How to easily part with your money

Living in my little village with two small children I have become a big fan of internet shopping.

No more darting around trying to look at clothes I most probably wouldn´t fit into anyway while simultaneously trying to catch my darlings when they decide that it would be so much fun to play chasings - pulling the clothes off the racks, scaring little ones who have just started toddling, losing themselves among the massess. Or the time when I needed shoes and turned away for 2 minutes to find that they had taken every sample off the shelves to try on for themselves - all laces undone and zippers unzipped (and where were the attendants when they needed to be stopped? They turned up quick enough to berate me!). Or food shopping where my 18 month old had manage to climb into one of those long freezer compartments and was throwing out the bags of fish. I was only around the corner running to catch her again and the cabinet was nearly empty already. Or when they decide it would be so fun to run around and put things into people´s trolleys without them knowing about it. Or the time at IKEA when they played hide and seek with me and crawled into a cupboard waiting for me to find them (nearly an hour). Or on the same day when they climbed into every made beds to see if they could sleep like Cinderella. Yes, I love shopping!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The other problem I find is that when I physically go out to shop I can never find what I need. In the first place I have to go to the city which is 30 mins away, then find a car park, which is about an hours work, then empty my wallet to pay for the car park, then finally go to the shop. And then when I get there, I can search and search and search but never find what I want.

I don´t know if it because Austria is a small country that the markets are smaller or if my expectations are unreasonable. The things I want are based on the groovy shopping I used to do at Paddington and Balmain markets, Newtown, Glebe, Oxford Streets and the one that ran off it (what is it called), the back streets around Sydney, Nicholson St, St Kilda, Brunswick, South Yarra, that groovy shop in Braddon and the ooddles of op shops where you can always find wonderful gems.

So I have turned to the internet. You can buy anything on the internet. I buy my books from Germany and England. Wool from Iceland and America. My coffee machine is from France and grinder from Italy. I brought half the fittings in my house from e-bay. I buy my children toys that you can´t get here. I search for original items from ETSY. It´s amazing. Most places I don´t even pay with cash or notice I am spending money. You don´t even have to do anything with the bank as most places just charge it to Visa and we have a deal that Visa is paid directly from our account. It is like when I play shopping with my children. It´s not real. I noticed more what I was spending when I had to give money out of my wallet. Now, the numbers are arbitary. It has become a dangerous hobby. Thank goodness that I have the gumption to check my account regularly to keep an eye on things........