What happens when I had a £40 John Lewis gift card and could buy anything with it. Well, let me show you what I brought. Here is my £40 John Lewis challenge.
One day a Joh Lewis gift card came through the post quite unexpectedly. I wasn’t expecting and I have to say I was pleasantly surprised. It came from one of my client who thought I did a good job recently on their website, so as well as paying me – they also gifted me with a £40 gift card. How kind and I swear I have the best clients.
So this sets in motion a little idea I’ve been sitting on for a while on here. You see, last year around Christmas I set myself a similar challenge: How much could I buy in The Body shop for £20. An easy enough challenge I think you will agree. I thought that I would repeat the theme of the challenge and instead use John Lewis. I’m going from high street to a high brand department store.
Now for this challenge I actually visited the big John Lewis store on Oxford Street, I was visiting a friend and thought it would be a wasted journey (and opportunity) not to pop in and put my plan into action.
In all honesty, shopping in John Lewis when you on a £40 budget is a lot harder. Really hard. You see one thing and then that one thing could blow your budget and challenge out of the water. Apart from the overpriced items – it’s the pushy-in-your-face assistant and the security guard following you around.
Ok maybe I might have imagined that a security guard was following me around, but I swear to god there was a security guard following me around. I’m not sure why exactly. All I was doing was looking at products and putting them down and calculating every item on my phone. Nothing strange about it. I wasn’t wearing a dodgy brown trench coat with the collar up and peeping from a hat. It made me feel really uncomfortable and as I couldn’t decide what I wanted, I just went home. I’m also certain that the security guard radioed in ‘she left the building, brought nothing’. Well, I won’t be shopping in there again for a while.
I went home and decided the Joh Lewis website was the best options with this challenge. In the comfort of my own home, in pyjamas and taking all the time in the world.
I’m sure you are dying to know what I bought. And wondering if I succeeded. Well, let me show you.
First up it’s the Rituals relaxing serums, followed by Rituals Fortune Scrub. Now for the past 6 months, I have been completely loving Rituals products. If I could I would buy the whole shop and live there. Now I’m a shopaholic so any spa products I can’t help myself and not love. However, I do find Rituals to be a little pricey and often out my budget. I think Richard would kill me if I spent £30 on a singular product. Plus, I also often can’t make up my mind and usually leave empty handed. So with this £40 John Lewis challenge, I wanted to incorporate a little Rituals. That was how I ended up with the relaxing serums and fortune scrub.
Next up is Orgins Flower Fusion face mask, another brand I love – but is often out of my price range. This work in a similar vain to The Cure facial mask. The fact that this is drenched in orange oils peaked my interest and it was only a fiver.
The last thing I will show you is the Nuxe my beauty collection. I had this idea that instead of buying individual items and working out if it would fit my budget – I’d just buy a gift item. That way you get more products for your money. So that was how I picked up the Nuxe collection. Five little sample size Nuxe products. I keep hearing people raving about Nuxe products so I was interested to see how I would get on with these.
And that conclude on what I brought in my £40 Joh Lewis challenge: Let me run in down for you:
- Rituals Laughing Buddha Fortune Body Scrub, 150ml: £7.00
- Rituals Dao Relaxing Serum, 15ml: £11.50
- Origins Flower Fusion Orange Radiance-Boosting Sheet Mask: £5.00
- NUXE My Beauty Collection Travel Kit: £13.50
Amount Paid by Gift Card: £37.0
I can’t help but give myself a pat on the back. I did good, didn’t I?
Oh, I also had free delivery as I did a click and collect from my local Waitrose store.
I will be doing a full proper review on each of these products soon. But that was my £40 John Lewis challenge.
Let me know if you will do a similar challenge, I would love a read.
(There are some affilate links here but it all items I purchased myself, and gave an honest blog post.)
