Trick to save money during shopping (for sahm)

This was supposed to be a Facebook status but it became so long that I decide to copy and paste it here instead. :P

Trick to save money for a sahm on holiday~ (*doesn't apply if you are a sahm with a maid/caregiver/nanny)

1. You don't have that many friends and colleagues to buy gifts for so don't need to think too hard.. just those that bought you gifts recently and maybe close relatives and friends. For those not so close, if you buy food stuffs by the time you see them the food expired liao. Lol

2. You stay at home 5 days a week so no need too many nice dress. 1 will do. Ditto bags and shoes. But you can go crazy for comfort casual clothes though. :p

3. Bags and shoes have extra criteria. Bag have to be big enough for a couple of baby items (diaper, 1 set of clothes, diaper wipes and a bottle of water minimum.) but yet lightweight and not too big that it makes it difficult for you to carry both baby and bag. Shoes have to be comfortable cause usually you wouldn't be able to manage carrying a 11kg baby and a bag, a pair of high heels is going to do a lot of damage to your poor back and knees. (Normally I have problems buying shoes cause my feet are a little wide and in a stupid size of 34/35 or 22-22.5 so with the added criteria, the difficulty to shop increased!)

4. MU items cut down from the full extensive set of many colours to just some easy to use colours. Hard to find time to be really experimental with a baby in your care. Though the budget may stay the same so you can get more premium products. :P

5. This Is the most important! Buy heavy and bulky gifts like food items during the early part of the shopping trip. It will make you to think that you have bought a lot of items and spend a lot of money..

(I thought I bought a lot just now, but when I did a "headcount" I only bought 1 pair of shoes, 1 Bag and 1 phone cover for CNY. The rest of the items I was carrying was food gifts for friends and relatives. Lol. So I literally shopped for about 3-4 hours but only buy 3 items for myself. :P (and 2 pairs of socks for baby, and hubby finally bought 3 items for himself, and also approx 5kg of food related gifts) hubby says it's a waste of time but I actually felt happy. Cause I have most of the items I want covered today morning (18 items in 1hr) and I bought the bag I had my eyes on 2 days back but couldn't get it at 2 different shops due to:
● The colour or design I want is OOS
● The only 1 piece of stock (in another colour) left in the first shop where I first laid eyes on is not in good condition
●+ it's sold out on their website!
●+ it's the only piece available!
●+ I nearly bought a similar bag at twice the price this morning.. :D (in other words.. I found treasure!!)

Tml morning/early noon will be covering the MU stuffs so I am very excited for that part of the day.. oh and also probably getting gifts at the airport. Good luck to me. :P