about which is the very best popcorn maker—you wouldn’t want to waste your money and you’ll want to brag to your friends about how you know yours is the best because you did “research.” You have to drive to and from the store—45 minutes of road rage and parking hassle. You have to find it, wait in line, and haul it back to your car—another 20-30 minutes. Back home you unbox it, sort the packaging, maybe read the manual, and 20 minutes later you have popcorn. All in all, just to obtain a popcorn maker, you wasted an afternoon.
Now if it’s a popcorn maker, that’s four hours well spent! Anything else? Chances are, it’s not worth it. Not “for fun.”
Consider the immense amount of time you’ll waste. Is this thing still worth it? If it is, don’t make a trip just yet…put off buying it for a time when you will already be out.
5. Noise
You have to listen to the terrible muzak or pop radio that stores pump into their space.
You have to listen to people shouting, baby’s crying, people talking on their cell phones.
You have to listen to registers and cell phone ringers and pager systems and TV displays.
Headache!
6. Driving, Parking
If you aren’t riding a bike or walking, you’ll have to deal with other drivers and—much worse—your own road rage. There are stop lights and parking hassles. You’ll get cut off and become angry. You’ll cut someone else off and become angry. And you’ll have to do it all over again on the way back home.
7. Smells
Whether you’re at a mall, a store, or boutiques around the city, you have to deal with smells. First there’s the smell that the store puts out—their signature, manufactured smell designed to make you relaxed and eager to spend cash. Then there’re the other customers who shower themselves in perfume or forgot to shower at all. There’s the grease-air wafting from the food court in malls. Not to mention the phthalates and chemicals released from the packaging, plastics, and cleaning solutions! [These you get to bring back with you into your home.]
If nothing else does, the smells can induce actual nausea!
8. Body Image
If you’re shopping for clothes, you’re going to have to look at slim, alien models in ads and mannequins. They dress them in size zero clothing and still need to pin them in the back to fit.
The male models are more muscular than you. The female models are bustier and thinner than you. And they’re all white.
They are designed to make you feel not-good-enough.
Beyond these, clothing regularly doesn’t fit people well. It’s normally cheaply made, and we so often subconsciously start valuing and judging ourselves based on how good we look in these clothes. That’s just setting ourselves up for discouragement.
9. Nausea, Allergies, Headaches
I buy most of my clothes in thrift stores, and every time I do, I wind up with a runny nose and aching sinuses from the dust and mold.
When you’re in a store’s claustrophobic, confined space, you get to breath in the fake scented irritants and chemicals. And the whole time, you’re under fluorescent lighting, which increases headaches, eyestrain, messes with your sleep cycles, and has even been linked to psychological effects like depersonalization and depression.
Why do we flock so eagerly to shopping and call it therapy when we wind up with runny noses, headaches, and upset stomachs?
We need therapy from shopping.
“But Shopping’s Necessary!”
It’s true. Without shopping, we would starve to death. We need food, clothing, and many things, but this isn’t the shopping I’m talking about.
I wear jeans until I have holes in the crotch and shoes until they start to shred. Right now the soles of my everyday pair of shoes are so ground-down, you can see my socks through the soles. Admittedly, this is part minimalism, part laziness on my part, but the point is that you don’t need shiny new stuff all the time. When we feel this need, it’s because we’ve been trained to feel it.
Learn to separate your true needs from the manufactured needs you’ve been taught. These feeling don’t serve or benefit you at all.
Focus On The Negatives
One of the few times I would suggest focusing on negative thoughts. If shopping has a hold of you, focus on all these negatives. Build up negative associations with shopping, because no corporation, store, or capitalist society is going to do that for you as long as they benefit from you being part of their system.
Now Spend!
By which I mean go out and spend your new freed-up energy, time, and passion on things that you really love! And I promise – the next posts will be focusing on these! Thanks for reading.
] chloe [
