Reverse shopping

I’ve noticed something really strange. I now enjoy taking things back to the shops more than I like buying stuff in the first place. Bizarre, isn’t it?

For years, hunting down the perfect dress, getting it wrapped by a polite stranger and taking it home in triumph was rather a thrill. Now I get genuine pleasure from watching the process in reverse – my things being taken away, and my money somehow being swiped back onto my card. And not just so I can replace the failures with other things, either. I just like having less, and I really hate having clothes in my wardrobe that aren’t completely right. Once upon a time, there’d be various items lurking there, still with their tags on, just in case they managed to turn themselves from frogs to princes somehow in the dark. Now they get rooted out and marched back to where they came from, and I love it.

That’s not to say, alas, that everything in my wardrobe is rosy. There are still a few dodgy items in there, sometimes things that I’ve forced myself to wear at least once justt to prove I wasn’t completely mad when I bought them (though I was) and which can’t, as a consequence, be taken back or, more likely, things that I’ve just held onto for too long and lost the receipts for.

But that’s not going to happen any more. Reverse shopping is too much fun to put off. You should try it. Or maybe you have?

Bags of swag
Bags of swag

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