You Can’t Leave It at That Price

I was half-heartedly rummaging through the rails in TK Maxx on sunday trying to find something that wasn’t brown. There is a LOT of brown around at the moment and, while I have nothing against brown for those it suits, I don’t particularly want to wear it myself.

I need some new tops and get bored really quickly when scrolling online waiting for something divine to jump out at me.

TK Maxx was already pissing me off because the rails were so tightly packed together. I’d got a shopping trolley to lean on, and it was literally touching the clothes rails on either side. Thank god I didn’t go in on my scooter! That would’ve been impossible. It felt less like shopping and more like trying to manoeuvre a lorry through a jumble sale.

Then I spotted a T-shirt for £15. It was nice enough, good quality, plain black with DKNY across the front. And fifteen quid for a DKNY T-shirt seemed like a bargain.

I started thinking I could wear it to the gym.

I don’t really wear T-shirts, apart from at the gym, but I’d recently got some proper squat-proof gym leggings rather than wearing my normal ones.

Perhaps I needed a proper gym T-shirt as well?

For a fleeting moment I had a little daydream about this new gym-going version of myself in my special leggings and DKNY T-shirt. Which is hilarious considering I don’t particularly enjoy going to the gym. But I’ve currently got twelve weeks’ free membership after finishing my joint pain programme, and at the time of writing I am number 11 on the waiting list for a ‘chair-obics’ class.

Hardly gym-bunny territory.

I looked at the T-shirt again and caught myself. “What are you thinking Lisa?” A £15 DKNY T-shirt isn’t going to make you like going to the gym.

It seems I’d temporarily reverted to factory settings.

I have previous form for this particular factory setting. Back in 2016 I wrote a blog called Bargain Bev. She was a character I’d invented who couldn’t resist a good deal.

She loved TK Maxx, obviously. She was seduced by the WAS price on the label and focused on how much she’d saved rather than how much she’d spent on something she didn’t need. She would even buy things that didn’t quite fit because she could always lose half a stone or have the trousers shortened.

Spoiler alert: she generally did neither.

I KNOW THIS STUFF.

I knew it ten years ago. I wrote about it. I teach other people about it. Yet apparently Bargain Bev is still lurking somewhere in my factory settings when I just want to buy SOMETHING.

For years, one of my ways of making do was buying things because they were reduced. There was a time when I would barely look beyond the sale rails. Something could be the wrong colour, need altering or just be a bit meh, but if it had a big enough reduction on it, I could usually persuade myself that it would do.

“You can’t leave it at that price.”

I’m pretty sure that’s something I heard growing up but actually, of course you can leave it at that price. Somehow the reduction becomes part of the thing you’re buying. You’re not only buying a top, you’re getting a £75 top for £19.99 – see! Bargain Bev maths.

Except if you wouldn’t have even looked at the bloody thing in the first place, it’s not really a bargain, is it?

My relationship with clothes and bargains became particularly complicated after I had Finn and gained weight. For a good few years I saw my bigger body as temporary. I was going to lose the weight, so spending decent money on clothes in a bigger size seemed wasteful. Why would I invest in lovely, full-price plus-size clothes when I wasn’t planning on being that size for long?

Except the temporary situation lasted.

I joined a slimming club several times, lost some of the weight, fell off the wagon and eventually ended up heavier each time. There was also an awful lot going on in my life during those years and my mental health wasn’t great. Meanwhile, hanging in my wardrobe were clothes belonging to a version of me I apparently intended to get back to.

I imagined they would motivate me but eventually realised they weren’t a carrot at all. They’d become a stick to beat myself with. Eventually I gave lots away and put the things I really loved in a suitcase for the day when I lost the weight and could wear them again. That day never came and eventually they went to the charity shop too when I accepted my size might be more permanent than I’d like.

What strikes me as quite sad now is that, while I was waiting for that future body, I wasn’t prepared to spend good money dressing the one I actually had. Sale rails made that easier. I could make do for now because this wasn’t supposed to be permanent.

I think there was something about my self-worth tangled up in there.

These days I’m much more discerning about what I’m prepared to spend money on and where I’m happy to save it. I still bloody love a bargain which brings me to my new Vinted flurry.

I’m loving it at the moment, partly because I can get things for a fraction of what they would cost new. At first glance, that sounds suspiciously like the same behaviour.

Except it isn’t Bargain Bev territory at all. I’ve bought a couple of Scarlett & Jo dresses because I already own several and know I love them. I bought another pair of Halara jeans because I’m wearing my existing pair to death.

And last Friday I went for yet another bra fitting at Bravissimo because losing weight means my bras keep getting baggy. (Still not a size that I can get from the supermarket though.) I bought one new bra in my new size for nearly £40, then came home and found another on Vinted for a fiver. That, to me, is a proper bargain. Assuming someone hasn’t sold me a shabby old bra that should have gone in the bin, obviously. The experiment is ongoing.

The difference now is where the decision starts.

·Sometimes I know what I want and then discover I can get it for less.

·Other times the fact that something is cheap creates a reason for wanting something I hadn’t wanted five minutes earlier.

I didn’t buy the DKNY T-shirt. But I did buy a black top that I don’t absolutely adore, but which fills a genuine gap. It means I can carry on wearing some balloon trousers I bought in the summer now it’s too cold to wear them with camisoles. That felt like a choice rather than making do.

Then we went next door to Marks & Spencer and spent some of the money I hadn’t wasted on things I didn’t want on nice things from the food hall instead.

I’m more interested these days in noticing what is actually driving my choices.

Am I buying the thing because I want it and the price happens to be brilliant?

Or has the bargain itself persuaded me that I want the thing?

Because apparently even after ten years, an entire blog, a made-up woman called Bargain Bev and a career spent helping other people avoid exactly this sort of thing, I can still find myself standing in TK Maxx clutching a black designer T-shirt and briefly believing that £15 is all that stands between me and becoming a gym bunny.