What a fascinating thread. I agree, the best thing would be to have a perfect wardrobe just appear in your closet. I was lucky enough to have that experience when I shopped with Angie. A few hours netted a whole spring wardrobe. Although I live in an urban area and I have a lot of free time, I don't really enjoy going to the mall. I wait until I need something specific, spend 2 hours maybe a 4 times a year. I hate to be rushed. I work full time at a demanding job and mostly want to be home or in my neighborhood on the weekends. That said, I do wish my neighborhood had a few more boutiques. We have consignment, thrift and discount stores but those are hit and miss. I find I end up with a lot of wardrobe pieces that are not quite right from those shops. I love the idea of a library book, a coffee and window shopping. I have a lot of fit issues so online shopping doesn't work for me.

I like shopping in stores more than online (as an experience) because it is so hard for me to tell what size to get nowadays, and I like to compare more than one size--(tailored? fluid? oversized? !!), and I like to see the fabrics IRL.
But, it can take time away from other pursuits and also from honing what I have already.

I have spent the last 3 days looking for some items for an upcoming trip and second all the above. What I find most frustrating is the dichotomy between what's in B&M stores (limited selection, limited sizes) and what's on-line (overwhelming selection, huge variety of sizes). It seems the most interesting items are on-line only, where it is difficult to judge fabric, drape, size, etc. I find myself ordering more and more on-line with diminishing level of success (I often order a raft of regular and petite sizes and maybe 90 % or more gets returned). This is especially difficult with shoes where fit is so very important.

As you noted in your introduction, shopping is very exhausting for me. It can be fun as long as I have all my ducks in a row: I know exactly where I'm going, exactly what I want to get, etc. And I like to preshop online before I go. But after about an hour, I'm starting to flag. It doesn't help that the only places that carry petite sizes are in really huge malls, which means I can't go to a smaller, quieter boutique. That's why I shop online most of the time—it's much less draining. If I had only one free afternoon during the week, I would most certainly not spend it shopping! I might spend it *thinking* about what I want to buy, though.