The Second Guilty Pleasure
Buying What You Don't Really Need
I’m guessing that for many of us, the first and most frequent guilty pleasure is some item of food, be it chocolate truffles or vanilla ice cream or a cappuccino with whipped cream. How good it tastes! How sweet, how rich, how caloric! What an easy way to reward ourselves for the completion of a task, or, really, for nothing at all. The frisson of guilt (so unhealthy!) only makes the experience better.
Coming in second, perhaps, is shopping and buying what you don’t really need. This is so satisfying, at least for a couple of hours, it has been called “retail therapy.” Here, the guilt is greater, because if you spend $100 on a cute shirt, it’s money you could have sent to help save starving children. You tell yourself this is the case with any purchase whatsoever, but on some level, it feels decadent to be buying another shirt when you already have so many.
Nonetheless, clothing purchases, especially, make me happy, although I have plenty of clothes in my drawers and closets. I think on some level I feel a new outfit will make me fresh and more appealing to the people who know me. Writing this here, I see how silly it is. Maybe I think a new shirt will make me more appealing to the people who don’t know me. A new piece of clothing offers us the illusion of a new identity, even if it is similar to another piece of clothing in the closet.
Fashion also makes one buy some purchases. Do I need a pair of wide-legged jeans? An olive-green jumpsuit? Another white tee? Of course not. But I’m glad I recently bought these things. Old people needn’t be frumpy!
Getting a bargain adds to the pleasure of the purchase. Seeing the original price with a slash through it and a new much lower price makes it seem like spending money is really being thrifty.
Collectors are also people who buy what they don’t really need. A marketing coach collects typewriters of various vintages. He has about twenty. Is he on the prowl for another? You bet he is! Part of collecting is the thrill of the hunt. I doubt he feels guilty about amassing still more typewriters, any more than Jay Leno feels guilty about his $50 million car collection.
A woman I knew collected small sculptures of owls. She accumulated so many over the years, partly through getting sub-par owls as presents, that some owls were not even on display, just hidden away in a closet. Did she still look for owls at tag sales and gift shops? She did, and she was thrilled whenever she found one.
As for me, I collect blue glass objects: vases, candlesticks, animals, paperweights. I keep them on the window ledges in my study and let the light stream through them. There isn’t much room for more on these ledges. Yet I recently saw a blue glass mushroom suspended in a clear tear-shaped glass. I had to have it. It was only $18, yet I did feel a certain guilt. I justified the purchase to myself by saying I would give the spectral blue mushroom to my oldest son, a therapist who practices consciousness medicine.
I don’t know. I’m getting quite fond of the glass mushroom and might have to keep it. Looking at it on my window ledge, knowing I intended to give it away, might become, in the future, yet another guilty pleasure.
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I am a collector- of many things. I have now reached the tipping point and have to pare down- or let’s use the phrase” conscious collecting” . This is somewhat tongue in cheek but there is some truth to it. I do a lot of thrifting and so now I do a lot more looking around than purchasing. But still, the irresistible is always around the corner. I find great gifts too. I usually don’t feel guilty about it. I seek beauty and it’s a pretty harmless way to treasure hunt. But I am now at the point of being able to go through drawers and boxes in my own home for treasures and when we sell this rambling house somewhere in the near future it will a chance for others to find treasure. The great circle of life.
Thanks for the kind mention Catherine. I will say, more recently I have been focusing on curating my collection of typewriters. To have it be very specific in terms of the space it takes up, and the exact types of models I want in the collection. I've noted which typewriters I will be giving away, when I find others to replace their (finite) spot in the collection. Limits can be a very important aspect to collecting.