I think you all know by now that I have too much stuff. Instead of blaming my own proclivity for shopping, I have decided to blame the internet. Well for the most part anyway. I also blame Sephora and duty free at airports.
Take this stunning outfit for example. I bought it on EBay, and it was listed as a church suit. For those of you who don’t know, church suits are worn mostly by women of color, at church. I wonder if I would have ever found anything like this before the internet.
Think about how mail order shopping used to work. The Frederick’s catalog would come. You would spend 2 weeks looking at it, carefully selecting things. Then you would mail in your order and wait weeks for it to come. Ok it got a little faster with 800 numbers, if you had the courage to call.
To date I have discover many amazing catalogs on line, all with "clearance" or "outlet" sections. I especially like Old Pueblo Traders, but you all know this already.
And forget about sales—you almost always paid full price. The same was true for the Sears catalog, JC Penny etc.
I was rather lucky to have the now closed “Eva DeVito’s Corset Shop” but I still bought stuff in catalogs.
And buying things in person was always dicey, even thought I did it a lot.
Then along comes the internet. Slow at first, but it picked up momentum. I sort of missed it in the beginning, but then someone told me about something called EBay.
When I first got on line I spent a lot of time looking for free porn. Admit it---- you all did as well. But once I found EBay I was mesmerized! I spent hours for 2 weeks looking at everything. Finding new ways to search, discovering that “girdle” returns a lot more results than girdles
I bought girdles, bras, dresses, stockings (tons of stockings!), slips and more. I got to meet vendors like stockinggirl, lyn locke, and cherry-tomato. (Hope you are OK out there bunny) Everyone was so cool to deal with. They’d ship before they got checks for heavens sake. And I bought and bought and bought some more. And then I bought more. I was pretty flush with moolah at the time, which either helped or hurt, depending or your point of view
I love this picture.....I have more than 50 sanitary belts! It is insane!
I bought so much stuff that I once made an agreement with an EBay vendor who took a box of foundations I didn’t want for one reason or another, and she sold them all, took her cut, and I still got more than $1,000.
I could go on, but the point is that before all this stuff, I was extremely happy with what I had. I didn’t need 75 white girdles, so many stockings that I might never wear them etc. To be honest EBay did replace places that closed, like Eva DeVito’s, Cosmo Hosiery in New York, etc.
Now what I should probably do is stop buying all this stuff. But just the other day I got an email form OPT about 20% off everything for 3 days. The trick to being successful when this is the case is to know what you want. So I had everything all picked out and before you know it 5 new outfits, 4 new pairs of shoes
But how could I resist when I was getting $99 items, on sale for $29.99, with 20% off?
So I have too much stuff. I do have ways of getting something for my old outfits, but it has grown out of April’s room to the garage (Pettis stored in oversize boxes) a secret compartment, my under a staircase (wigs)
I have so much stuff that when I was looking for this outfit I found a dress I forget about completely.
Now let’s talk makeup- and Sephora. No matter what I do or how hard I try I spend $100 when I go there. No surprise as things are $15 top $30 there. I have the same problem with Duty Free, as the anonymity there always sucks me in
To be fair I graduated from health and beauty store makeup some time ago. But I would wait until I got to another city to visit the Mac counter. Now all I have to do is drive 20 minutes in most any direction and there is Sephora.
I suppose I shouldn’t complain, after all I can afford it. And the advances in the past ten to 20 years have made April’s life a lot more interesting. Just think about laser hair removal, and no more hairy chest, legs, armpits, arms, even my face
And a few years ago when I wanted a surgical procedure most reputable physicians would not perform, I found one only a few miles from home by researching it online.
Note on August 30 WOW!!! You all want to know what this procedure was! Sorry not telling, use your imaginations. Please don't email me about it, I won't tell.
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