Shopping Ban: Day 10 (and an announcement!)

So I’ve made it to Day 10 of my Shopping Ban and I thought I’d do a little reflection on it so far. 10 days and all I’ve bought is soup, crisps, a creme egg and 2 books for uni. That sounds a lot when it’s written down like that, but it’s not (especially because one book was only £1, yes!!). At least for these 10 days I’ve been at home, food has been bought for me, and there are none of the city temptations: these take the form of Primark, H&M, Urban Outfitters…all of these I have to walk past on my way to uni, and I haven’t even been in to the new Urban Outfitters yet!! Okay, I have spent money on something else, although technically the money has not been spent yet: Ben and I have booked a holiday in June to Turkey for 11 days! One of my reasons for the shopping ban was to save up for things like holidays, so I think I’m justified in spending money on that!
The only major problems I’ve had so far with the ban are blogs. So many blogs with beautiful clothes and links to where they’re from, telling me they have a sale on. And emails too, so many emails telling me they have 70% off at the moment!! A couple of times I’ve found myself on websites looking at an item from a blog before realising what I’m doing! Window shopping is banned for me, remember?! And because I’m at home, I only have a limited number of clothes, so I keep thinking: “Oooh I could do with a new….” before thinking, “No I don’t!”. Shopping all the time is a habit I have to break, particularly if I want to be able to afford other things. Before recently the only things I needed to buy were food and clothes (and I didn’t need to buy those!), but now I’m spending money on bigger things like holidays, sofas and (eek!) houses!!
Oh, I didn’t tell you yet?? I got onto the Masters Course at Durham University that I wanted to!! It’s MA in Museum and Artefact Studies and I’m SO excited!! We went to look around Durham at the weekend and it’s so beautiful. So now Ben and I have to start house-hunting up there. We want to live just outside Durham, and hopefully I’ll be able to have my car up there to make it easier. A lot of the houses we’re looking at however are unfurnished, and at the moment all we’d have to furnish a house is a sofa, oh and a LOT of cook books (Ben’s fault!!). So I need to save if we can afford this, otherwise we’ll be looking for somewhere more in Durham that’s furnished, and probably more expensive anyway!
So, after that rambling tangent: so far, so good. Nothing bought, many things wanted. I just need to get out of the habit and then I think I’ll be fine. I’m back up to Newcastle on Monday though, so we’ll see!! But once this ban is over, I have a few items that I sort of want for Spring/Summer that I might invest in. I think I’m already starting to see the value in buying better quality items, but less frequently.
Love,