Carpet Ride

I have never been one for shop­ping lists or plan­ning weekly meal menus. And nor, it seems, ware­house fur­ni­ture shop­ping.
I have proven that I approach ware­house shop­ping in exactly the same way I approach food shop­ping: with spon­tane­ity and accord­ing to what is on spe­cial.
Of course I will buy the sen­si­ble basics, but it’s the other mis­cel­la­neous items that often become a lit­tle blurred and spur of the moment. This means I am always short of shop­ping bags. I always go in for rice and come out with an extra large pack of ‘on spe­cial’ toi­let paper or moun­tains of bread that was marked down to a mere 99cents.
In exactly the same way, I found myself in a fur­ni­ture ware­house clear­ance store with absolutely no idea how to get my large pur­chase into my dinky toy of a car.
Here is an absolute fact: A grown woman can carry her own body weight if deter­mined enough to shove a large, heavy-weight car­pet the size of a net­ball field in her car made for scoot­ing around the city, not car­ry­ing a car­pet con­sign­ment.
We are not talk­ing lit­tle dhur­rie rug here. This car­pet was a heavy woollen cre­ation that was so dense it must have required an army to remove it from the loom.
‘I think a small ani­mal could live in there,’ a fel­low shop­per had com­mented ear­lier.
Deter­mi­na­tion, how­ever knows no bounds, and I man­aged to squeeze the car­pet in the car with boot barely clos­ing and the driver’s safety severely com­pro­mised. I con­vinced myself that it was absolutely accept­able to drive while pressed up against the driver’s door, bot­tom off cen­tre. This was an emer­gency.
Ware­house fur­ni­ture sales, if one is not dis­ci­plined and focussed can cause one to lose every ounce of good sense and style the minute one enters the zone. It’s noth­ing like buy­ing toi­let paper on spe­cial. You will always use the toi­let paper. You will not always have use for a dec­o­ra­tive urn.
The secret is dis­ci­pline. New shop­ping rules apply. I’ve dis­cov­ered that while I pride myself for spot­ting a bar­gain a mile away, it is only a bar­gain if I really need it. The way to remain focussed is to make a list prior to leav­ing home and thus lim­it­ing spon­ta­neous buys. A bar­gain hunter like myself is on dan­ger­ous ground when they end up with a heavy weight car­pet when what they’d really come for was ….what was it again?
To be fair, it is easy to lose good sense when con­fronted by a sea of shop­pers and an entire ship­ment of sale items a frac­tion of their orig­i­nal cost. Pack the con­sign­ment into a capa­cious ware­house and you have con­fu­sion.
The annual ware­house sale had caught the atten­tion of the entire pop­u­la­tion of bar­gain hunt­ing Bris­ban­ites and com­pe­ti­tion was fierce. In super­mar­kets, there are usu­ally enough bar­gains for every­one. In ware­house clear­ance sales, there is lim­ited stock. The win­ner takes all.
There were those quick off the mark – the sen­si­ble one’s clutch­ing cat­a­logues and shop­ping lists so they could hone in on the desired item and leave with­out fuss. They were sea­soned ware­house shop­pers. They knew what they wanted and departed with exactly that item – no more, no less.
This elite group were untempted by the wall of rad­i­cally price reduced vases, the piles of vel­vety cush­ions, sen­sual silk sheets and lux­u­ri­ous bath tow­els. They were unmoved by the heaped bric-a-brac, designer home­ware and dec­o­ra­tive (read use­less) well, stuff.
Then there were those mere mor­tals like myself and my fel­low con­fused friend who became unrav­elled, unbal­anced and unable to see the wood for the trees, as it were.
Or, as another friend com­mented about her ware­house clear­ance expe­ri­ence: ‘dizzy, over­come with inde­ci­sion.‘
My friend observed a dan­ger­ous, recur­ring pat­tern – she didn’t like an item until she saw some­one else walk off with it.
‘A bit like sud­denly lik­ing an ex boyfriend again because he found a new girl­friend,’ I com­mented.
It is also very easy to be influ­enced by a For Sale sticker that once said $400, and now says $20, no mat­ter that the ottoman in ques­tion is canary yel­low. Cre­ativ­ity and pos­si­ble jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for pur­chase is a com­mon char­ac­ter­is­tic of a rabid bar­gain hunter.
The trick is to self talk. A two-seater Fanta orange couch marked down from $800 to a mere $99 was reduced in price for a rea­son: It is hideous. I have to repeat this self talk sev­eral times over and sen­si­bly remain unmoved by the tempt­ing slashed prices.
I came oh so close to falling for a bright green ottoman the colour of mushy peas. ‘Think gra­cious clas­sic colo­nial, think gra­cious colo­nial,’ was my mantra as I perused the vast ware­house, scan­ning it’s bow­els for a touch of class.
The car­pet, admit­tedly, was a com­pro­mise. It caught my eye as I realised the ware­house rug sup­ply was fast dwin­dling and I may miss out on a bar­gain all together. My poor chil­dren would for­ever sit with their cold lit­tle bot­toms on a worn old kilim rug, thread­bare and way past its prime.
The mon­strous floor cov­er­ing was made up of square shades of sludge: Sludge brown, sludge cream that although not quite fit­ting my clas­sic colo­nial pic­ture, was a good foil for messy chil­dren and their friends.
It had tufts resem­bling a bed of sea urchins – or fat lit­tle grubs I’d seen com­ing out of my lawn. The label promised it was pure wool and hand woven. My heart went out to the weavers.
It was comfy quite beyond expec­ta­tion. Like step­ping on marsh­mal­lows. My sad old kilim had noth­ing on its cushion-like soft­ness. Sev­eral shop­pers were eye­ing it out. They were com­ing closer, remark­ing on how lovely it was, what a bar­gain marked down from a cool $1400 to a mere $150.
Sold! To the lady squat­ting like an urchin on the sludge brown worm car­pet.
And so it was that I came for a couch and left with a car­pet. And a cur­va­ceous bam­boo urn that had my hus­band ask, ‘What is it? I would never in mil­lion years have imag­ined you’d choose some­thing like that.’ And a teal coloured wicker foot­stool worn and yes, rather colo­nial, I self-talked. For just one dol­lar, I was not about to hag­gle. I also found pas­tel green camp­ing cups. And dare I admit it, another rug. Black, with orange, sage green and rust squig­gles. Pure wool, marked down from $499 to $50. An absolute bar­gain.
Soon to be auc­tioned on Ebay…
And the sludge slug car­pet? My chil­dren love it.
One has already spilled an entire mug of Milo on a choco­late sludge square and it blended beautifully…

Copy­right © 2009 by Lois Nicholls