What? Some people don’t like to shop?

I love to shop. It’s like playing dress up, but then getting to take the clothes home with you. Ideas of what I like, trying out new combinations, colours and fabrics… And whether you like shopping or not, it’s an essential part of life……we all need clothes, so at some point we all have to venture out.

So it came as a massive shock to me to learn that some people DON’T LIKE SHOPPING!!! How is that even possible?? I sat in choir one night as my friend Anjanette opened up about her feelings towards shopping –

I hate the whole shopping experience – from finding something that I feel comfortable in to just browsing the aisles and using those changing rooms that seem to be full of women unlike me … I just hate it!

WOW! I just couldn’t get my head around it……..Shopping is fun and liberating – how can you not like it? How can we fix this? Not wanting to scare Anjanette off shopping completely, I offered my services: a friendly face to shop with…maybe encourage…speak only when asked haha.

Anyway it was quite a while later when Anjantte messaged me to say she had an occasion she needed to buy a dress for (her worse type of shopping) and would I go along with her…of course I said yes…as the time grew closer, I actually started to feel a bit nervous. I mean, who am I? I’m just a girl who likes to shop. I’m not an authority on what’s right and wrong. How am I really meant to help?

Well, a week or two later we arranged to meet. I suggested to her that we just go for it, try it all on, even the things she thought she’d never be able to wear. We picked up things in styles that she’d looked at for years but never been brave enough to try. We picked up things that she wasn’t even that keen on, more for the different shapes than anything else. By the time we’d finished, we had armfuls of dresses…that was the easy part…now time for the changing room!

We went to Debenhams and Helen encouraged me to just wander the aisles and pick up anything that I liked, even if I thought it wasn’t right – ‘if you like, it just pick it up and try it!’ So that’s what we did … half an hour later with armfuls of dresses, we were offered a private room to try the dresses on! Helen sat patiently as I tried on each dress. Some were good, some were bad.

I sat outside as Anjanette tried everything on. We laughed. I encouraged. We talked about what she liked about each dress and what she didn’t. I don’t need to like what other people wear. I just wanted her to feel comfortable enough to do this! Eventually, in amongst all the dresses she found the one, and with the addition of magic underwear! We had conquered the shops. We had done what we set out to do.

I actually fell in love with a dress but didn’t feel good in it because I could see lumpy bits that I didn’t want to see. Helen showed me how to fix it with the right underwear – who knew!? For the first time in my adult life, I left that shop smiling from the inside out. I had a dress I loved and thanks to Helen, the confidence to wear it knowing it was a good choice!

I love that Anjanette got so much out of that day. I did too. She looked beautiful in her dress and has since done lots of shopping.

Since then, we’ve had a few ‘just try it on’ shopping trips! I now know that there aren’t people hiding amongst the racks waiting to laugh, there aren’t people in the changing rooms just waiting to judge, and if I ‘just try it on’, it will either work or not! It’s as simple as that! I now have the confidence to go it alone! Thank you Helen!

See I told you shopping could be fun!