vacation pics and posts for a while, but this is what I came back to (and I am absolutely luxuriating in not having German class and not planning on an intensive full-time course for at least a semester).The left pictures are a portion of the swag brought back from the US: soft underwear and clothing for the children which fits, is 100% cotton, doesn't cause them issues with tactile sensation, and costs incredibly little: 9 pairs of socks cost less than two pair here.
I really appreciate the ease of shopping (I'll have posts up in "Decluttering" to show what was passed down, recycled and donated soon), but heavens, I also really appreciated Black Friday.
Although some people have mentioned that day as one where one should not consume, I think of it as the day when I can get each of my children two pairs of shoes and have it cost approximately 30% of what it would cost to buy a single pair of shoes in Germany. I finally got myself a pair of (great)Uggs knock-offs (for $32), and Sketchers for all (including the German- very nice looking walking shoes).One of the first stores we hit after arriving in Miami was Costco- our favorite store. Among the normal purchases, such as brown sugar, craisins, dried blueberries and hot sauce, we buy clothes there. And this time we wanted a GPS (needed a US one) and some other odds-and-ends. After we completed our purchase, the greeter gave us the Black Friday flyer on our way out: for some "Missing Man" feeling we discovered that most of what we had purchased would be going on sale: we were able to go back the next week, re-buy our items and then return them and reap the 35% discount on the items in that one week period. I was even able to use Costco coupons from 2006 and exchange a camera that I had waiting (which had undergone a deeper price cut in the 60 days it waited at my brother's house) to allow an additional $50 discount. Almost made it seem as if I was saving money by purchasing items:-). The German bought a suit for 60% off, or 20% of what the same suit costs here. We also bought jeans to replace the ones with holes (I really hate shopping in Germany) for 10% of the cost of the same ones here. And so on. In all, we bought absolutely nothing that we had not planned to buy, with an average savings of 70% on what the items cost here.
I love Black Friday and if I ever move to the US again, I hope to buy all my furniture on that week, even if I have to live on crates until that point.
2 comments:
I don't know how we managed to get our bags back home from the airport yesterday. We didn't hit cosco or get anything close to a satisfying amount of food, but we picked up a lot of clothes for the mooselein on our trip. This post spoke to me.
We have actually cut back- in the old days, we were allowed two bags per person. Now, with the 1 bag rule, we actually brought only 2 extra bags and were two carry-ons under the limit. The stroller and two car seats make the journey a bit of a struggle, though! (On the way there, we actually had the car seats inside an empty suitcase.
We were so busy we also didn't have time to hit Michael's or any of the other places we hoped to, but it was still a good trip. I hope to read about yours!
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