Surviving the 11.11 challenge

I have a confession to make.

Even though I try to live minimally, and purchase only things I need, I do a lot of window shopping. Online.

Ok, that is an oxymoron, some might say. If you are a minimalist, you won’t even bother looking at stuff like that. Because, you probably don’t need any of those. So what’s the point of browsing through them?

Very valid points. And to that, I will say that when it comes to physical shops, I don’t even bother to look at items on sale anymore, neither will I be attracted by visuals to entice me into entering them just because something looks cute (which are things that I am extremely attracted to). 

But the online environment is very different.

And it is especially so, since I do most of my shopping online nowadays. Whether it might be groceries (mainly through redmart), or other stuff (mainly through qoo10 or ezbuy or various other sites), they are mainly done online. Well, one of the reason is that its pretty difficult to go shopping with a toddler in toll. You seldom have the time to stop by and have the shop assistant explain the product to you. Unless you already know what you want and you just head to the cashier once you pick up the product.

The only things that I won’t buy online are items like fresh produce, shoes (I mean you will still need to try it physically to make sure the cut fits right? Plus I only buy my shoes from 2 places). In addition, it’s so convenient to buy online. You don’t even need to travel to the physical store to purchase and can have it delivered to the comfort of your home.

When I am shopping online, I have this tendency of overfilling my cart. That is, I will have added in those items that I wanted, but at the same time, ended up adding a bunch of other items that wasn’t in the original shopping list. But I do try to self-rationalise before checkout and checked through the items again to assess if I really need them.

Recently, I needed to get something and went to a couple of websites. And all you see are the 11.11 discounts. For those who are not aware, the 11.11 singles day discount was something that was pioneered by Alibaba, the world’s largest e-commerce company and what happens on this day is that most of the online merchants will introduce huge discounts. Over the last few years, this festival has become the largest online shopping day in the world, even larger than Black Friday itself.

And wow…. there are so many great offers out there. There are so many great discounts. And crap, even the milk powder is Buy 1 get 1 Free!!!!

Sometimes, looking at all that makes you lose your rationality in a sudden. Nevermind that Ally is already transitioning out of formula milk – but that buy 1 get 1 free discount is hard to resist! And look at that dress! It’s so pretty, perhaps I could buy it first and it come be my Chinese New Year outfit…

You just end up finding reasons to buy. Even though it might not be a required purchase at that time.

I know some individuals who wait until 11.11 to purchase the items, simply because they are priced aggressively, and it makes it worthwhile to wait.

But at the same time, there are some that just pile up, because it’s cheap…

It was all simply too irrresistible. And distracting. In the end, I exited all the apps. But I did spend $66 in the end for the Buy 1 get 1 Free milk formula. 

So what about you? What was your damage?