Skip to main content

The Urge to Buy

I've been fighting the urge to buy for the past few days. I've found myself searching online for the following:
  • A dishwasher. We have one, but it's old, noisy and unreliable, so I've been doing them by hand ever since we moved in. Until my daughter was born, that worked fine. Now, though, I feel like I just finish them, and within hours it needs to be done again. As I stood in the kitchen this morning looking at the dishes that have accumulated, I found myself thinking, "Boy, it sure would be nice if the dishwasher worked."
  • A free-standing pantry. My kitchen is small and my cupboards are full. Therefore, I have a few appliances, such as a bread maker, that are stored on the countertop. I don't know that we have enough items to put in an extra pantry to justify the expense, but it sure would be nice to have some more counter space.
  • Birthday and Christmas gifts. Five or six years ago, I would be out with other last-minute shoppers on Dec. 24. Over the past few years, though, I've started looking for gift ideas -- both for birthdays and the holidays -- months in advance, looking for on sale items that I can stash away until gift-giving time arrives. I'll give my last "in stock" gift this month, so I'm due for another round of buying. The problem is, I keep coming across other things I personally want and think, "Well, since I'm buying anyway ... ." Therefore, I fight the urge to buy altogether. I have to wait until the urge to get the extra stuff passes.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Finding a use for gifts you don't use

( Stuart Miles / FreeRangeStock.com ) Question: Someone gives you a present. You open it, give the gifter a sincere smile, and say, "Thank you," but you know that gift is something you'll never use. Not once. What do you do with it later? Me? I keep them. I just can't shake the feeling of guilt that goes along with regifting or selling them. As a result, my family and I have lots of items we either haven't used in years or have never used at all: An electric knife, electric griddle, a big mixer, something called Yonanas. The list goes on and on. But the bottom line is, Yonanas and electric knives don't fit my family's lifestyle. They never have, and I doubt they ever will. So I think I might need to get over feeling like it would be ungrateful to get rid of them and post them in places like Craigslist or some of those online sales sites on Facebook for sale. That way, at least we can have the cash to pay toward part of our debt. Wouldn't...
Post a Comment
Read more

Trimming the Grocery List

This week is another grocery shopping week, and I'm dreading it. I had at one point managed to get my grocery spending under $175 every two weeks, the last few trips have not gone that well. They've all totaled more than $200, not including any supplementary trips I needed to make later. I'm not really sure what I can do to cut it more at this point beyond rethink what we've been eating. Over the past few months, the price of ground beef has gone up quite a bit, and much of what we eat has ground beef in it. I had been buying the leanest beef available, but on my last grocery trip, I bought 90/10 meat. Perhaps we'll need to eat more chicken.
Post a Comment
Read more

Getting Ready for Etsy Debut

One of my hopes for making a little extra money is to see some of my handmade crafts on Etsy. I have a few items I'd like to list -- a couple of bracelets -- but the beads on them are so small that I'm having trouble getting decent photos of them. Hopefully, I'll have something usable by the end of the week.
Post a Comment
Read more