The Valentine’s Vacuum

Call me unromantic, and at the risk of being browbeaten, anyone else get really frustrated with feeling pressured into buying expensive gifts for Valentine’s Day?

I’m all for romance and appreciating one another, but do we need to fork out our hard earned dollars for overpriced flowers and chocolates that none of us actually need?

Lis and I are trying hard to reduce our collective debt. Like most families the size of ours, we live week to week and surplus funds are scarce. In line with my earlier post this year about subscribing to Marie Kondo’s minimalist ideals regarding material possessions, I’m also trying to adopt a more frugal approach to life. The last few weeks in particular we have really reined in our spending, which has not been easy or enjoyable. We have made some tough decisions including forgoing a family holiday to cover our ever-growing list of child related expenditure, and have done this without relying on our credit card funds or borrowing from other allocated bill paying accounts.

So along comes Valentine’s Day, threatening to scatter all our hard work to the wind…

Nightmare.

Just don’t buy anything you say? My thoughts too.

Apparently I’m only half of the decision making tribunal on this one and my better half says, ‘Not a chance’. It’s the same every year. Lis, God love her, is a massive one for kind gestures and celebrating these sort of occasions and I hate the thought of sucking the fun out of this for her, which is exactly what I would do if I pushed it.

Of course I won’t leave her hanging. What choice do I have? Either partake or be in the proverbial doghouse. There is just no quiet opt-out clause for those trying to navigate their way through the white waters of parenting on a budget.

So I hope you will forgive me for using this blog as a forum to vent my frustration with the whole Valentine’s commercialist manipulation that none of us can escape. It’s even less fun for the single folk out there who, try as they might to avoid it, end up potentially feeling unloved and miserable unless they magically receive 12 long-stemmed roses with a teddy bear in a box hand delivered to them at work.

I understand that the florists and chocolate companies need their hey-day as well – but seriously, are flowers really so expensive to package up and make look pretty?

Anyway, now that I have succeeded in sharing my miserly musings on my first world issue of Valentine’s Day commercialisation, I shall take my leave.

I’m off to bake Lis some cookies and wrap myself in a huge red bow.

Florists eat your heart out…