Charity shop shopping

An interesting phenomenon appears to be occurring. And one that I hadn’t forseen.

I am now the proud owner of several dresses. Having never really been a big dress wearer, I seem to have stumbled across lots of really lovely ones in local charity shops over the last month or so. And it seems rude to say no, when they have all been £5 or less…

So now I have FOUR new dresses.

And I really must stop.

It hadn’t really occurred to me that changing WHERE you shop, might affect WHAT you buy. I’m sure I would never have looked twice at these dresses if they had been in their original shops. Lets face it, I probably wouldn’t have gone in their original shops-a trip out clothes shopping is a rareity, and has previously been focused on the likes of Fat Face, White Stuff and Joules (very middle class of me I know)-ideally at their outlet stores(!) and I have never been one for just popping into clothes shops on a whim-probably largely because our nearest large town for clothes shopping is 40 minutes away, and I have 2 Small boys, who REALLY don’t like shopping…

Maybe it’s just because there are quite a few charity shops in my town, and now I can no longer browse in WHSmiths or even look in Lidl at all the stuff I never knew I wanted, but often felt compelled to buy, so I have taken to browsing the charity shops. I often go in with the best of intentions, looking for something off the ‘wishlist’, which I don’t normally find. But I usually see at least one item of clothing I like, and whether it’s just the novelty value, or whether it’s because they always seem like a bit of a bargain, but I am finding it very hard to resist. It may also be that the ‘need to shop’ is stronger than I thought, and charity shop shopping is acting as a displacement activity for ‘real’ shopping.

I sound like such a shopping addict. I’m really not. Or I didn’t think I was. But when you can’t just go straight out and buy whatever it is you need from say Tesco or Sainsbury’s (for example, I want to get some more melamine type bowls for the Smalls) you have to look longer and harder, and obvioulsy you then see a lot of other stuff, and I can never resist a bargain…

All in all, I think it’s a really good thing. My Make Do and Mend Year is broadening my horizons (and wardrobe) in ways I hadn’t anticipated, and anything that moves you slightly out of your comfort zone has got to be a good thing. Right?

But I also have a rapidly expanding wardrobe, when I already have plenty of perfectly functional clothes. So it isn’t really all that Make Do and Mend is it?

Now I just need to make sure that a) I actually wear said dresses!; and b) stop buying stuff I don’t really need, even if it is secondhand…