Make a lot of big purchases in one day and keep the relationship difficult, but you can
It will be about those annoying and nasty quarrels with her husband in the shops. Or his wife, okay. I think everyone knows exactly what kind of shop fights I mean.
Just do not think anything like this: I like IKEA products, and I respect their huge and important business for people. Here, in this article, IKEA is rather a household name for a whole class of huge and not very supermarkets offering furniture and household goods.
It would be so nice to calmly and without haste to choose the desired products. But in reality, moving, repairs, new housing or just a desire to update the interior, as well as the constant lack of free time make us take about this decision: "all next Saturday will devote to shopping." And here for the family psychologist begins all the fun…
Shopping: pleasure or stress?
Amazing thing: on the one hand, shopping seems like a pleasant pastime. People are looking forward to the upcoming trip to the Mall, dreaming about what beautiful new things they will get instead of boring and old.
On the other hand, annoying crowds of visitors, spending for the wallet (and in many cases unplanned!), headache and quarrels-that's just an incomplete list of the consequences of such a "pleasant" campaign.
Why is this happening? We all know how shops manipulate our desires, putting goods on certain places or setting a price at a sensitive border, like 499.99. We want to spend less and get more, and stores — especially large ones-have very different goals.
The most important rule on a day shopping trip is the list. Note the bright color in it the most important thing and for clarity, sign the title: "I came here just for this." If you have a designer's draft of the future interior and you know exactly what you are looking for a chair with a medallion back in the dining room-there is no need to "hang" in the garden furniture section.
The stores showcase lifestyle
Shops in which the furniture is presented as a finished room (sorry, IKEA!), represent a much greater danger to your wallet than shops where interior items just somehow arranged. Why? Because the finished room is perceived by you as a whole. You can touch everything, open locker doors, sit on the couch. And as a result, you "read" the lifestyle that the store designer offers you.
As a rule, this image is fresh, functional and simple. Perhaps even original. And certainly not in any comparison with what you have now!
As a consequence — impulsive and intense desire to buy: the same light bulb, and the same frame, and the same stand... You are trying to embody the image you like entirely. Although not planned.
What to do? List, list and list again! And reread the headline:"I came here just for this."
Stores like mazes
I think for you it is no secret that large stores (and IKEA is no exception) are specially designed so that the buyer is disoriented, distracted or forgot why he actually came here, and made more impulsive purchases. This layout is called the "Gruen Effect" - after the architect who built the first supermarket on this principle.
Suggestibility, inability to concentrate, and a blank stare are all signs that you or your companion have fallen into Gruen's trap.
How can you resist it?
1. Remember your compiled shopping list with the right title? Look at him more often.
2. Try to enter the store from the exit and go the other way, contrary to the logic of the creators of this maze.
3. Actively use the short way to the desired Department or section, bypassing unnecessary.
If this does not help, and you already feel that you have stopped thinking, immediately take a break for lunch or coffee — all in the name of preserving your finances!
How to minimize the stress of visiting a large store
Do not expect too much from shopping: even if you do not buy The same Nightstand, it is better than to experience a week of conflicts and scandals.
* Explore the store assortment on the site if possible. Look at the products on offer together if you are planning a shopping trip with your spouse.
* Determine the budget.
* Make a shopping list, print it with the right large title.
• If your list includes large pieces of furniture (wardrobes, beds, etc.), especially if there are several, do not include small accessories in the list, but plan their purchase for another day. Firstly, it will be easier for you to concentrate on more important, key purchases; and secondly, after you arrange large furniture, it may well be that your preferences for accessories will change.
* Follows from the preceding: first choose and buy the largest, most important objects (sofa, wardrobe), and then smaller: stools, lamps.
* Stick to the budget. You can allow a deviation from the budget by 10%, but no more.
* Schedule a visit at a time when the number of people in the store will be minimal: the morning of the weekend or weekdays. Remember we talked about personal boundaries and the stress of trespassing without our approval? When you move in a crowd of people, each of them unwittingly violates your boundaries. It is no wonder that you will soon feel tired, irritated and want to give up everything and go home.
* Remember, that you, of course, you can now quarrel with husband (with wife), but in the long term it you need to? How will this fight affect your relationship today, tomorrow, a month from now?