Confessions of a recovering last-minute shopper

I might have mentioned here that I am a hopeless last-minute person. No matter how many vehement promises I make myself, and I mean them at the time, I always find myself rushing to beat a deadline I have known about for days, even months, at the very last minute. You should see me rushing around like a locomotive on adrenaline, determined to do everything that requires doing before the clock strikes 12.

As you can imagine, I frantically fill my taxes a day before the due date, do Christmas shopping a day before this day when supermarkets are packed to the rafters, even when many past experiences tell me that I will emerge tired as a dog, with legs that can barely support me thanks to endless queuing and a bad mood from all the shoving that goes on, as well as a headache from breathing in all that recycled oxygen. It is as if I thrive on crisis, self-manufactured crisis.

More than five years ago, my eldest walked up to me and asked why we never decorate our home for Christmas like his cousins do. Did I see how pretty their home was with all the garlands and the shiny Christmas tree? He wanted to know. I had noticed, I told him, and promised him that come the next Christmas, we’d put up a tree and hang shiny things around the living room. I was serious, and intended to fulfil that promise.

Christmas decorations

More than five years later, I keep re-promising that promise every year. Reason? I always go shopping for Christmas decorations last-minute, when they cost an arm and a leg, and so I return home empty-handed, having done my math and concluded that only a fool would buy a plastic tree that costs Sh30,000, yet it doesn’t go past the knees.

I’m sure that if I shopped for one in, say May, it would cost much, much, less, but since I find myself postponing things I should have done yesterday, even this year, we will not have a Christmas tree.

Well, I decided to break this bad cycle, and rather than go uniform and book shopping a day before schools reopen, I went a week and some days before the D-day. I cannot even begin to tell you how liberating it was.

The last time I bought school uniforms, I had queued outside the same building for close to an hour and took even longer to get served when I finally got into the building. It was catastrophic.

Proud of myself

On this day, however, I simply breezed in, the air was fresher, the underworked attendants eager to please. There were barely any people, just a few dedicated parents like me buying their children school uniforms a whole week and days to spare before school opening day. I was so proud of myself, I almost bought myself one of those shiny trophies outstanding students get in school. You should have seen me preening on this achievement. I was so pleased with myself, I was tempted to take myself out.

I know that this is a lesson I should have learnt long ago, but that experience taught me that it is possible to wean yourself of bad habits, because procrastination is a bad habit. And it need not take lots of effort, all you need to do is actually do what you need to do before it becomes urgent. I think I’ll buy myself that trophy …

The writer is editor, Society & Magazines, Daily Nation. Email: cnjunge@ ke.nationmedia.com