the road to hell.

is paved with crumpled shopping bags. i was doing really well on my $30 a week plan for needless weekend spending… and then this weekend descended in a haze of clearance racks and impulse buying. does anyone else ever feel like they’re possessed by the devil? come july, i’ll be making some drastic reductions in my spending (to disastrous results i’m sure), but in the meantime… let’s revel in this last summer binge with gusto.

1. target, my second home. i once vowed that i would stop sleeping in sweatpants and old t-shirts and start sleeping in sexy lingerie. i’m not doing a very good job, but two new pieces of pretty from the liberty of london collection @ $4.48 each significantly increase the odds. if someone would come over to my house and finally torch my heinous disintegrating sweatpants, then we’d really be in business.

2. we decided to go to windham for a change, and that goodwill never disappoints. found another addition to my three investigators collection (jupiter jones is gonna solve that mystery SO HARD), and some crazy plastic apple container. i don’t know why, but i’m a sucker for shit that’s shaped like fruit.

3. marden’s sweet marden’s. there’s a brand new gigantic fucking mardens that just opened up in the old walmart building in south portland. i’ll be posting a deep and dirty expose about my experience later this week, but until then… BEHOLD! hobo spanx no more (that’s control top panty hose with the legs cut off for those who aren’t yet aware of my secret shame)! $11.49 for a maidenform control shorts. sure, it feels like my organs are being crushed, but i look SO SKINNY.

4. i ditched the boyfriend in the car for a nap while i took off to the marshall’s for a while. he’s such an old man. amazing asymmetrical t-shirt for $8, and the most beautiful summer dress ever for $19.99. i’m too fat for spandex, but there was a boatload of really nice looking marc by marc jacobs swimwear if you’re in the market for that sort of thing.

5. last time i was at the gap, it was all prairie skirts and straw cowboy hats, which is probably somewhere between windpants and juicy sweatsuits on the scale of shit that i shouldn’t be wearing. mysteriously this weekend, everything was awesome and on sale. oh, and everything that was on sale was an additional 40% off. got a cute skirt and 2 pairs of mysteriously great fitting pairs of 1969 (regularly $79 a pair) for $51.

6. shaw’s was the final stop for grocery shopping, and probably the biggest retail coup of the day. WACKY MAC MOTHERFUCKER! there was and endcap fucking full of it randomly over by the raw chicken. i bought just a couple because i could, even though i didn’t have the coupon that made them free.  but the biggest score was easily the fiber one deal. on sale for buy one get one (@ $4.29 each), i had a stash of $.75/1 coupons that would double, making it $1.29 for 2 boxes $.65 a box. i got 8 boxes for $5.16 total. i even had a $5/$50 coupon which would bring the whole goddamn mess down to almost nothing. it would have been exceptionally impressive if the boyfriend could have been an adult about it, instead of just giggling like a maniac, and telling me how much i’m gonna poop.

$102.58– scandalous! anyway, appreciate it now before i cut myself off from the crazy shopping forever (or until august, whichever comes first). but if the demon possession should happen to be too strong for me… tell my family that i love them, and make sure you wrestle my dead ass into those spanx. i don’t want to be a bloated corpse.

spending too little on too much.

it was a spendy-ass sunday. took a little jaunt back to my hometown of augusta for brunch at the senator inn (a childhood fav that still holds up!), and a little light antiquing that turned into an entire day of shopping the town inside out. i got some pretty good deals that seemed necessary at the time… but seeing it all lined up at the end of the day (and added up), i start to wonder how much of my bargain shopping is really a bargain. i’m paying less for everything, but i’m buying more than ever.

shaw’s: 4 big G cereals @ $12.86 with $6 off when you buy 4 plus $4.40 worth of coupons ($.55/1 doubled from coupons.com) final cost= $2.46 for 4 boxes.

target: the liberty of london collection is on super sale at the augusta target and i snagged an adorable nightie for $8.98. there’s also a ton of zac posen stuff, but it’s not marked down enough for me to bother. give it another few weeks… i might have to go back to augusta and snag me a cocktail dress. i also found a mysteriously unblemished pair of striped espadrilles for $4.26 marked “AS IS”. their identical counterparts were just feet away in the full retail section for $16.99… maybe they’re going to explode in low speed collisions? i’ll keep you apprised if any defects should arise. lastly, i found a few boxes of puffs tissues with vicks vapo-rub in them (which i love but haven’t been able to find ANYWHERE- discontinued?) for $1.38 a box, and sacrificed 2 of my $.50/1 vocalpoint coupons. target total= an eerie $15.00 even.

big lots: to my credit, i did put back one movie and a $6 box of diet granola bars. but a $3 copy of funny face?! i have a list of movies on my iphone that i’m looking to buy. the problem being, that my price point for DVD buying is $5 of less, usually less. today i encountered 3 of those titles in the $3 bin. is there really anything else at big lots that’s even worth looking at? funny face, art school confidential, & confetti= $9.00.

goodwill: i used to own and love this jacket in another size that i am not officially too fat to wear. lo and behold, here it is at goodwill in brunswick for $4.99! oh wait, is that a yellow barb? make that $2.49!

cvs: i had $14 worth of extrabucks expiring tomorrow, and this evening was my only chance to cash in.  with the gillette proglide razors already sold out, i had to improvise a bit and use a few more extrabucks than i otherwise would have preferred. i ended up with a bunch or random crap (most of which will get donated), but it felt like a good haul considering the circumstances:

2 john frieda root awakening shampoos @$5 each with $3 ECB back when you buy $10 + $5/2 coupon= $2
2 right guard total defense deodorants $4.49/ea. on BOGO + $3/2 coupon from coupons.com= $1.50
1 covergirl wetslicks amaze-mint @ $4.99 with $3 ECB back, and $1/1 coupon= $.99
1 colgate proclinical toothpaste @ $3.99 with $2 back in ECB, and a $1/1 coupon= $.99
2 gillette bodywash @ $8 with $8 back in ECB and a $4/2 coupon= +$4 ECBs (the flier said limit 1, but it turned out to be limit 2!)
total OOP= $17.47 (paid $17 in ECBs + .$.47 in cash plus tax), received $16 ECBs

total spent this weekend (for all above pictured goods, not actually counting meals, groceries for the week, and a ridiculous failed dinner party that will never speak of again)= $29.42 of stuff that i didn’t actually need. on one hand, i could have spent a whole lot more on a multi-store shopping binge, and gotten a whole lot less. on the other hand, is spending $30 on anything that i don’t need really a bargain? it might be time to put the debit card away for a while and think about what i’ve done.