100 days without new clothes

Since school ended, I suddenly had a bunch of free time on my hands. So much free time, that I almost feel like I should help the other busy people in this world take some load off.
A couple days ago I was so free I decided to flip around my mom's collection of Chinese women's health magazines. Surprisingly, I came across an interesting article, it was titled "The Challenge: Not Buying Clothes for 100 Days". 
The writer mentioned a point about the value of clothes. She said that, cheap and expensive are relative things. To use a exaggerated example, a dress that costs $100 which you wore for a thousand times, on average only costs $0.10 per wear. Comparatively, that's actually a lot cheaper than a $15 one that you only wore once.

That reminds me, I have this pair of pants in my closet, I got them from Urban Outfitters on sale. The colour and the fit were both mediocre at best, but it was presented to me at such a ridiculously good price, I felt like not buying them was like missing out on some really great one-in-a-life-time big chance. When I debated about it in the store, my friend said: "Girlfriend, are you for real??" In the end, I bought them. And I felt like a clever thief.
However, those pants did not even get worn once. Many times I had considered them, but I always put them down in the last minute, sometimes due to "Oh it's not the right fit with this outfit", or "the colour doesn't go", or "it's too short", or some other kind of dissatisfaction. Those poor pants, ever since last Christmas, they've been sitting in my closet collecting dust. Now, that clever thief quite a few months ago wasn't so clever after all.

The sad thing is, I have quite a few items like this in my closet, added together their value can probably afford one very nice coat, or ten something visits to my favourite drink and snack bar! It's amazing how much money one can save, if she could just resist a few temporary urges.
Oh boy, when I think of all those delicious foods and the good times I can have with my friends perving on the stylish hosts, I'm so determined to not buy clothes. I might just take up that 100 Days challenge one day!

No stress

It's been almost two weeks since I started this blog, and during this time, I never bought any clothes. Although two weeks is a short time, for me that's a pretty good record. Thank you to the readers! In a hidden way, you helped me : )

I do have one confession to make, I indulged and bought this guy over the weekend. He is a stressball, and pretty much useless except you could squeeze him in your hand when you are stressed out. The character's name is Barbabeau. He belongs to a series of toys based on a very old cartoon show called Barbapapa. Barbapapa and his children are basically characters whose bodies resemble lumps of play-do, and could shape-shift into anything they want. You could watch the French Barbapapa clips here.

I saw Barbabeau in an indie toy store in Parkdale, Toronto (whose name unfortunately, I for the life of me can't remember :/). The store had a lot of merchandises from vintage cartoon shows, like Tintin, Moomin, and others. When I saw a Barbapapa figurine, I was so excited my heart actually started beating faster. The feelings of childhood instantly came, I was reminded of a time when I used to flip back and forth my Barbapapa book, until it was totally beaten and fallen apart at the seams. I was also in a state of disblief, because one, Barbapapa was never aired in America or Canada, and two, Barbapapa is so old that even if there were toys for it, they should have gone into extinction by now. But nonetheless, there it was!

The place was like my dream come true. They had so many things, like Barbapapa lunchboxes, puzzles, plates, soap dishes, toy carts, and even a clothing hanger shaped in Barbapapa creatures.Being collector's items, they were of course, all well out of my price-range. The Barbabeau stressball was the only thing that I could afford, it was around $20 with taxes added. I spent a ridiculous amount of time in the store debating whether it is worth it, it took so long I think my friends probably wanted to shoot me in the foot. In the end, I thought, the cartoon does have a special place in my heart, and this was a pretty rare occasion to see an "extinct" toy of your childhood, so I bought it! Even though I'm trying to be thrift, I still believe that, when you see something that's that precious, you should just go for it, guiltlessly~.

Now, when I feel stressed out and want to buy more stuff, I plan to squeeze Barbabeau instead.

fleeting romances

Today's clothes craving:

darling little coat from Victorian Maiden (I think 2010 collection?).  Most of the stuff I own are straight up and down 'cause I find that more comfortable, but I love things with a waist these days!

While I was waiting for the bus, I thought about the impermanence of material things.
Even though I find almost everything pretty and want too many things, I rarely experience times when I could not stop thinking about something that I couldn't have. There are always other different pretty things to distract me, although I love clothes, I not a faithful lover. A typical fixation oftentimes don't even last more than a week. I have a closet full of stuff, but  realistically, if my house got burnt down, my life would go on just the same.
Maybe when you want clothes, it's not actually the clothes that you want, but that feeling of instant gratification. Could such feeling be achieved in other non-financially-disastrous ways? Probably. And it if you tried hard enough, you could probably even nip it in the bud. But, giving into those desires is so much easier than resisting them. Often times, people would just rather not do it, and in the end they're the ones to carry the debt. There's a Chinese saying, which literally translates as "Carrying it on your back or your arms, it's still the same weight", I think it describes that very well.

On a different note, today I got mad at boyfriend for a stupid selfish reason. Sometimes I just can't help but be selfish, being selfish requires sooo little effort. But in the end, it's still me who has to bear the consequences. It's just like giving in to buy clothes. Chunchun if you read this, Moomoo is sorry :. <, I was wrong.

comfort pants

Hi darlings, welcome to the first official post on this blog!

I hate to write something stupidly down-putting on here, especially on the very first post, so please forgive me for the tale of doom and gloom you're about to receive. Long story short, after waiting for an interview result for two gruelling months, I finally found out today, that I have to wait not one, not two, but seven months more! Have you ever heard of interviews that take 9 months to get a result? What poop! And also, I have to write a ridiculous psychology final tomorrow. =3= just what I needed, more poop on top of poop.

I often find myself getting a dangerous urge to buy clothes at times like these. Right now, I am experiencing mad craving for a jumpsuit made of jersey material. Like this one:

Isn't it cute? If you're a student in your finals week, I want you to know that it's PERFECTLY okay to want to be a slob. But if you're going to be a slob, you'd better be a cute slob. And this jumpsuit does that perfectly.
I imagine you could wear it with sneakers or tom's, or even moccasins. Add a cute sports jacket, and some ice-cream, and you're just about ready to cram for those finals.
The feeling it gives kind of reminds me of what the girls wore in this Tegan and Sarah video.

Though I have a hard time justifying spending $50 on a dinky little jumpsuit (though this is actually one of the less ridiculously priced items on their website), I still really want it.
Haha, I guess comfort clothes is kinda like comfort food, great stress relieve, but bad for your (financial) health.

Hell.O

Hi boys and girls, I'm Mousse. a 24 year old female living in Canada. I guess you could refer to me as what is known as a shopaholic, I love, love, LOVE clothes. It's not the deepest intellectual thing to obsess over, and being a student I'm poor as fuck, but I just can't help it. I'm sure many of you out there could relate, it's like those evil darling things in the display cases have an electric pull on you, when you see them, you just can't move your feet!

I've had my share of credit card debt in the past, and I used to feel super guilty over spending hundreds of dollars on one measly item when the average money spent on clothes for a three-person family is just a little over a hundred. After working my ass off begging strangers to do surveys in the mall, I was finally able to recover from the credit card sins that I committed. However, even after many futile attempts to terminate it, my love-affair with clothes still persists. The more I want to stop wanting them, the more I want them, it's basically the classic case of reverse psychology. What can I say, clothes are undeniably my soul-mate.

So, I've been thinking of writing a blog about clothes for quite some time. Today, I finally got off my lazy ass to do it. From now on I'll be posting my rants about clothes, fashion and whatnot. However this is by no means a hip fashion blog. You know those alcoholic-anonymous blogs where people talk about quitting drinking? This will be more like that than say, the Sartorialist. I hope you'll find some enjoyment from my writing, and may we collect our ransoms together!