9 Tips For Handling Holiday Shopping Like An Adult

DON’T FREAK OUT.

Like us, you’re just now realizing there are only 12 shopping days left until Christmas and are feeling like this right now:

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DON’T FREAK OUT.

We’re using some advice from Kelly Williams Brown’s Adulting to help us deal with the overwhelming exhaustion, stress, and expense of holiday shopping, and you should, too!

Just follow these simple steps and it’ll be all good. We promise.

1. Decide who you actually like and/or must spend money on...

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… and who is getting homemade peppermint bark.

2. Think of holiday shopping like drinking.

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You can do it in a normal way, you can do it maybe a little more than you should but not veer into self-destruction, or you can f*cking ruin yourself and spend the next six months with a financial hangover.

3. Set reasonable expectations for yourself, gifting-wise.

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Just decide, realistically, what you can do. Spending a month’s rent on Christmas presents is not reasonable. People will deal.

4. Pause before you buy something.

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If you fall in love with a present that is out of your price range, just hold on a second and leave the store. Your boyfriend/mom/best friend has survived without this thing so far; they can probably soldier on without it. If you're still thinking about it the next day, go back and get it.

5. Discern things that are worth spending money on.

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6. You did not come here to make friends.

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Think of yourself as a reality show contestant, your fellow shoppers as your competition, and being done with shopping as the paunchy, middle-aged rocker’s heart you are vying for.

7. But be really extra good to the people who are working retail during Christmas.

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Good Lord, it is awful. So don’t raise your voice to strangers as a means of signaling that they need to pay attention to you, even if they are the worst HoneyBaked Ham™ purveyor ever.

8. Get what you came for.

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If you are in the kind of place where you go needing one thing and leave with fourteen, (I’m looking at you IKEA, Target, and H&M), then make a list and do not allow the siren song of random, unnecessary gifts to lure you onto the rocky shores of eating ramen until your next paycheck.

9. Keep your cool, and don’t fall apart (at least until afterward).

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Sound good? Now go forth and shop like an adult!

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