My Toxic Shopping Trait
Every time I go on a trip, I need a new wardrobe. I’m not sure where this stemmed from, or why I justify spending more on my wardrobe than the trip itself, but every single time I go on an international or domestic trip, I feel the need to completely customize a new wardrobe for it.
It’s not just trips, it’s also events — weddings, rehearsal dinners, graduation celebrations, work celebrations, even a birthday dinner, you name it — I warrant a something new. For example, when I graduated with my Master’s degree in May of this year, I couldn’t just settle for the graduation dress itself. For the day of, I bought a graduation dress, shoes, and a luxury bag; a back-up dress in case the weather turned on me; a new dress for the reception the night before; another new dress for the reception the week before; and to top it all off — another new luxury bag, as a reward to myself for completing the degree. While the bags do get a lot of use out of them and feel like investment pieces, the other items sit in my closet. These pieces just stare at me, waiting for me to finally cave and sell them, or at the very least, wear them one more time and then sell them. Not to mention the beautiful Aeyde silver heeled sandals I wore and posted on Instagram, while I received tons of compliments on them, tore up my feet, so at what cost were these compliments?
That’s just one example. Every time I travel, like for an upcoming trip to Iceland in August, I create a spreadsheet. I’ve shared these spreadsheets on my TikTok for a full visual, but basically I categorize by day and by type. For example: Monday: tour outfit, Monday: dinner outfit, etc., and then I paste images of those items from their product pages to visualize how my outfits will look. Sure, these spreadsheets help to mix and match items, take the stress out of what to wear once I’m there, and presumably help to pack as light as possible (which never happens)— they also feeds the addiction for more. If I have a pair of pants that I can wear on a trip to Europe two or three times over the week, I can’t possibly wear the same shirt with those pants - I need 3 new shirts to accompany it.
I could go on and on about the packing spreadsheets I create or the amount of money I shell out to curate the perfect travel looks, but the point of this blog is to track how I’m improving - and to do that, I have to figure out the psychology behind why I feel compelled to spend hours a night on these looks in order to improve on my ‘why’. It’s been a difficult thing to come to terms with, because I know it’s wrong - I know I don’t need an entirely new wardrobe. Friends and family can tell me over and over again that I don’t need any more shoes, but I’ll never heed their advice. I’ve been on enough trips at this point in my life to know that no one really cares what I’m wearing, and that I never (seriously, not once) have gone on a trip and worn every item I’ve packed. I know it hurts my wallet and the planet to shop in the excess that I do for these trips — and yet, I still can’t stop.
I become obsessed. A hyper-fixation occurs and I become fully immersed in curating the perfect looks, spending hours, much more than I initially intend, on searching the depths of the internet for things like a 2019 jacket in a color-way that no longer exists so it can perfectly match the pants in my cart to them.
I know that I have obsessive tendencies that fuel the fire to this type of behavior. It makes me feel ashamed sometimes that I’ll live in this cycle forever, because even if the behavior is hurting me, it also brings me immense amounts of joy. I love shopping, and I love crafting outfits. I get giddy every time I see that an item has shipped or was delivered and I can add it to the ‘trip spreadsheet in real life’ pile. It’s a coping mechanism, yes, but I’ve also yet to find an alternative to it that sticks.
What’s the solution? I’m honestly not sure yet, that’s the reason I created this blog. It feels really vulnerable writing this all for the internet, but it’s become an issue enough where I’ve finally ‘hit my bottom’ and know this can no longer be a topic of discussion I skirt around in therapy. I don’t feel like I’m alone in my behavior either. I know I may take it to the extreme, but I’ve learned in life basically nothing we do or think is original. So in this blog section, I’ll discuss behaviors around shopping such as the one above, and ways I’m improving (albeit slowly). I’ll take my learnings from my amazing therapist and the vast internet, and share them here - (hey ,it’s like a blog full of free fashion therapy!) I’m fully jumping into this work and really (really) ready to see how I improve.