When Is 20% Not Enough or Shower Shelf Alternatives?

 

 

I’m not talking about the emails for enlarging part of your body or solving a problem you didn’t know you had.  No, these are legitimate offers from brick and mortar stores.  For years I had been using one of these offers to solve a problem:  no shelves in the shower.  Yes, it’s a big problem, no place to put the soap or shampoo or conditioner bottle which we always purchase in the largest size.  So they end up on the floor.

We started with the 20% off coupon from the store and bought something that need to be assembled and stretched from the ceiling to the floor of the shower.  It was steel coated with something to resemble oil rubbed bronze.  It lasted for a few years and then began to crumble, leaving bits of rusted metal at our feet. 

When it finally collapsed, I again used the 20% off coupon and purchased one that wouldn’t rust—aluminum.  The problem was that even though it didn’t rust, it wasn’t sturdy enough.  When the last shelf broke off, I took my 20% off coupon in hand preparing to do it again at the brick and mortar store.

However, life got in the way, my trip was put off, and we stumbled over the bottles on the shower floor as I wondered whether it was even worth buying another shower pole.  Time passed.  Soap disappeared more quickly from laying in water on the shower floor.  I needed to buy more soap and by now I was sure that any pole would work. 

I picked up soap at a local store and then went to their limited aisle of bath and shower accessories.  There is saw it!  A suction cup shelf sporting four suction cups and certainly large enough for shampoo, conditioner, and soap.  At under $10, it was certainly worth a try.  No more $50 shower poles at 20% off! 

And yet, the brick and mortar store keeps sending me 20% off coupons.  Sometimes waiting awhile for inspiration to strike is worth more than 20%.  My impulse to make a 20% off purchase, would have cost more, taken up more space, and eventually rusted or fallen apart. The simpler solution took more time, more thought, but result in a better outcome.

What might you save if you took a little more time?  If you hit Delete?  If you considered alternatives, searched for alternatives?  Might you hit upon a better solution, one you’d never before conceived?  I did. 

 

Photo:  By dbfrom1kb1 (Amy) (Flickr) [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons