Target Dollar Spot is the greatest masterpiece of some evil marketing genius. It's positioned RIGHT when you walk in the store so you can't help but pass by it. It is cheap, so so so cheap, that the dopamine floods your brain at the sight of all these "steals." And it's seasonal and ever-changing, so you feel just a little bit panicky on missing out on a great find. Visibility, urgency, a feeling of getting something for nothing = a trifecta of manipulation trying to separate you from your money.
But Dollar Spot items are typically the first to get the axe when a person purges. These objects are almost always impulse buys so they don’t fill a true need or serve a true purpose in the home. They are poorly made from low quality materials so they’re damaged easily. They are trendy and highly stylized, so they look dated and frivolous quickly.
They are rarely treasured, and frequently discarded.
I’m a reformed Target Dollar Spot shopper myself before becoming absolutely insistent on sticking to The Shopping List. Never have I ever written “novelty ice cube tray” on my shopping list, so once I built up that list-following muscle, my dollar spot purchases were eliminated.
Next time you’re in Target (or any other retailer that combines visibility, low prices, and FOMO to separate you from your money), try these baby steps:
Set a timer for 3 minutes. You may walk through the dollar spot for these 3 minutes. Touch nothing. Seriously. Hands in your pockets or folded behind your back the whole time. Don’t check the price, don’t look for other styles or colors, don’t lay on finger on anything.
I'm a firm believer that the moment you touch something, you subconsciously feel a tiny sense of ownership over it, and you're more likely to go ahead and make that ownership official with a swipe of the card.
When your timer goes off, you must leave the dollar spot. No exceptions.
Did you see something that could satisfy a need? Unlikely. But let’s indulge you for a moment here, and say you spotted something that would solve a problem in your home or life. (No, having rectangular ice cubes is not a problem.) Take out your Shopping List and write the item at the bottom. Then go on with your intended shopping.
If you'd like to return to purchase a selected item from the dollar spot, you may do so only after completing your other shopping.
Chances are great that you will forget to do so, or return with more objective eyes that can see that those items are not worth it now that you actually have a cart full of needful things that you actually intended to purchase.
Make that impulse buy less impulsive by requiring you wait until the intended shopping is done, and make the trek back to the dollar spot. Those two tiny obstacles of time and effort will likely diminish your “need” for the object, and you can delete/cross off the item as if you had never even written it down and get the heck out of there.
Mastered those baby steps? Great. Now, up the ante. Do not enter the dollar spot. I repeat, do not enter the dollar spot. You know everything in there is cheaply made crap, the likes of which succumbed to a big black garbage bag when you last did a purge. You know you made your list well before your trip to the store, and before you were under the influence of these sly marketing tactics. Stick to your list and keep it moving. Leave the store with more money in your bank account and less junk coming in to your home.
Remember, today’s impulse buy is tomorrow’s clutter.