Shop Till You Drop… Signal

By Rebecca Woolf | October 21st, 2011 at 4:07 pm

• Tweet
• 
• 409

The following post (two of four) is sponsored by DELL and their fancy new Inspiron All-in-One 2320 Computer which (hooray!) is up for grabs for giveaway! (See rules and regs below.) Thanks, Dell! You = awesome.

***

I recently bought a pair of shoes on my phone. I was in a boutique, fell in love with a pair of shoes that did not exist in my massively-large shoe size (10) so I quickly googled the brand on my phone, found a pair on Shop Bop, bought them and left the store. A few days later they arrived and were gorgeous. And ill-fitting. Of course, by the time I tried on the shoes I had already misplaced the packing receipt and the box was repurposed for Archer and Fable’s new “castle fort” and I was like, “Oh screw it. Maybe one day my feet will shrink and fit into these suckers.”

I’ll justify anything NOT to have to send it back. Which is why I’ve never been a good online shopper. Etsy? Rules. I buy every gift on Etsy for the most part but ordering anything else online has always been a disaster for me. Because I ALWAYS find a way to order things that don’t fit me. And then I’m screwed because I’m too lazy busy to send it back. Or I lose the receipt. Or the box. Or I have to buy a new box and stand in line at the post office for 67 hours and then pay for shopping (lost the packing receipt with the regular receipt) and then me trying to “save time” by shopping online backfires and I’m late to pick the kids up from school, grouchy because the guy in line at the post office accused me of cutting (when I would NEVER cut ever) and the after all of that, I forgot to buy stamps! And we needed stamps BAD! AHHHH!

So, anyway. I recently bought shoes on my phone and then swore off every buying anything wearable on my phone (or online) again. FINDING items online is one thing, like this bag for instance which after weeks of perusing the Internet (and two whole blog posts devoted to the search) I finally found one. On Nordstrom.com. But instead of buying it online, I jumped in my car and headed to the mall.

ed: shot-vac sold separately

THOSE WERE THE DAYS. Now? Jumping in the car is not an option.

(Remind me to tell you the story about how after two hours of prep and rallying the posse to get into the car to go for ice cream, Boheme decided to have a poop explosion and then Reverie woke up starving and then, after driving approximately three feet off the driveway, I put the damn van in park and we all went back inside, where I busted open a box of popsicles and called it a night.) Wait. I guess I just told you the story. Please ignore me. I am sleep deprived.

Sigh.

For the last few years I listened to parents swear by doing ALL of their shopping online and I’ll be honest I was always like, “Is it really THAT hard to get out of the house? Pulease.”

“Don’t knock it ’til you try it,” I was told by a friend with two toddlers.

I told her that shopping online for things like paper towels and tampons made me fel like a weird Internet vampire. That was before leaving the house became highly unlikely.

Last week I almost went to Target. I spent the entire week ALMOST going to Target. Because when you have newborn twins + two other children going to Target (let alone leaving the house) is a full-on humongous insane production. Every day I wrote on my list of things to do today, “GO TO TARGET” and every day I failed myself by not going.

And Hal was like, “just buy diapers online, you crazyperson,” and then I remembered that there’s actually a site called diapers.com that sells (YOU GUESSED IT!) diapers. And formula. And wipes. And diaper cream. And (who knew) about a thousand million other things.

At first I was like, “NO! I’ll just go to Target. Target isn’t THAT far away!”

But after running out of diapers and sending Hal out on an emergency mission (because I STILL hadn’t made it to Target) I finally bucked up and logged on. I spent ten minutes shopping and the next day everything appeared at my door like a magic trick.

I’m sticking to my guns with my whole “no buying shoes on my cell phone” rule but I’m totally on board the whole shopping for necessities on my trusty computer. Someday I’ll have the time (and the balls) to shop at Target with my 789728931 kids. For now, I’m doing it online. At 4am, in the twenty-minutes a day when I have peace and quiet, when I can jump on the web and shop till my computer drops Internet signal or, you know, one of the babies wakes up.

***

How about you guys? Do you do your convenience shopping on your computer or cell phone? What about grocery shopping? Clothes shopping? What are some of your favorite places to shop? Comment away for a chance to win an Inspiron One 2320 Touch computer! This giveaway will run until Friday, October 28th at 11:59 p.m. EDT and is open to all U.S. residents. A winner will be chosen at random using Random.org from all eligible entries. Each reader has FOUR chances to win by  leaving a separate comment on each of my Dell posts, and Dell posts by other bloggers participating in this campaign (you can find those posts at the Family Tech topics page). The chosen winner must respond within 48 hours of notification to claim their prize. Good luck!

• Tweet
• 
• 409