My Personal Shopping Style

In an off-season episode of the Fandesals Podcast, my friend and co-host Judith took our viewers on a day of walking and window-shopping. It got me thinking about what my personal preferences are when it comes to shopping, something that I decided to share in this post.

Image by gonghuimin468 from Pixabay

From what I’ve been able to tell from how my friends do their shopping, I am not as “girly” of a shopper. In fact, I think that my shopping style is more like that of my male friends or relatives. 

I’m the type of person who only goes to the mall when I need something. These days that would also mean something that I have not been able to buy offline. When I’m at the mall, I’m the type who has a list of the things I need and goes out to buy whatever is on that list and then I leave. I may get distracted by other things if a salesperson is pushy enough, but I will not buy anything that is not on my list, because those would be things that I do not necessarily need at the time. I keep myself on a budget as much as I can.

What do I usually buy? For some reason, I’ve never been much for shopping for clothes and accessories, I would rather buy the same item in different colors or the same types of clothing in one color scheme and I would be completely satisfied. I buy clothes when the ones I currently own become too old and ratty to wear out, or when there is an occasion that requires types of clothing that I do not own. I would love to be a fashionista and wear really nice things, but I find it all intimidating and I find that it takes too much work. Shopping for gadgets and tech-related items is a different story though. I tend to drift more to stores that sell that than clothes when I am at the mall. 

Most of my female friends, like Judith in the Fandesals episode I mentioned, love to shop by roaming around and seeing what’s available and deciding if they want something or not. They may also have a list of what they need, but it takes them forever to choose and decide what variation of what they need they will buy. I once spent half a day accompanying a friend who was looking to buy a pair of shoes. Just one pair. And it took us at least four hours of walking around all over the place for her to decide which pair she wanted. I can’t do that. Taking that long would feel like a waste of time for me. 

Another thing that I’ve noticed is that I am the type who would not buy anything without looking at reviews of the products before buying them. It doesn’t matter what kind of item it is I’m buying; I would still do a quick online check before I decide to buy anything. If an item is expensive, it takes me longer to decide, but usually, that decision-making process is done at home. If I want it, I will read reviews and will take time to think about it. If I really feel that I want and need it after going through the reviews I’ve found, that is the only time that I will buy anything expensive. 

While I mostly shop for things that I need regularly, I do have my moments when I get excited about things that I do not necessarily need but want to buy anyway. I may not inevitably buy them (because as I mentioned earlier, anything that will call for me to spend more money on tends to be a long decision-making process), but I do get excited, nevertheless.

These days, the adulting side of me is more into things for the house: appliances, things for the kitchen and the bedroom, and other things of the domesticated sort. I’ve never been one to enjoy going out before the pandemic, so during and after the fact I have become even more of a homebody and that makes me more interested in shopping for home than anything else. However, wanting things is not always synonymous with buying them in my case, because I tend to take my time thinking about which ones I really need and not just want.

What about you? What is your shopping style? What types of items do you enjoy shopping for? Let me know in the comments!

Let me end this post by sharing the Fandesals Offseason episode that I mentioned earlier. Enjoy!