Anachostic

The Internet is great for shopping, except in two specific cases, when you want to touch something and when there’s too many choices for an item.

Recently, I was in Target and in the checkout line, I saw they had reusable shopping bags.  They had the typical fake-cloth bags, and they had a canvas bag as well.  I picked up one of those canvas ones and the cashier was like, “No, those are $5. the 99 cent ones are the red ones.”  And I was thinking to myself, “but I like this one…” And I ended up buying it.

It’s a really nice bag.  It’s soft and roomy and it has a hook loop for hanging it up and it has eyelets that I just realized would be used to hold it upright in a bagging rack.  It’s a good design.

So I thought I would try to find some others like it to replace my cheaper, branded grocery store bags.  And this one is branded, too, so it’d have to be a Target-only bag.  I’m a little weird about using other people’s bags in a store.

Well, thank you Internet for giving me so many choices.  Add to that the deceptive descriptions.  Search for “cotton” and you get cotton-poly.  Search for “canvas” and get plastic canvas.  Search for “tote” and get purses.  Search for “shopping bag” and get a ton of marketing and printing company ads.

And on top of all that, I have no idea what the quality is like.  You can’t feel the fabric, you can’t see the stitching, you can’t make any quality judgment from a picture.  This is just one of those cases where you need to buy it in person.  But of course whatever store you are in is going to sell their bag with their brand on it.

So I did something quaint and old-fashioned.  No, I didn’t go to a physical store.  I searched for a company that specialized in cloth bags instead of just relying on good old Amazon.  I found a company that manufacturers cloth shopping bags and their prices are completely reasonable. 

Now, I have the dilemma of choosing to spend money when I am still in austerity mode.  Like I keep reminding myself – it’s something I want, not something I need.  And that’s something that takes real effort.  “Oh, it’s only $25.”  And I’ve used that rationalization about things for much more and much less.