Online shopping can be a dangerous hobby. A few absent-minded clicks on a lazy Sunday morning can empty your bank account, fill your home with flotsam, and sentence you to days of buyer’s remorse, often more out of boredom than want or need.
Here are a few things you’ll understand if you buy way too much stuff online
1. You’re best friends with your recycling bin
It’s not the net quantity of recycling that stands out, more the gulf between your recycling and the rest of your rubbish. Come garbage day you haul out a normal-sized satchel of food waste, half a bin liner of basic trash, and a mountain of crumpled cardboard packaging so vertiginous it deserves an official name. It’s very easy to tell which house is yours.
Read more: Can’t resist splurging in online shopping? Here’s why
2. It’s probably clothes
We’re sure there are people out there addicted to ordering books, stationery, or antique grandfather clocks, but they’re a tiny minority compared to the tentacle-like reach of fast fashion. If you could go a month without doing laundry, or leave bags unpacked post-holiday with no ill effects, then it’s probably time to un-favourite ASOS.
3. You may still have unopened packages somewhere
With a steady stream of different-sized parcels languishing both sides of your front door, it’s odds on at least one has rolled under the shoe rack or been blown into a flowerbed. Assuming it wasn’t urgent medication, today’s parcel-under-the-sofa is tomorrow’s pleasant surprise, like a Christmas present that only arrives in time for New Year.
4. Decluttering is a way of life
There’s something strangely satisfying about conducting a wholesale purge, but the novelty wears off when you need a bi-weekly run to the charity shop just to keep your wardrobe operational.
Read more: Decluttering tips to help you get started
5. You know everything about deliveries
You’ve memorised the free delivery threshold on a hundred different sites, and exactly which low-cost items might drag your order over the line. You’re on first name terms with your postman, who knows exactly where to hide the bulkier items if you’re out.
6. You’re sometimes baffled by your own purchases
Everyone has unnecessary purchases in their back catalogue: ill-fitting clothes, poorly picked birthday presents, a margarita maker that takes way too long to clean. But even you are sometimes staggered by the sheer worthlessness of your more impulsive purchases.
You did not need that top ‘for work’, you already owned 20 pairs of shoes and only wear three of them, and you already drank far too much wine before buying that motorised bottle opener.
7. It’s occasionally super useful
You’re never knowingly understocked, and in times of mild crisis, the most random bits of bric-a-brac can enjoy a sudden moment in the sun.
8. You window shop constantly
You sometimes wonder whether it’s the endless browsing you really enjoy, and the periodic purchases are just there to make it socially acceptable. Scroll for entertainment; buy for a false but necessary sense of purpose.
Read more: Simple tips for smarter online shopping
9. The ‘junk drawer’ is very much a thing
Somewhere in your home resides a closet filled with all the useless rubbish you bought on a whim, and now need to keep convincing yourself you didn’t waste your money. The junk drawer is like the Hotel California – in theory items can be retrieved at any time, but nothing ever actually leaves.
Do you shop online? What was your most recent online purchase? Do any of these points hit too close to home?
– With PA
If you enjoy our content, don’t keep it to yourself. Share our free eNews with your friends and encourage them to sign up.
