Mapgirl’s Fiscal Challenge

Friday night I promised a girlfriend to help her shop for new clothes for work. We both work in IT so we get cut a lot of slack about our wardrobes. However, I’m at corporate HQ now, and so I actually still have to break out a suit on occaision. She gets to wear jeans and t-shirts if her laundry isn’t done. I am green with jealousy. That’s one way to be frugal about clothing.

While we shop we end up at Sears because I really want her to try the Lands’ End no-iron dress shirts there. She doesn’t like making a fuss over ironing and neither do I. I am determined to get her into a collared shirt out of sheer malice and avarice over her workplace dress code which allows her to wear a T-SHIRT. But these shirts are truly fantastic. There’s a coating on them which makes them a little stiff and wear very well, and require NO IRONING. I’ve left them in the dryer for an hour and still had no wrinkles in them. They say they last for 50 washes, and it’s easily more than that. I’ve had one for about 3 years now and the only finishing it needs is a bending down of the collar tips since it doesn’t have collar stays. (And why are brass ones unavailable these days? I had to go high and low and finally end up at a Nordstrom’s to get some for my dad for Father’s Day one year. Wretched!)

But I digress. We landed at Sears after about 2 hours in the rest of the mall. This trip was not to be for me. But while there, I see jeans on clearance and for some reason I get it into my head that I ought to try a pair or two to see if there are any cuts that I like. My last experience buying denim made me very, very angry, a la the Hulk. I do not think the slutty Britney-cut on jeans flatters me even I am apparently the right size for it.

I pick out two pairs and try them both on. They both fit nicely, but differently. One is relaxed fit and the other is a slimmer cut. I could buy either, but I’m not sure. I wasn’t supposed to be buying anything! I was just here to help my friend! I swear! Well, I look at the prices and my friend convinces me that $15 for one pair and $25 for the other is pretty good since they’re originally far more than that. $40 bucks for 2 pairs of nice fitting jeans is not bad. I see her point and agree that it’s still a good deal.

Meanwhile, she’s got 3 types of shirts and we select various colors since they’re going to be $10-14 each for nice Pima cotton t-shirts. We trot over to the checkout and the nice man behind the register scans the first pair of jeans for me. I see on the read out that the $15 pair is now $9! WHOA. GET OUT. He scans the second pair. $11 bucks! NO WAY. I’m getting two pairs of jeans for $21.00 including taxes. NICE.

My friend and her armful of shirts? We think she’s going to spend about $130 on all of it. Nope. Because she’s buying multiples of the same shirt, some of them go as low as $7.50 after the third shirt is rung up. Her purchase of 10 shirts? $88.00.

I tell the guy at the checkout that I usually just shop the catalog and he says that it’s actually better to come into the stores first since that’s where the clearance stuff ends up, even from the catalog. I don’t know how true that is, but I am definitely going to start going to Sears more often so I can get my good deals on Lands’ End clothes without paying for shipping!