Tag: retail

As of mid-October, it seemed to me I had just about enough space to store and places to put everything I had and most of which I wanted to keep. The next required action was to figure out where I wanted to put what so everything would fit and at least be mainly unboxed. Up until that point, I had been using lack of space and place as an excuse to delay opening many more boxes. In the meantime, I had continued to indulge in some old practices and behaviors, though part of the requisite self-evaluation I have been forced/directed into by a recent turn of events includes making conscious choices about what I want to keep from my past and what new thoughts or behaviors I may want to introduce or at least to try on for size.

Where to start this new me/old me monologue? I guess I will start with the comfortably old but with the new twist of where and how and with whom. One of my go-to, usually solo activities, aptly and personally named by me, is a little thing I like to call “retail therapy (RT).”

Wikipedia opines the use of the term as “ironic and semifacetious,” and also comparable to comfort food, which is what I purchased most often recently in my pursuit of short term “relief from dysphoria” before I finally settled where I am now. Now my need to indulge in RT for any purpose, to deal with depression or stress, occurs much less frequently. That’s one thing about Mom (my historical and hysterical stress inducer) I definitely don’t miss and try not to emulate with my own now nearby adult daughters.

Food is my drug of choice (Excuses, Excuses)so I’d already started (re)filling the two most essential rooms in my three-room apartment first. After piecemealing kitchen purchases, I’d finally bit the bullet and settled on buying a set of real plates at my new favorite store, Meijer, and dining utensils at a store I mostly stay out of, Cost Plus. It almost physically hurt me to pay full price for a 12-piece setting for four of Corelle Geometrica pattern (no need for coffee cups or saucers anymore) and a 16-piece setting for four of dining utensils (no need for salad forks, either). The pain was only slightly mollified in that I think the latter was marked down to justify using it to supplement my minimalist starter set, purchased for $1.25/pair (fork, knife, teaspoon, tablespoon) from Dollar Tree. Is it odd that kitchen items I’d moved with me, including drawer organizers, have sentimental value?

I have continued my RT by acquiring and using “new” furniture. I have put that term in quotes because my shopping/retail therapy methodology has been extended, finally, to the use of 21st technology as it has been taught to me by my daughters. Like most millennials, and even a few advanced/daring/sane baby boomers, they prefer to make their purchases online. I feel like I have so far employed a fine mix of many of both the old and the new RT options available to me to find usable and easy to move furniture, aided and ably assisted by Mini-Me (MM).

She knows my taste more than she knows my needs. She also knows, and does not appreciate, my FOMO, though she does share, to some degree, my nearly extreme frugality. I spent several successive days while MM and her spouse were on vacation late last summer making limited forays into any and every brick-and-mortar local retail establishment that might carry what I hoped would be reasonably priced and sized furniture – a solo exercise that left this hobbled old lady exhausted and overwhelmed and worse, still unsatisfied with the results. I didn’t share all of these details with MM upon her return, though I still used them in my own mind as an excuse to continue to dither and therefore not commit to getting that critical first piece of furniture I needed: seating for the living room!

Lucky for me, she had heard that prices and availability were excellent at a local chain establishment I had not yet made my way to. We made that the last stop on my final living room furniture foray where we found two “chofas” that would work with my style and space. As usual, I had to extend the decision process and time by going back to the store to make my final choice. Even after that, I still ended up paying extra for an extended warranty that I may not need on top of the exorbitant delivery charge that I had expected. On the upside, if I move again and anything breaks in the process, they will fix or replace it!