Getting the "I WANT" bug...

I have become ill. I have self diagnosed myself with "IWANTITIS".

It is a horrible disease to have. Some causes of this condition include, but are not limited to:

*Seeing your neighbors newly redone garden and realizing that it is better than your garden.

*Sitting in your backyard and realizing that you really do not like your next door neighbor's backyard decor. (Either of them)

*Watching HGTV home improvement/decorating shows.

*Seeing a cover of Country Living, Better Homes and Gardens, or any other home/garden magazine.

*Opening your closet and realizing that it would be so much better to have a closet organization system.

*After steam-cleaning the 20 year old carpets, you realize that some stains are simply there for eternity.

*Looking at your functional, yet asethically displeasing bathroom, and realizing that no matter how hard you previously tried to make it asethically pleasing, the only way it is actually going to happen is to rip everything out and start from scratch.

*Looking into your children's rooms and seeing that there is truly no style, rhyme or reason to the decor. Deciding immediately that this is very sad that your children must sleep in such conditions.

*Since your living room does not have an overhead light, you must use lamps (many of them) to illuminate said living room. After turning on 2 floor lamps, which are, of course, placed behind furniture, you really miss having a light that works via a switch.

*Listening to your 10 year old daughter sing Taylor Swift songs for hours because she does not have a door to close. Instead, she has a curtain rod with hot pink curtains for visual privacy because her door was taken off the hinges due to the fact that the renters tore up the carpet in her room, making use of a door impossible without tearing up the carpet even further.

*Going to get the wet mail out of the mailbox because the mailbox door is broken. So is the stake, for that matter, which causes the mailbox to lean either left, right, forward or backwards, depending on the direction of the wind.

Symptoms of "IWANTITIS" include, but again, are not limited to:

*Nausea
*Headaches
*Mild depression
*Restless body syndrome
*Compulsive window shopping via the internet with the helps of Lowes and Home Depot.com
*Telling your child for the 1384749857834 time that you have a headache and to please keep it down
*Tearing out pages of home/garden magazines to start your own portfolio of wants
*Contemplating calling the producers of "Clean Sweep" to come take care of your neighbors unsightly yards
*Looking at your budget and seeing if there is anyway you can create a "Home Improvement"fund without extending your debt payoff goals
*Laying wet mail out to dry on a flat surface


A cure for this disease has yet to be found. Some things that can help include:

*Revisiting the budget
*Acknowledging the reasons why you can't immediately purchase the things you want is due to previous carlessness with finances
*Actually create a "Home Improvement" line item in the budget and deciding how much will be allocated to this newly created sinking fund each month
*Actually pricing the things that you want from various sources via the internet
*Prioritizing your list of wants from most important want to least important want
*Giving yourself a pat on the back for not immediately grabbing a credit card and buying what you want
*Congratulating yourself for actually taking time to think things through and creating some type of plan on how you plan on getting the things you want


As you can see, "IWANTITIS" could hit anyone, at anytime. It can be a very dangerous condition in which you spend money that you don't have. If you think you are coming down with "IWANTITIS", it is best that you stay home, or at the very least, out of any place where you could be tempted to buy anything for a while. Hopefully, researches will one day find a cure for this disease which seems to be running rampant among humans.