Today’s guest post is from Erika Mitchell of Parsing Nonsense, a professional blogger and wannabe novelist. You rarely have to ask what’s on her mind.
I have this weird aversion that so far only my husband knows about. It doesn’t make much sense, but I don’t suppose that matters much because weird aversions wouldn’t be weird if they made a lot of sense, would they?
I hate buying toilet paper. There’s very little about the process I can stand. I hate standing in the toilet paper aisle, pacing back and forth while comparing deals. I despise doing math in my head, trying to figure out which brand/quantity combination is the best value for my hard-earned dollars. Pushing my cart through the store with my gigantic package of toilet paper embarrasses me, because I can only imagine what people are thinking as they see me breezing by with my 36-pack of toilet paper monopolizing the bottom rack of the grocery cart.
Maybe they don’t care, but maybe they’re wondering if I spend half my life in the bathroom. I don’t need that kind of scrutiny.
Maybe I would feel less put-upon if I reserved toilet paper purchasing strictly for somewhere like Costco. Everyone’s always telling me I need to shop at Costco but I refuse. For me, Costco is a black hole from which my budget never returns. There are too many deals, too many delicious foods, too much temptation for one such as myself. I’m drawn to deals like a moth to flame, and I fear that Costco would conflagrate me rather than save me money.
Sure the toilet paper might be cheaper there, but it ultimately wouldn’t save me money if I left there with toilet paper and 20 different kinds of delicious bulk snacks, new socks, a vacuum cleaner, and a portable A/C unit.
This is why my interest is piqued by Alice.com. I’m not trying to be a corporate shill or anything, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t more than a little interested in how this is going to save me money. I love that innovation never stops, and that the doors are finally open enough that if someone thinks they can do business better, they have as much opportunity as anyone else.
I also love that I could potentially start buying toilet paper from home. In secret. While wearing my SpongeBob slippers.
I’m sure a therapist would frown on this method of dealing with my weird aversion. I should probably be confronting my weird aversion, learning how to do math in my head and cruising grocery stores with toilet paper until I’m no longer embarrassed.
That all sounds great, but my response to the judgmental therapists would be that I have bigger fish to fry. There’s the fear of heights, the arachnophobia, and the strange jubilation I feel every time I hear a Journey song. In other words, I’m too busy to address my toilet paper aversion.
Good post. I can’t wait to see the final Alice.com and be able to shop while sitting down drinking my cup of tea, instead of pushing the germ laden cart for longer than I deem safe.
-Linda, Seriously! The first thing I do when I get home is wash my hands! I’m not a germophobe or anything but there’s no telling what substances of mystery are clinging to shopping carts!