The Inspired Shopper

Living beyond one’s basic needs becomes a problem only when the accumulation of property becomes a source of stress rather than enjoyment ... finding balance is difficult for many because purchasing and accumulating can be effortless, while planning ahead and organizing takes effort.

Notice what you are buying for. How are you feeling emotionally when you buy something? Is it to make you feel better, more accepted, or to give you that shopper’s high? Or is it really useful? For it to be useful you need to ask these questions before buying:

1. Where will I put it?
2. Do I have the money to buy it right now?
3. Do I already have something else that works?
4. How many times a year will I use it?

Thrifty minimalists, unite!

What are you really looking for when you shop?

Shiny, upmarket boutiques and department stores drag us away from the imperfections of life, promising an eternal present where things never get lost, get old, wear out or break down. 

Their gleaming surfaces and stark cream walls offer a tantalising backdrop from which to ogle an array of items that are pristine – never used, unmarked, tags still on.

When we enter a retail temple we succumb to the illusion that the goods it displays are a kind of virgin territory waiting to be discovered – by us. It’s as if they appeared on the designer shelves fully formed. The seductive store fit-outs urge us to forget about the source of their manufacture. And they beg us to believe that we too can be renewed, and our very lives made over, by this pure, unsullied world.

When we shop, there’s often something in particular we need to buy – something practical. No matter how frugal we are, shoes wear out, jeans tear, gadgets take early retirement, fridges break down. Sometimes buying something new is a necessity, not a hobby or leisure activity. But there are many reasons for our buying that have nothing to do with practical considerations.

A common reason we go out on the hunt is that we’re really seeking something new. One reason why we crave new things is that we're searching for an elusive perfection that's missing from our own lives.

I was backing my car out of the drive and noticed just how untidy the front garden was looking. The art deco style unit I rent is over 70 years old and the outside walls, which are cream-coloured and roughly rendered, are cracked following Melbourne’s recent ten-year drought. The weather has been too miserable for me to garden – well, too miserable for my version of gardening, which basically consists of weeding – and the front yard really needed a mini-makeover.

Easier, of course, to go to the mall and buy something shiny and new.

The same goes for my car, a little emerald green Toyota Starlet. It’s now well over ten years old and is beginning to show its age. There is some loss of colour on the roof, and plenty of scratches. Yet there’s absolutely nothing wrong with it. Once a year it gets a service. The mechanics charge like wounded bulls but are finicky to a fault – the sort of mechanics who change the spark plugs regularly. I would love to buy a new secondhand car, a little Echo or Yaris, and I could afford one. But there is absolutely no justification beyond the look of the car, and the need for something that is less worn and in better condition that my trusty Starlet.

Many of us have been taught from an early age that it’s worthwhile to seek perfection, and that if we try hard enough we can attain it. Yet in our lives, so many things are unfinished, unresolved, worn, imperfect. Our relationships and jobs are imperfect. We home in on our physical ‘imperfections’. The problems of the world remain unresolved and seem to get more serious by the day. We are chronically imperfect beings living in a chronically imperfect world.

Clinging to the ideal of perfection can sometimes affect our ability to make good choices – choices that are right for us – when we do have to buy something.

Below are some pointers for combatting the need for perfection that sometimes drives us to buy, and can also adversely affect how we buy.

1. Give your existing possessions some TLC. Think of making your things and environment better rather than perfect. Polish your shoes and boots, reorganise your cupboards and drawers, handwash your sweaters, get your mending up to date or do some handyperson tasks around the house. This kind of self-maintenance can be extremely rewarding – it makes you feel looked after and makes your things seem newer and more valuable. You’ll gain an appreciation of what you already have, and how it is serving you, and you’ll have less need to seek the new. I know that when I get around to weeding my front yard the cracked walls won't bother me as much. I always feel much better about my Starlet when I’ve lavished some attention on it – taken it to the carwash, vacuumed the seats and carpet, polished the windows.

2. Celebrate and highlight the worn and used aspects of possessions. Old can mean full of character, lived in, loved. Part of the frugal and thrifty movement is to play up and enhance the ‘old’ aspects of objects. We already do this for some things – jeans come to us prefaded, and some homewares stores proudly display their ‘shabby chic’ furniture. Repurposing, such as stacking old trunks to make a table, is now a craze. I’ve already placed plants in large terracotta pots against the cracked outer walls of my unit to create an olde worlde look, and I intend to add more, working around the cracks rather than trying to hide them.

3. Hide an imperfection you can’t easily live with. There are some imperfections that are simply irritating rather than endearing. We’re visual creatures, and it’s easy to forget what isn’t in front of our eyes. Cover up a mangy carpet with a bright rug. Cover the fading on a piece of upholstered furniture with an attractive throw. You may sometimes have to buy something new (or secondhand) to do this, but at least you’re dealing with the imperfection rather than blindly buying something unrelated in a bid to ignore it, or spending thousands on new fittings or furniture. This is especially worthwhile if you’re renting your home and can’t make significant changes to the decor.

4. Replace the concept of ‘perfect’ with ‘right’. This goes for all areas of life as well as objects – partners, friends, work, home, and even suburb. Instead of thinking about things as not being perfect, ask yourself whether they are in fact right for you at this time. Of course, not everything will be – when something isn’t right, making changes is not just worthwhile but vital. But when we’re measuring the things we have – both materially and otherwise – why not try to replace the measure of perfection that we often have in our minds with the measure of rightness?

Until next time!



If you enjoyed this post, you might like Inspired Thrifting: What Makes a Good Find at the Op Shop or Thrift Store?
 
(Picture courtesy of oh my goods!)

I adore shopping. It’s something I’ve taught myself to do and I’m not ashamed to say I’ve become good at it. But these days whenever I enter yet another gleaming retail temple, I’m always painfully aware of the labour that’s gone into creating the goods that are now presented in upmarket and sometimes opulent splendour for my delectation. There’s always another setting that is not seen, but that I think about.

This is what struck me most about Seduction in the City, a wonderful documentary screened on SBS, a government-funded Australian TV channel, last Wednesday night. It was a fascinating program about the birth of the modern department store. Many innovations that we take for granted today are incremental. But if the show is to be believed, the entire department store concept as we experience it today seems to have been dreamed up by a visionary marketer, the French entrepreneur Aristide Boucicaut.

Boucicaut owned one of the world’s first department stores, Le Bon Marche. It started off as a dry goods store in 1838 but after 1852 Boucicaut began to innovate, and he was spurred onto greater things by the World Fair that was hosted by Paris in 1855. The innovations he pioneered, and that we now can’t imagine life without, include price tags, the ability to return goods, on-site toilets, lifts, home delivery, sales, store catalogues, relying on high turnover to sell goods with a low mark-up, and the very idea of browsing. According to academic Sally Feldman, ‘The freedom to wander and gaze without having to buy ... was the most arresting feature of the very first department store’. And this, of course, is what still seduces us today.

Most important of all, Boucicaut decided that he was not just selling individual goods, but a lifestyle. Boucicaut’s consumer paradise offered customers more than the satisfaction of material needs. He was selling consumer desire itself.

Boucicaut was decades ahead of his time, but not just through his concept of an inviting store that would offer a complete experience. He focused on a target market that was ignored and denigrated at the time by a sexism that had permeated every discourse: women. Patriarchy was at its intellectual height and science was ‘proving’ that women were both weak and, to put it plainly, stupid.

Ironically, department stores became portals to female emancipation. They got women out of the house and into the public sphere and gave them objects of desire and aspiration. They created new public spaces that welcomed the presence of women, and developed the idea of consumerism. They gave jobs and a measure of independence to young women who came to capital cities and obtained work as shop assistants.

With half the population radically disempowered, leisure shopping for the first time offered women not only a public space where they were valued, but a dazzling array of consumer choices. Is it any wonder that so many women still adore leisure shopping today?

Continuing the tradition
Australian online shopping is way behind the USA and the UK both in popularity and the choices available to customers. Australian department stores and shopping centres are still undergoing stunning and opulent refurbishments in a bid to immerse customers in a seductive bricks-and-mortar experience. In late 2009 Chadstone Shopping Centre opened a new luxury precinct where shoppers stroll in light-filled splendour past elegant, architected-designed spaces housing international luxury brands. Myer’s flagship department store, a Melbourne institution, unveiled its dramatic architectural redesign (pictured above) in March this year.

I visited Myer’s Mural Hall in the city centre on the weekend. The 1933 hall, restored as part of the recent renovation, is a grand art deco space on the sixth floor of the main building, with a striking double staircase that sweeps down from twin balconies and three huge, ornate chandeliers. A series of murals around the walls that are set in decorative panels celebrate the achievements of women. Given that the murals were painted decades before second wave feminism, they attest to the importance of women as a target market at the time, and the need for the store’s design to contribute to women feeling good about themselves.

Behind the scenes
Watching the beautifully produced Seduction in the City, with its recreations of a nineteenth-century department store complete with quaint rows of wooden drawers to hold the stock, and elegant ladies in Edwardian costume, I kept thinking about the coal mines that powered the industrial revolution, and the horrific conditions in which the goods had no doubt been produced.

I was saddened to think about how little things have changed – we’ve simply exported the dark satanic mills to China. Indeed the show’s director, Sally Aitken, has written:

Many a time I have marvelled at the ingenuity and the tenacity of the early department store retailers. And many other times I’ve been appalled – their cunning ploys have left us the legacy of a society beset with instant gratification, debt, throwaway goods and endless fashion.

I still get seduced by the gleaming retail temples I visit, although increasingly less so. Simultaneously appalled and enthralled, I keep reminding myself that new models of making, buying and selling are now being developed that are in contrast with this model of consumerism, which is arguably outdated. We just don’t hear about these new models in the mainstream media – a subject for a future blog entry?

The final instalment of Seduction in the City will screen in Melbourne this Wednesday at 8.30 pm.

If you liked this blog entry you might enjoy Last Days of a Dying Behemoth.

Sometimes it’s the things in our psyche we don’t acknowledge that have the most power over us. Once we’ve taken them out, dusted them off and held them up to the light, they lose their ability to sabotage our lives.

In my last blog entry I listed a set of negative beliefs about money and spending that could be holding you back without you realising. This time I’ve identified a range of positive beliefs that can help motivate you to successfully stick to a budget, save money and spend wisely.

Money is a charged subject, and beliefs about money and spending are influenced by our values and political affiliations. While the beliefs listed below are very general, they’re also subjective. Certainly they’ve helped me to save my hard-earned, and buy things that are right for me and my budget. You may have other positive beliefs that are helpful to you.

If you find any one of these beliefs particularly helpful, you could write it down and place it somewhere prominent so you can be reminded of it on a regular basis.

Here’s my list.

• I can’t control everything in life – the world and life itself are inherently unstable. However, it’s possible to improve my chances of being financially independent by planning ahead and being prudent in my spending.
• The feeling of satisfaction I get from looking after myself by paying a bill can sometimes be as gratifying as the short-term high of buying something I don’t need.
• Just because my parents were poor at saving money doesn’t mean that I have to be.
• Just because I’ve been a spendthrift all my life or lived in insecure housing doesn’t mean I must always remain in that position. Plenty of people have changed their fundamental attitudes to spending as well as their financial situations.
• Some of the best things cost little. I can have fun while spending little or no money.
• Money is not love, and I don’t have to spend a lot of money to tell others I love them. My hyperactive cocker spaniel would much rather I took him to the park for an hour than bought him a diamond-studded collar.
• It’s not self-indulgent to treat myself sometimes – it’s important!
• Money and possessions aren’t measures of personal worth. I don’t need to judge others on the basis of how much money they have and what they own.
• The world is an unfair place. Many people have more money than me, and some of those at the top have rigged the system for personal gain. I can work for a more just society if I choose to, but in the meantime I have to deal with the world as it is, and look after myself accordingly.
• Even though I may be sure that I want something, this doesn’t mean I have to have it the moment I decide I want it. Waiting for it may actually be a good thing.
• Everyone is on their own path. I don’t have to have a particular material item or the latest piece of technology just because my friends, family members or colleagues have it. I buy what’s right for me and my lifestyle.

Try this exercise: find paper and a pen, and brainstorm a list of helpful beliefs about money and spending that you either already hold, or would like to. For the next week or so, keep the list handy and add to it whenever you become aware of any additional positive beliefs that you hold.

Use an e-file  to create your own permanent list of positive beliefs about money and spending. Include any beliefs you find helpful, whether from this list, other lists, or your own.

Whenever you make a spending decision that you think is unwise, refer to your list to help put you back on track.

What positive beliefs have helped you stay on track with your saving and spending?

If you enjoyed this post you might also like Beware the Shopping Shoulds.

I’ve got a confession to make – I used to be a spendthrift. Basically that meant that I spent whatever I had. This seemed natural to me, an unwritten law: money was there to buy stuff, not to be saved. I’m ashamed to say that during my school years I even distrusted school friends who had managed to put away nest eggs!

We all have beliefs about money and spending, even though we may be unaware of them. I’m not one of those people who claim that you will achieve instant prosperity as soon as you change those beliefs – life is much more complicated than that.

But if you do have negative beliefs about money, until you face them fair and square they will almost certainly influence how you shop and how much you spend, and you’ll have trouble being more frugal, saving money for significant goals, and gaining control of your finances.

Here are some destructive beliefs that may be holding you back, starting with the most obvious. (I’ve subscribed to many of these beliefs at various times of my life.)

Note: you may still be holding onto some of these destructive beliefs even if you are being successfully frugal; even if you’re not acting on those beliefs any more, they may be making you unhappy.

• Money is there to be spent. When money comes in, it has to go out again.

• When I get a windfall, I need to splurge, otherwise I’m missing out.

• I always need to have the latest piece of technology, otherwise I’ll be uncool and out of the loop.

• I need to keep up with the standard of living pursued by my friends, family and neighbours.

• I need to be rich before I can start giving.

• I deserve to have [insert item of your choice!] because I am a good person.

• The world is an uncertain place. It’s safer to spend money rather than save it.

• Saving money is boring. It’s the kind of thing accountants do, not creative people like me.

• I don’t have to worry about money because the universe will look after me.

• I don’t have to worry about money because my parents will bail me out if need be.

• I don’t have to work for money - I’ll just attract it if I believe I can.

• I always have to buy only cheap goods and sale items otherwise I’ll go broke. It’s not safe to spend extra money to buy higher quality or ethical goods.

• It’s not fair that my sisters [or brothers, friends, neighbours, colleagues] can afford [their own house, an overseas holiday, a renovation, private schooling for their children] and I can’t, so it’s okay for me to borrow and overspend to obtain these things myself.

• I’ m a progressive and believe there should be a decent welfare safety net in place, so there’s no need for me to look after myself financially.

• The cost of living these days is outrageous. It’s not worth trying to live within my means.

• I’m too chaotic to develop the organisational skills that would enable me to save money, eg preparing my lunch in advance rather than buying it.

• There’s no point in trying to save money because whenever I start to get ahead, something happens that sets me behind again.

Identifying your negative money beliefs
Here’s an exercise: grab a piece of paper and brainstorm a list of negative beliefs about money and spending that may be holding you back. Note that some of these beliefs may lead to underspending rather than overspending.

Keep the list handy. Start to notice whenever any of these beliefs (or ones you haven’t yet pinpointed) are in play when you’re shopping, or doing anything that requires spending money, including paying bills. Add to the list any new negative beliefs that you’ve discovered you have about money.

Next time I’ll look at some helpful beliefs that can replace the unhelpful ones.

If you enjoyed this post, you might also like 11 Positive Money Beliefs That Can Help You Save.

I can't believe how much I learn from a visit to the mall sometimes. About people, shopping and me. Here's a list of some of the things I learned or that happened when I went to my local mall recently.

First, the reason I was there. A cousin of mine has recently become engaged (congratulations C!) and was holding a celebratory 'garden party'. Having bought my fill of summer clothes, I'd decided I was going to do some compacting. I had a perfectly good dress I'd worn to my sister's wedding in October, a gorgeous grey jersey dress with very wide, short sleeves, a high gathered waist and above-the-knee pencil style skirt. I'd wear the dress again, I thought, with a newish long-sleeved black top underneath -- only a tiny fraction of the people there would have seen me in it.

But I was defeated by the bureau of meteorology. It was going to be a sultry 29 degrees. The dress's material would be all wrong, and it just doesn't look right without something long-sleeved underneath. So, despite being an Inspired Shopper, I did a last minute rush out to the mall the day before, hunting, as usual, for a bargain.

My shopping was much more dispiriting than usual -- trying on dresses that looked awful or that I had trouble even getting into. But eventually I found my bargain -- a $40 Witchery dress down from $130. It was black, peasant-style and casual, so I planned to dress it up with a bright necklace. And as my sisters assured me, I'd 'get a lot of wear out of it'.

This experience made me think about compacting. As well as the initial aim, it requires planning -- much more than I'd been prepared to do. I'd also forgotten about the perils of last minute shopping -- although it was fun to finally hunt down my 'prey', I wondered at the time whether I'd still be running around the following morning looking for something.

Other things I learned:

I rarely go 'late night shopping' on Friday nights any more -- but this was one of the fun things in my childhood. When the then much smaller 'Chaddy' -- now 'the largest mall in the southern hemisphere'(by sales volume rather than size) -- first introduced late night shopping, my family and I would often wander round the centre on a Friday night, ending with a visit to the doughnut shop, my sisters eating them in the car on the way home. The only trouble was, I hated (still do!) doughnuts. Parking my car I had a sudden memory of those Friday evenings.

I still experienced a bit of Inspired Shopping magic. A book I'd been thinking about getting from the library -- The Lost Thoughts of Soldiers -- 'appeared' in a bookshop for $3, complete with accompanying short stories. Synchronicity at its best.

Last but not least, the toilets at Chadstone shopping centre have automatic flushing. Melbourne is in the midst of a drought and I was appalled by the waste of water! The toilet actually flushed twice while I was in the cubicle -- I tried not to take it personally. I was gobsmacked at the hypocrisy -- Chadstone has recently announced its efforts to be more environmentally friendly.

But this weird state of affairs also sent me off into a meditation about the kind of society that needs self-flushing toilets. Supposedly we are more selfish than ever before, and we're also encouraged to be more self-reliant. However, this has led to a state where we're losing our sense of social rules and customs to keep the public, communal sphere in order -- we don't have time, it seems, to create reciprocal communities where people know the social expectations and carry them out.

Yet, while we're encouraged to be selfish, it's selflessness that is required to teach tomorrow's citizens basic skills -- like how to keep public toilets clean! (Of course, not flushing 'number ones' for environmental reasons is perfectly OK, an aim that these self-flushing toilets also defeat.) Selflessness still exists of course, but it's highly unfashionable. I'm not blaming working parents here, but the relentless march of materialism and the changes wrought by 'economic rationalism'.

All that from a visit to the mall on Friday evening!

When I first started researching my book I began to read about what is often called 'affluenza' -- a kind of frenzied materialism that has a corrosive effect on society. That there were three books (I've read two of them) with this word in the title is indicative of how it has taken off as an idea. But I found with both the books I read I had differences with the authors.

Both books, one by Australian cultural commentator Clive Hamilton and one by English writer Oliver James, bemoan materialism and society's obsession with shopping. This is perfectly understandable. Australians now collectively owe $41 billion on their credit cards. I don't know what the US figure is but I bet it dwarfs that one. The spiritual malaise that such a figure suggests attracts the ire of both authors. Sharon Zukin, a US sociologist, describes this malaise well, suggesting that shopping is what people do to find value -- in the deepest sense -- in today's world. And from an environmental and social perspective, unbridled materialism is disastrous. Think of the greenhouse gases dirty Chinese coal produces providing energy to manufacture all those cheap goods, not to mention the obscene number of Chinese miners who die each year extracting it. There's no doubt that shopping sustainably and going green are both environmentally and socially responsible.

Compacting is one way of countering Western nations' obsession with shopping. Compacters buy no new items apart from those in a few specific categories (eg food, hygiene products, underwear). They buy or borrow secondhand items. I heard lifestyle commentator Maggie Alderson on Melbourne radio recently talking about how useful compacting had been for her in breaking her compulsive shopping habit -- she's no longer a compacter, but is now more disciplined about what she buys. Again, I think this practice is great as a way of breaking long-held consumer habits and forcing people to be more resourceful about how they meet their material needs.

But my problem with this whole anti-materialism thing is that in some instances it may avoid or evade one central fact: that shopping is fun. Of course, there are many qualifications to that statement. I'm talking specifically about leisure shopping, and even that may not be fun if you're strapped for cash, shopping with children, or a compulsive shopper. My point is that we need to address the fun aspects of shopping if we want to change our own shopping habits, let alone other people's.

Both the writers of the books on affluenza I referred to are men. A majority of men don't enjoy leisure shopping and can't see the point of it. When it comes to shopping they tend to get in and get out and engage as little as possible. Although younger men do enjoy leisure shopping, it's women who make up the bulk of those who see shopping as recreation, in Australia anyway. Also -- and this is a huge generalisation -- men often don't have an appreciation of the aesthetics of fashion to the extent that women do. Aesthetic appreciation and the search for novelty are both important reasons why women in particular love to shop.

In my book, then, I'm trying to address those people who have no intention of giving up leisure shopping. I want to show them that they can shop more mindfully, and that they don't have to seek retail therapy blindly. I believe that as people become more conscious shoppers, many of them, budgets permitting, will start to make more considered choices about what they buy and where they buy it from. But I'm not going to deny the delights of shopping. I want to open the field -- to let people know that they have a great deal of choice, in the wider sense, about how they approach and deal with their material needs and desires. My book includes advice about waiting, about practising frugality and budgeting, and about staying away from the shops at certain times; but it's all given in the context of encouraging people to use their intuitive sense -- a sense that goes beyond emotions -- to make shopping decisions.

Photo: flickr

Inspired Shopping can take much of the drudgery out of your shopping experiences. It can lead to more successful, happier shopping, and save you time and money. 

On this blog you’ll learn about the basis of Inspired Shopping – how to stay present in the shopping process and use your own inner resources, whatever your budget, to buy the things you want and need, and that are right for you.

Inspired Shopping is not meant to encourage readers to be greedy and focus too much on material goods. On the contrary, it can help you make the most of your money, which will leave you with more to build a secure future for yourself and your family, or support causes you might be interested in. And Inspired Shopping is efficient shopping, which can free up more time for spending on other kinds of outings or pursuing a new hobby.

What is Inspired Shopping?

Inspired Shopping harnesses a marvellous tool that you already have, but may currently only use occasionally, and probably accidentally, to buy the things that will enrich your life – your intuition. It enables you to tap into this wonderful resource every time you go shopping, so that the goods you buy are those you truly want and need, and so that your shopping experiences help you grow as a person.

Intuition is a deep inner knowing, a sense of internal guidance that steers us towards doing things that are the best for us on every level. It can seem like a kind of magic, but it’s very much grounded in the present and our everyday feelings and experiences. Because shopping is about finding the things that are right for us, this ‘sixth sense’ can be always at the ready when we’re at the shops.

In Developing Intuition, personal growth teacher Shakti Gawain insists that ‘if we have too many things we don’t truly need or want, our lives become overly complicated’. When you become an inspired shopper the material goods you buy will be in harmony with who you are and your life journey; they will truly enhance your lifestyle, and in some cases will even enhance your self-development!

Buying this way will inevitably save you money (unless you’re seriously phobic about spending, in which case it might free you to spend a little more). But saving money is a wonderful byproduct of the process.

Another great effect of Inspired Shopping is that you stay in touch with who you are and your personal journey while you shop. Inspired Shopping is about seeing shopping as an adventure and allowing yourself to stay present and feel your emotions while buying the goods that are right for you. You’ll discover that ‘tuning in’ rather than ‘tuning out’ can be a marvellous way to allow your intuition to lead you to exciting and unexpected shopping finds, and you’ll become a smarter, calmer, more aware shopper.

My book, Inspired Shopping, shows readers how to use their intuition for great results in a range of shopping situations, including returning goods, buying big-ticket items, shopping on the internet, shopping with children, friends and partners, and supermarket shopping. While it can help you regardless of income, it's especially useful to those on a strict budget.

I believe that Inspired Shopping can help you reduce your carbon footprint by buying less as well as slow down. But I'm not trying to tell people to stop leisure shopping -- just suggesting that they make a few positive changes so that they get more out of it, and take less of the world's resources in the process.

I hope you enjoy reading and learning about Inspired Shopping.