Well! I pulled of a frugal coup this morning, without even hardly trying.
The wardrobe has been running short on plain, easy-to-care-for, unobtrusive knit tops that I can wear on the junkets around the park (now three miles long, in 90-degree heat at 5:30 in the morning), loaf around the house in, and not look too unpresentable in at the grocery store. The ones I’ve had have just worn out. After the last closet-cleaning frenzy only three such priceless garments were left.
The early mornings are now pushing humid and hot enough that I’m soaked by the time I get back to the house. Running the laundry every three days is not how I want to amuse myself.
A year or more ago, I found plain, unadorned, well-made Calvin Klein T-shirts at Costco. Went back to acquire some more. Naturally Costco isn’t carrying them anymore.
So on the way home from this morning’s Scottsdale meeting, I stopped at the mildly upscale Biltmore Fashion Square and popped into Chico’s, which I recall as usually having such shirts on sale during the summer.
Nope.
They had a few V-neck shirts. I hate V-neck T-shirts. I want crew necks.
Over to Black & White.
Nope.
Ann Taylor.
Not a chance.
Brooks Brothers.
Like, I’m sure. 🙄
Finally dragged into Macy’s. I really don’t like shopping in Macy’s. It’s such a jumble of stuff that if whatever you want is in there somewhere, you have about a snowball’s chance of finding it. But what the heck. The alternative to was to buy something from Amazon, sight unseen.
Trudged through the second-floor women’s clothing department. Found two, count’em, two that pretty much filled the bill: $25 and a 25% discount. Traipsed through the swimsuit department looking for a cover-up that might work. Actually found one: $78.
😯
Moving on, I picked up a third knit T-shirt, cutely screen-printed, on the way to the checkout — $30, the same 25% discount. None of them thrilled me, but they would do. Not exactly what I wanted, but close enough. One, I saw at check-out, had some sort of frou-frou smocking in the back.
{sigh}
Shuffling off the escalator and through the main floor toward the exit, I had a thought:
Maybe I should look in the boy’s department? Or…what about in the men’s department? Men wear T-shirts!
Hence a detour into Men’s Wear.
Actually, I found two really cool T-shirts, one of them a Tommy Hilfiger in deep-ocean blue with this wild octopus on it. Continued shoofing around…and lo! What should appear, tucked away in a back corner, but a big display of ABSOLUTELY PERFECT 100% cotton T-shirts in every color of the rainbow!
And! To gild those lilies, the things were marked $7.98 — regular price!
The men’s “small” fits like it was made for me. The “medium” is a little large — not unsightly, but extremely comfortable.
I grabbed one in bright teal blue, one in little-old-lady violet (yes! can you believe…in the men’s?), and one in tan. If there’s any cash left at the end of the month, I may go back and get the bright pink and the deep purple and maybe a green.
So I take these three finds to the Men’s Wear checkout guy and explain that I searched all through the women’s department looking for something like these and now I want to buy them from his stock and I want to return the overpriced stuff I bought upstairs.
w00t! After the returns were tallied and the guy’s T-shirts were purchased, the AMEX card still had a net credit of $32!
I ordered at about the same time.
