A shopping impulse

Well, like I said yesterday, I wouldn't commit to walking everyday because I don't roll like that, but I did do a fair amount of walking in a nice air conditioned environment at Michaels, and surprisingly only came away with one $1 item for myself, the rest were presents for Rivka's friends.  I'm rather proud of that, despite all the awesome Halloween decorations, I held back and only got what we were looking for instead of splurging.  This is something I've been working on a lot, I've noticed that my yetzer likes to spend money, lots of money on rather insignificant stuff (or significant as it seems in the moment).  Exploring this thought, I discovered that when I'm bored at work (frequently), I tend to surf the web and shop, often buying things I feel severe remorse about later.  Definitely an evil eye issue here.  So, I haven't stopped myself from shopping, but what I do is let myself browse and "shop", placing items in the shopping bag online and then putting the tab aside until later that day.  Sometimes I go back and am like, "Hmmm....do I really need another 10 t-shirts?  Even though I'm meh on these scarves, do I really need to take advantage of this 15% off sale?"  Most of the time, I realize that I don't really want or need the stuff in those carts and I'll let them expire.  It's not easy and there are times when I want so badly to buy what I've shopped for, but (especially with the clothes), I remember how every morning I can't close my dresser drawer because of all the shirts in there, the fact that I haven't lost any weight, and I really have no space in the house to store things.  I'm not sure which of those arguments tends to win, but usually that's what it comes down to.  Same with headscarves.  Back in June, I went to Burlington and bought 3 scarf hangers which are totally full of the spring/summer scarves, so every time I think of buying a new one, I think back to the scarf hangers and how full they are.  If I'm just meh on something, I won't bother to buy it and waste the space.  I have a few scarves I've bought in the past that I'm not totally happy with and kind of wish I hadn't bought them.  Total buyers remorse.

So, for me to walk around Michaels for about an hour today and not buy but one $1 item (it's a squeeze stress football), that's saying something and I'm proud of myself for being able to not succumb to the urge to buy the entire Halloween section.  Of course, it helped to remember the 6 boxes under my work desk of decorations and how I really need to go through those and organize. 

This is all part of the Elul work, looking back at some of your habits and things you've done over the past year and see if you need to make changes or improve something you did change.  I'm continuing to refine my "past year" introspection and hope to lovingly improve.