My name is Simone and I’m… Addicted to shopping.

I have to admit – I have an addiction with shopping… Every time I get paid I will spend my entire pay before the weekend is over. Then I have nothing left until my next pay day. I used shopping as a way to make me feel better when I’m upset or anxious, I use it as a reward when I’m happy or have accomplished something and I use it as an excuse to do something when I’m bored.

I’ve always lived this way. And when I didn’t have enough money left in my bank account after paying bills, I would use one of my three credit cards. These days I’ve started using the buy-now-pay-later options for online shopping like AfterPay and Zip-Pay… Before I know it my whole pay is paying back all these things I have bought and obviously couldn’t afford.

I’ve realised lately that this is a serious problem. I am running myself into the ground with debt and this is not something I want to be doing. It’s not a great feeling being in your late twenties and knowing most of your money has been spent on frivilous possessions.

It’s usually clothes but in recent years I have also been spending lots of money on decor, stationery, makeup and shoes. I usually buy things on sale so I often feel like I’m getting a great deal. But do I really need all of those material possessions?

So I need to do something about it. It’s time for a shopping ban. I think a 3 month ban is best for me. But with these thing you need to set out the parameters and rules for any such challenge.

The Rules

1. No clothes shopping for 3 months. This includes jewellery, accessories, shoes, workout gear, pretty lingerie… I’m going seriously going cold turkey on this!
2. No non-essential makeup. This means anything other than the makeup I wear on a daily basis. And these items can only be bought when I run out. This will probably be the hardest to do throughout the challenge as I will likely see many things I want to buy.
3. No decor or homewares shopping. I love finding bits and pieces anywhere from Kmart to eBay to the local op shop… But if I can’t buy clothes, my spending may go to other things that I enjoy buying. I don’t won’t to replace one spending addiction with another, so I have to ban myself from decor shopping too.
4. No stationery shopping. Just like I said with rule no.4 – I need to also ban myself from stationery shopping as I feel I will definitely go shopping for pretty stationery if I can’t buy clothes. So I have to ban stationery too – Even if Kikki-K has a sale on!
5. Exceptions: can purchase essential stockings & socks. It’s getting colder now that it’s Autumn and I will need to buy skin coloured stocking and probably some black opaque stockings in the coming months. But I am only limited to the essentials and nothing like pretty patterned stockings.

So starting this week I am going cold turkey on shopping. It’s going to be hard but I think it’s important to do it. I need to curb my spending, but I also need to address the underlying reasons for my addiction.

I will make sure I keep my readers updated on my progress on both the blog and social media.

I’m going to involve myself in a few other projects to get me feeling better about my wardrobe:

• Cull my wardrobe
• Give my wardrobe room a really good clean and freshen up, including taking out any clutter.
• Sell clothes, shoes and accessories on eBay, Facebook or the local market.
• After 3 months, all unsold clothes to go to charities.
• Mend any clothes that are broken. Organise for any shoes or clothes with complicated repairs to go to the tailor.
• Use Stylebook to plan my outfits for the week and hopefully come up with some great new outfit combinations

Have you done a shopping ban before? How did you go? Do you have any tips or tricks to survive a shopping ban? Let me know in the comments section!

Bye for now,

All opinions in this post are my own. Unless otherwise stated, this post has not been sponsored and I have not been paid for this post

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