After my road trip ended I made a conscious decision to only buy what I absolutely needed. Having done my big death cleaning and purge earlier that year, I knew I could live with much less stuff. Plus, it irked me to no end when I had to buy something I had so recently given away just a few months earlier.
When winter creeped in, I decided I would use the blankets I had used when camping. This was fine – until it dropped into the ’30s. Then I needed something warmer so I unzipped my REI sleeping bag and used it as a comforter. It was warm and suitable – sort of – except for the ice cold metal zipper that rubbed against me in the night.
Occasionally I thought about buying a comforter, but due to stubbornness and cheapness, I endured 2 winters using the unzipped sleeping bag instead.
Last year, I had enough. It was time to buy a comforter. Naturally, I was appalled at the prices for down comforters. My wife had always bought all of our bedding, so I had no idea what they cost. Even worse, all the ones I saw were white. I don’t own anything white – it’s too hard to keep clean with 2 dogs.
On Amazon Prime Day that summer, I found a burgundy comforter (not down) for $25. I bought it because it looked like it would hide paw prints, it matched my drapes and had decent reviews. An added bonus was that it came with a set of matching burgundy sheets.
At least I thought the sheets were a bonus.
They looked good. But they were so thin they were almost transparent. Not that I care about that. What I did not like was that they were kind of scratchy instead of being soft.
Nonetheless, they made it into my rotation of sheets. Every three weeks when I did laundry, it would be time to use the scratchy sheets again for a week.
My two other sheet sets cost $35 each. They were thicker and softer and felt great. But because Wiggles had chewed little vampire bites in both sets when she was teething, they have patches and repairs.
My only undamaged sheets were the crappy Amazon ones.
After thinking about this for way too long, I ordered a third set of good sheets for $39.
Before I donated them, I kept them in my closet for a week. After all, they were perfectly good sheets. Maybe I should keep them as a backup? Perhaps I would use them in the dog beds or if I had a guest sleep on my futon.
Then I thought, no they are not perfectly good sheets – at least not for me. They are scratchy and I don’t like them.
I took them, and two “perfectly good” REI shirts (that were also scratchy and way too large for me), to the thrift store.
For anyone who’s hung in to the end of this post, I apologize for my boring tale.
The lesson, once again, for me, is that if I something I own doesn’t bring me joy, I’m better off without it – whether it’s an oversized t-shirt, a set of sheets, a Toyota Tacoma or a casual date.