The 10 Steps to Giving Up Your Designer Handbag Addiction

If you can’t open your closet because it is so stuffed with designer handbags that if you even turn the knob, a tidal wave of purses will turn your bedroom into a mess, you need help. If you are trying, unsuccessfully, to curb your designer handbag addiction, here are 10 steps to help you give up your designer purse curse.

Giving up your straight-up Handbag addiction!

1. Unlike with a lot of self-help programs, you don’t want to try and go cold turkey and stop buying handbags altogether. If you are addicted to handbags it won’t work. The first step is to realize that you can't stop your addiction suddenly.

2. The second step is to make a budget. You aren’t just going to make a budget for your handbags, listing exactly how many Marc Jacobs you can buy versus Coach bags. You are going to make a budget for everything in your life including rent, utilities and car insurance. Yes, it's a drag, but you have to do it.

3. Now that you have your budget in hand, you are going to limit how many purses you purchase. If you only have $100 extra in your budget, and the Marc Jacobs Clutch costs about $400, you will now know that you can afford to buy one every three months, instead of buying the green leather one and the black one at the same time.

4. If you are having a problem keeping your willpower to not buy a designer handbag, you are going to want to prevent a rash purchase. 20 years ago you would just put the money into a bank, which would have pretty much prevented you from buying a handbag, but with shopping online and ATMs, you are going to want to literally freeze your plastic. Get a big container, fill it with water, put your credit cards in it, and stick it in the freezer. That way, if you want to make a purchase you have to wait for the money to thaw out.

5. Try to avoid temptations. Throw away the tabloids or just don't purchase them to avoid seeing handbags. If you look in some of these rags, you'll see that every week a new celebrity is carrying around a different designer handbag. Sure, it's nice to see who has the same bag that you want, but it's just too tempting to buy the latest it-bag.

6. If you are feeling a bit depressed about not having the latest bag, organize your own collection. Even if you only have a couple of purses, you can spend the time that you would normally spend shopping doing a bit of work on them.

7. If you are sick and tired of carrying around the same handbag, you may want to take some of your older bags out of retirement. Sure, they may have been popular couple years ago, but that doesn't mean you still can't carry them around today. A good handbag will always be a good handbag.

8. To get something new into your wardrobe, you may have to trade or borrow. Hey, it's won’t cost you a lot of money, and no one has to know it’s not yours.

9. Handbags are expensive things to collect, so you may want to start on another collection. Why not start a stamp collection? Stamps are only $.49 so you could literally buy hundreds of them (if not thousands) for the price of one handbag.

10. If it is that tough to give up your handbag addiction, you may just want go ahead and buy one. You’ll be disappointed in yourself, but at least you will have the satisfaction of carrying around the latest bag!