Friday, July 14, 2006

To scrub or not to scrub... that was the question.

I've never had much trouble spending money. In fact, I'm pretty good at it. Ten dollars here, twenty dollars there, no problem. I do though have a problem with spending large amounts of money in one sitting. By my best calculations what I mean by large amounts of money is in the range of $75 or more. I think that is where my stomach starts getting a little quesy and the inner me starts questioning the purchase. The ironic part is though, that I could go shopping and spend well more than this, but divided up among many purchases over the course of the day, I have little worries.

I'm writing this because over the past, well, few months now I've been having a hard time ordering clothes for work. I've gotten online, picked out what I'd like to purchase, even gone so far as to fill out my shipping and payment options but just couldn't go through with hitting the send button. I've gone through this process more times than I could count on one hand, in fact. Partially I think it's because I wear scrubs, nothing glamourous, nothing that I'll wear anyplace but to work and on occasion the grocery store on my way home in the evening. I won't go out and spend much of my hard earned money on clothes that I'll wear every other day, why would I drop so much cash on scrubs?

Well, because more people see me in my work clothes than in my regular clothes, I spend a good portion of my time at work, and I've been wearing the same scrubs for 2-3 years now and they are getting more than a little worn. Good reasonings. But, at the same time that money could be used for so many other things, namely our bills and necessities of life. How selfish of me to put new scrubs in front of other, more important things. Good counterpoint. But everybody is always getting new scrubs. Everyone I work with always looks so cute in the newest styles and fabrics. I'm still wearing the same old things, and worse in fact, I probably have 5 tops that I rotate out most frequently. That's not much variety. I bet some nurses see me oftentimes wearing the same top I wore the last time they worked with me the week or two before. How embarrassing! Oh well though, who cares about looks. I shouldn't be so vain in my thinking anyways. I'm lucky to have clothes to wear and other neccessities in life that I'm able to afford and pay for.

That has been the arguement going back and forth in my head for months now. It's been driving me insane! Just imagine all of that commotion and talking --- back and forth, back and forth. Well I've ended it for now. I've bought myself some new scrubs. Good for me, I deserve it. The most ridiculous part of it though is that I never was intending to buy the newest, the nicest, or the most expensive items. I buy off of clearance or what is on sale (nearly always no matter the purchase). So the items I bought were nearly a third of what I could have been buying. I'm pretty proud of my abilities to be a bargain shopper. Twelve items of clothing for around $160, and that even includes a pair of shoes. That sort of purchase could have easily topped off around $350 for many of the women I work with, so I'm feeling good. But it's still a chunk of money that could have gone to other, more important things.

1 comment:

Devion said...

Michelle--I am sure you always look cute no matter what scrubs you're wearing. I know it's tempting, though, because there are TONS of cute ones out there! Glad you were able to get great deals, though. That is extremely reasonable for all of the stuff you got.

I got an email from Andrea. I'll have to tell you about it some time. In the meantime, have a great night and I'll talk to you later!