Confessions of an onlineshopaholic.

To stop myself from doing too much harm to my visa, I decided to write about online shopping rather than actually doing the oh-so dangerous act.  Ever since I got myself a Visa and PayPal account I can say that I do most of my shopping online.

For electronics and other non-fashion related stuff, the reason is simple, stuff are much more expensive in Malta with quality being only a fraction of that online, given that you know where to look. For clothes, shoes and accessories, the reasons are much more.  First of all, I tend to find the selection in Malta a bit too restricting.  We have in general improved over the years and there are much better options today then a couple of years back.  But as a nation in general, we tend to stick with one particular trend and showcase it all over the island.  I want diversity.  I tend to check out what trends there are at the moment, and then give them my own twist, but shops in Malta tend to be a bit limiting in that aspect.

Another reason is most certainly comfort.  It's way more easy to switch on my laptop or phone, think of something I want, type it in and I have 200 items to choose from.  That easy.  Of course some may say they're scared of sizes and such, but once you get the hang of it, reading other people's reviews and knowing what the sizes are like for which site, you're good to go.

Prices.  Being a student on a budget, I must say that a blazer which cost Eur.40 in Malta bought at Eur.15 online is amazing.  Of course, not all things online are cheap, but again once you get the hang of where to look, finding bargains unfortunately for my visa  becomes second nature.

Looking for bargains is easy.  You can go to ebay, type "blazer" and get hundreds of pages worth of blazers.  But of course, quality would not be that great.  So I tend to stick to a couple of favourite, trustworthy websites.  First off is ASOS.com.  I've been buying off this site for years now and I'm used to the sizes and styles and what brand is better.  An added bonus is that shipping is free.  Similar to that is boohoo.com though I must be honest and say that I have yet to order something from there.  I also look out for other sites which don't usually offer free delivery to Malta because sometimes shipping is still worth it and they also have days where shipping is free; RiverIsland is one of the many and they almost have a free shipping day each month.

Of course, like normal shopping, online shopping is usually a spur of the moment thing (or a symptom of stress) for me and there are tons of other sites I love to explore which I didn't mention above.

-Claire