Bunnings Warehouse is a very large, supposedly low-cost, hardware store in Australia. DIY Mecca in other words. You know you're middle aged when your idea of a pleasant Sunday morning outing is to go down to Bunnings, ostensibly to purchase some minor-but-essential item, but really to dream about all the things you'll do to your house while you eat a sausage in a bun*.
As everyone in Melbourne who is A) middle-aged and B) middle-class (in the Aussie sense... think desk-bound working class) and C) a home owner knows, it doesn't count as materialist ostentation if it adds value to your house. In that case it's an investment, even if it will be worn out by the time you need to sell in order to fund a retirement villa. It also doesn't count if it's a $6,000 BBQ, for some reason I don't quite fathom, but that's a subject for another post.
Ah, retail therapy! Today I - mentally - spent around $1500 on patio furniture, terracotta pots, a raised vegetable plot and more plants than will fit in my garden. We went in looking for grout to re-grout the shower recess. Funnily enough, we forgot to look at anything as mundane as grout after we visited the Storage, Gardening, Outdoor Living and Power Tools sections. I may have mentally spent it, but I have a feeling that the things I saw will eventually make it onto my actual shopping list. (Only 336 days until Christmas!)
But today was a win, as Mr O and I departed empty-handed - though not empty-stomached, but that doesn't count as purchse, I mean it's for charity, right?!
*In a master stroke of marketing, Bunnings have an outdoor kitchen which they loan out to various charity groups who purvey BBQ sausage in a piece of bread (with or without onion) for around $2.50. I gather its a very successful fundraiser, even better than selling chocolate and only one day's work a time.
This is post 12 of 43 posts.
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