If you know me, you know that I specialize in the pretty and rarely take into account the useful.
When someone says to me, “I love your shoes!”, inevitably it’s followed with the question, “Are they comfortable?”. And then appears what I can only imagine is a dumbfounded look on my face… of course they aren’t comfortable. In fact, I wouldn’t even know if they were because my feet have been so mistreated over the years, that I literally have a pinky toe that’s numb. But do the shoes look amazing or not? #doyouneedapinkytoe
And if you know me, you also know that my dream of all dreams (I do have a lot of dreams to be fair) is to be a personal shopper. When someone tells me that they hate shopping, my soul gets this little sad face. Some people have a knack for science or math, but I thank my lucky stars (and so does my husband, I’m sure) that my talents are shopping and putting together an outfit. But until the personal shopping thing pans out, I will continue to spread my wisdom via the written word.
If I could give all of you out there who hate shopping (I can barely write ‘hate’ and ‘shopping’ in the same sentence) some guidance, it is that if an item’s not pretty or useful, put it back. I could even argue that our useful things should be pretty. Like I’m a sucker for kitchen towels (it’s sad), but they make really pretty ones and I apparently need to own all of them. Hence pretty AND useful (see, I can do both).
“If an item’s not pretty or useful, put it back.”
I think the biggest mistake many of us make while shopping is that we look in our closets and think, “I need a new sweater”. So, begrudgingly off to the store we go to search for the sweater. And behold, we walk into the first store who, by some stroke of luck, happens to have sweaters. #miracle So we hold up the first sweater (in gray or black, of course), and it indeed looks and acts like a sweater. We then put said sweater in the cart and check out. Checkbox for the sweater.
No. No, no, no and all of the no. Put the damn sweater back, my friends. If you are not absolutely and wholeheartedly in love with that sweater don’t you dare buy it. We live in a world with thousands of stores that sell thousands of sweaters… beautiful, well-fitting sweaters in colors and patterns and different lengths. So don’t you settle for any old sweater that you happen to walk past. We have choices people!
I think too often in life we settle. We settle because we’re tired (totally get it, I have an 8-month-old), because we don’t have time (again, I have an 8-month-old) and because there are other things we’d rather do than shop for sweaters (like staring at an adorable 8-month-old). But what starts as settling for the first sweater we see, can quickly turn into a habit of settling in other areas of our life, like a job or a partner.
So dig through that pile of sweaters until you find the one that makes your heart happy… the one that you 
can’t wait to flaunt. Hold yourself to a higher standard of happiness and don’t stop until you find the perfect sweater.
And as always, if you need help with the literal shopping of the sweater, I am always down for that.
Any other advice for shoppers who don’t like shopping? Let me know in the comments below, so one day we can all enjoy one of my favorite pastimes.
Images courtesy of: here & here
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Amazing as always Liz! ? I loved this as it is so true that we should always hold ourselves to the highest standards. I recently purged for our move and it was a great reminder not to buy anything that I didn’t absolutely love; so much waste!