Recreational Shopping

One of the easiest, cheapest fun I have is shopping. Easiest, because the only requirement is to have the money to pay for your picks; no doctor’s certification or special skills necessary. And cheapest, because you don’t even have to buy anything to enjoy the experience; you can just window-shop as much as you like.

One time I was browsing through a heap of paperbacks in a bookshop at the mall, and found a small 20-page booklet of tips on how to lose weight, make money and live happily ever after. It also has suggestions on how to stay within a budget when shopping; the ideas are quite sensible, although hardly practicable – to shop alone, stick to list, and not to shop for food when you are hungry.

The only one I find doable of those tips is to shop alone; the rest were just so hard to follow. It’s mostly when I see the attractive food display that I become hungry. And a shopping list of necessities prepared beforehand is always incomplete; many items would suddenly look necessary the moment I see them on the store shelves.

I like to shop alone; I don’t want to move through a store having to keep pace with someone.  If one section doesn’t interest me, I skip that section. I don’t want to stand around staring at cleaning supplies while waiting for a companion who’s turned on by detergents.

To observe stringent discipline when shopping is failing to consider the fact that shopping is the greatest form of recreation for most people. Who among us go to the supermarket with a single purpose of getting enough food to prevent us from starving to death? In fact, it’s often the unnecessary but nice stuff that gets into our shopping carts first; the very things that we came to the store for sometimes occur to us only as we finally approach the checkout counter.

One day, on my day-off, I went to the mall four different times. None of those trips was for any significant or urgent purpose; in fact, it wouldn’t have mattered if I didn’t go at all. I went twice to the supermarket, twice to the hardware store.  It was also during those trips that I came upon that booklet of tips.

At the supermarket, I bought several bags of fish crackers (the big ones), a pint of ice cream and a bottle of cooking oil. I also bought a four-piece pack of penlight batteries, just because it was handy to grab at the cashier’s counter.  As you sure know, such things are not critical to our survival, but it is fun going around collecting them when were at the store.

While I enjoy shopping for food, it doesn’t compare with the pleasure I get from spending time at the hardware store. I think tools and gadgets account for over one-third of the things just lying idle around in my house. These are mostly items I acquire more for the pleasure of acquisition than for their actual use.

It may sound as if I’m some big shot kid with a lot of money to spend. But, truth is, I spend less and get more pleasure out of these little recreational shopping. It’s nothing compared to what most women spend on cosmetics or some young men spend on computer games, hair gels and pornographic DVDs.

The biggest kick I get from my hardware collection is looking at what I paid for the items last year and the years before and what they cost today. The electrical extension hub with three extra outlets and its own circuit breaker that I bought three years ago is still in its original package; it has not been opened and the price sticker is still there – P95.00. The exact same item now costs P199.75, at the same store!

Okay, it’s still a crazy idea to buy things you don’t need. But the mere fact that the market value of your collection has doubled through the years makes you feel so good. It adds up to the good feelings you had when buying those things in the first place.

And come to think of it: If, on my own, I had the wisdom to “make a shopping list and stick to it,” as what the booklet of tips says – would I even have thought of passing by the bookshop and spend time digging the heap of bargain paperbacks?  Would I have ever found that booklet of tips at all?