There are myriad shopping mantras to ensure you shop smart and avoid such scenarios, but they all have their downsides. Take the ‘one in, one out’ policy.
While the ultimatum will stop you in your tracks when you’re thinking of buying something new, if you do, it forces you to part with something that you otherwise wouldn’t have, or, miss out on a new smart purchase.
Another seemingly helpful mantra is the ‘three outfits’ rule, which says that an item has to work in three different outfits to justify its purchase.
But even that plays to ‘out of sight, out of mind’: if it only works in three winter outfits, for six months of the year it’s relegated to the back of your wardrobe, relying on you to remember to dig it out when the cold weather.
Read more on telegraph.co.uk