How to Shop Efficiently

Whether it's back to school season, vacation time, or you simply want to revamp your wardrobe, let me teach you how to shop efficiently and effectively under a budget.  

My go-to has always been to get multiple cheaper things rather than a few nice things. I love to change my wardrobe up often, so buying cheaper items allows me to do that. Here is my step-by-step set of tricks to help you.

1. Know what you are looking for and set a budget. If I go into a store just browsing, I’ll pick up everything and anything I like... I love it, but my bank account hates it. To compromise, I’ll write down what exactly I’m looking for. This is going to be hard, but give it a try. Start with taking a look at your closet and recognizing what you already have. If you have a couple pairs of pants you like but no skirts, that's progress. Make a note of it. 

2) If you're shopping in stores, try to find cheaper stores where you won't have to limit yourself to the tiny sale rack of left over, stained shirts. While it's fun browsing a Chanel store, it can also be depressing for those of us who can't buy anything. Why put yourself in that situation when there are tons of stores that are more budget friendly. Try those out (WITH your list...) 

3) If you’re shopping online, USE THE FILTERS!!! 

Here's an example. I went to the dresses section on Asos. Look at how many filters there are! USE THEM. PLEASE. 

4) If the website has as many options as Asos (I'm using this site for a reason because they offer the most variety of filters I've come across to this day) pay attention to the ones like PRICE RANGE, COLOR, STYLE, and SORT. 

Of course you may not use all of these, especially color. I'm a lover of neutral colors, so I know I won't be looking for a magenta dress. Adding this filter makes my life way easier. 

For websites like Asos that have 5,208 dresses listed, I'm overwhelmed and need to condense my results to get the best options available. I don't want to see a $500 dress that I love because it's simply not in my price range and will make me sad. 

5) Use the type category. If you're back-to-school shopping, there's no need to see the 266 Bridesmaid Dresses (unless you dress super nicely to math class...?) These are 266 less options you have to go through. 

6) Again, the style category is similar to type. If it's a dress for school, do you want it to be a bodycon dress or maybe something more flowy and loose fitting? Up to you. 

7) Here's another tip. Figure out the length of dress you want. Most girls I know opt for either mini dresses or longer dresses. There's a time and a place for both, and most girls I know have a set style. For example, I know I'd never wear a maxi dress to school. It's just not my style. In this case, I'd opt for a mid length one. Use this filter. 

8) Narrow down your size! While this may seem obvious, hardly anyone I know uses this filter. They simply browse a couple pages of a site and have a fit when their favorite dress isn't available in their size. It stinks when that happens, but just image how avoidable this can be if you use the filter from the start. If I know I'm going to be a medium or large, I don't need the site to show me dresses that only have sizes small or extra small in stock. Plain and simple. 

9) The range filter is just an extension of size. If you're plus size, fuller busted, or tall/ petite, etc.  this could help. 

10) Using your budget I already told you to set, figure out how much you want to spend on one item and narrow your results.   

11) Last but not least, here's one of my favorite filters! If you don't want to use any of the filters I mentioned because you have no idea what you're looking for and you're the type of person who will know what they want once they see it, then please please pleeeeasse use this filter. Just try it out for me. Go to sort, and select the low to high price setting. This is essential and totally underrated. It will show you the cheapest options first. I love this filter because I know when I hit page 5 and see that the first dress is already at $100 then I should move on to another website because there are no more options that fit my price range.  

Using these filters can make shopping much less stressful. It may seem overwhelming to go through the process of selecting your filters, but it makes your shopping so much better in the end because you will have way less results to look through. I personally rather see 100 dresses that fit all of my requirements then scroll through 5,000 dresses where most of them are nothing similar to what I'm looking for. 

I promise you shopping like this really is a game changer.