Lets Hit The Sales! I’d Rather Die

A lot of people love shopping in the sales. They eagerly wait for the January period to come, and then on Boxing Day they hit the shops like a tsunami on the shore; hunting down all the bargains and deals that they can find in an attempt to smugly inform their friends that they saved a bomb.

I, on the other hand, hate the January sales. In fairness, imp not a very good shopper at the best of times. I’m the kind of girl whose money burns a hole in her pocket, and for that reason I am always eager to get out and spend Christmas money on new bounty to feed the wardrobe monster and appease it for a few weeks.  But I can never find anything. Why is it when you have money that you want to spend you can find nothing that doesn’t make you look like you are wearing a potato sack or wearing something your Nan would dress you in, but when you can’t even find one more penny to keep the one in your wallet lonely, and the only thing there is an abundance of in your purse are moths, you see garments to fall in love with all over the place? Sometimes, life just isn’t fair.

Getting a bargain? It never works like that. My friend and I decided to brave the shops between Christmas and New Year, both of us with a view to get a new outfit for New Years Eve. He had rather more success than me as men’s clothes tend to stray from safe far less, but I walked in and backed out of shops at alarming speed, muttering under my breath about how I hated people en mass and sales in general.

I think the sales are out there to annoy me. It seems that through the year, eagle eyed sales assistants hook out the most offensive garments, and store them in a little hidey hole. It’s like payback for all those annoying shoppers who have time off when they have to work. Sure, you can come in and try to spend your money on new clothes, but they will try their very best to make the experience painful, finding all the alarming treasures that they have squirreled away all year and adorning the rails with them. Have you ever noticed how in the January sales there is a fright of orange, Lycra and tie dye that has been somewhat absent through the rest of the year? I think that some of the beauties that you come across on the racks at this time of year have been wheeled out year after year since the eighties, in a bid to not have to admit defeat and throw them out, but merely sell them to a poor unsuspecting victim who thinks they have found a bargain.

After all, there is nothing worse than going sales shopping and coming home empty handed, is there? It’s like admitting that there was nothing, however cheap that you liked or wanted, and for that reason we have ALL at some point or another purchased an item that will be fed to the God of the wardrobe, never to see the light of day again. Cast your mind back. This week I have gone through my wardrobe and donated a whole heap of stuff to the charity shop that has been hiding in my closet for years. Every time a friend asks to borrow something I hope they won’t come across said embarrassing item, and for this reason alone there was a high percentage of clothes that didn’t make the cut of moving to the new flat when I moved. Unfortunately I have now had to sort it all out on the way back in. What possessed me to but a T-shirt stating that “pale is the new tan” when I don’t wear t-shirts EVER? I don’t know. And we won’t even talk about the stripy jeans that made an appearance in the charity bag this year. I don’t even know where I got those from.

Have you got any horrific purchases too embarrassing to throw in the bin, for fear the dustmen might come and knock on the door and laugh?