The sum of little things

Buying just one thing at a dime-and-dollar store. Eating just one piece of candy. Bringing home just one item.
For most of us, these would be filed under "small indulgences". The things we do "because we deserve it". The things that "cost just a little bit".
But these are also the things that get us into trouble, if repeated more than rarely. For my money, it makes no difference if I spend one dollar ten times, or spend ten dollars at once. For my weight, there´s in the long run no difference between a once-a-day-one-piece chocolate habit or eating a whole bar once a week. For the fight against clutter, there´s no difference between bringing home one small item at a time daily or bringing home seven once a week.
Still, the threshold to cross before doing something that is against our better interests is a lot lower when we perceive the transgression as a small one. And it gets even lower when it´s coupled with a feeling of entitlement.
Which is exactly what a lot of stores prey on. One of the most dangerous shopping traps for me, in the past, was a chain of stores that, originally, sold just freshly-roasted coffee. And then the owners had the idea of including other merchandise, namely, household stuff. They started selling coffee drinking paraphernalia first, as in coffee machines and cups, and graduated to garments, tools, kitchen stuff  and decorative items. The kicker being that they have a different set of merchandise every week, so, there is the added pressure on the customer because the item may be out of stock the next time they come by.
I used to drop by there every week, not for coffee, but for those pretty things they had besides coffee. Most of the time, I came back with something that, the day before, I didn´t even know existed. so, definitely not something off any long-time wish list. And those somethings added up, financially as well as clutter-wise.
Had I wished so, I might have gotten myself a complete set of table decorations every year for Easter or Christmas, or a new set of garden tools every spring, never mind that last year´s ones were still good and stored away somewhere.
The realization that there was a regular return of themes in their merchandise helped me to see the most recent set of merchandise as just another variation on a theme they had had already, and, if I had bought the items the first time they came around, I didn´t need another edition just because this time they were yellow and the first time they had been red.
What also helped me was adding up the total cost of those small indulgences and measuring it against the cost of those items on my all-time wish list that I had always put on the back burner because they were so expensive. Turned out that, if I had restrained myself from grabbing the small stuff, there might have been enough money saved to go for some of the big-ticket items.
Which is why I have stopped indulging myself with little things. They usually end up cluttering my flat anyway, the pleasure to be had from them is mostly short-lived, and buying them keeps me from achieving the bigger goals I have for my flat and my lifestyle. I can appreciate that something looks pretty, but I don´t have to buy it to enjoy it, especially not if I already own something to do that item´s job.
The number of those items that see regular use is rather small, anyway. So, I still look at their merchandise when passing that particular shop, but I rarely even enter to see what they have inside, and even more rarely do I buy something. Actually, I only buy something there if it is something I have had on my wish list for a while. The last thing I bought from there was a pair of chef´s pincers for turning around bacon when frying it. That was something I had seen in a cookware shop and refrained from buying at the time because they were pretty expensive, so, when I saw a similar item at a highly reduced price at the coffee sellers´, I took it home and am using it daily when preparing our bacon-and-eggs breakfast.
Then again, in my book, something that sees daily use is not exactly an indulgence, even if I could get around using a different instrument for the job ( I used to turn the bacon with a fork).
But the number of things I would use daily is small when compared to that of things I used to bring home just because they were pretty.
Knowing the difference keeps a lot of clutter out of my home and a lot of cash in my pocket.


Julia