So I've been looking at personal ads on Craigslist for at least a few years now. It's how I used to justify moving out of California. I would read the Men Seeking Women ads for the county I live in, get thoroughly depressed, and decide that I need to leave. Then I decided that I would move to Seattle. And I have got to tell you, the men in Seattle are so much more...everything. Smarter, certainly more interested in intellectual pursuits, funnier, surprisingly more attractive...do I need to go on? So now I'm depressed that I'm not there yet, but I am actually a bit motivated to get there sooner. I find myself wanting to respond to some of these guys. Imagine if I actually lived there, I might actually socialize with people I don't know!
Maybe.
Don't hold your breath or anything.
Since I want to move some time this year, I've come up with some ways of saving money but keeping myself happy. I have a noted (thank you, Matt) addiction to beauty products, though you'd never know by looking at me. I currently have a bathroom overstocked with potions and lotions, most of which didn't do what they claimed they would and have numerous ingredients that I can't pronounce. I went through and returned anything I still had a receipt for and used the money to buy products with pronounceable, as well as minimal, ingredients.
A friend of mine asked me the other day if I wasn't just replacing an addiction to one kind of product with an addiction to a different kind, but I have justified all of this by doing much research: (1) I spend less when I shop at Lush (for example: $23 for 1.7 oz of Lush Celestial sensitive skin lotion vs. $37 for the same size of Murad's anti-redness lotion at Sephora = $14 saved), (2) I can buy larger sizes of most of the product that I use up quickly (like the 16.9 oz Lush Olive Branch Shower Gel) and (3) Lush doesn't sell a new miracle product every day, so I end up finding the right product instead of whatever is new and promising (and doubtlessly won't do shit) and won't wake up one day to find the products have multiplied in my bathroom cupboards like evil, evil bunnies.
Sephora is a shopper's paradise, admittedly. It's a great place to wash your money down the drain. Lush just seems more like a great place to find something you'll actually like and use...plus they've got a deal where you bring back 5 of their black pots (empty of product, of course) and you get a free fresh face mask. I'm not saying I won't buy a lot of stuff there, I most likely will. But limiting myself to their products (except for my hair, chemicals are required to tame The Hair) means I'm not jonesing for the newest trendy product on Sephora.com.
I have also made myself a promise. I will not buy a new product unless I have used up all similar products in my bathroom. The only exception is anything that irritates my skin. That leaves me with four bottles of body lotion, three face cleansers, three body washes (there were six, but I used up three since making my promise), one surplus conditioner (finally finished off the second one) and two bottles of shampoo. What's worse is that just before I made the promise I bought a large bottle of my favorite Lush body wash (see above), so it just sits there and taunts me day after day because I'm not allowed to use it until all the other body washes are gone. I did tell myself the other day that I could keep one extra body wash for days when I wanted to go fragrance-free...but then I remembered that I have two of those, as well. ((sigh))
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