My husband told me last night that National Wholesale Liquidators is going out of business – his coworker told him that he got a bunch of stuff at great prices.  Well, I don’t like to shop just because there’s a sale, but if there’s something on my ongoing list of things to keep an eye open for, then I’ll get it.  So this afternoon, I headed over to check things out.

The store was getting to be pretty well cleaned out, and I wasn’t incredibly impressed with the deals.  Then again, I’ve developed an attitude of only buying things that I need, not lots of cutesie tootsie things, so most of the things I wouldn’t buy even if they were almost free.  Actually, if they were giving it away I wouldn’t want it if I didn’t have a use for it.  But, a couple of aisles down, I found something I do use, canning lids – they looked untouched, unlike most of the shelves in the aisle that were mostly empty.  At 40% off, I figured it would be worth getting some, and it was – the regular mouth lids were .89 a dozen, the wide mouth lids were 1.19 a dozen.  It’s the kind of thing that I’d buy all they had if I could, but it gets expensive pretty quickly, so I only bought about 12 dozen small and 8 dozen of the large.  I’ll check in there again in a few weeks and see if they mark them down anymore. 

Then I got a couple of kerosene hurricane lamps.  Just last night I ordered some oil lamp converters (I’ll tell you more about them when they get here), so I didn’t really need many of these lamps, even though they were just $2 each.  I bought 10 bottles of torch fuel at $2 each (I’ll check if there’s more of that in a few weeks, too), after calling the company I bought the oil lamp converters from – they said that kerosene and oil can be used interchangeably in the same lamps, just the wick has to be changed between uses.  That was good to know, since I have no experience with these things and didn’t want to buy something that wouldn’t be of any use.  I’ll  keep them as backup lighting for emergencies and to take camping.

I bought 116 packets of vegetable seeds.  Yes, really.  I’ll have to really expand my garden this year to use all of that!  Well, I’m such a lousy gardener that I won’t have to expand it the way someone who was more competent would, since I seem to have to plant a lot to get a tiny yield.  They were .07 each, and I couldn’t resist; I’ve been looking at seed catalogs online, and though I’d love to only buy open pollinated varieties, it’s not cheap.  I also got canvas and heavy duty work gloves, 8 pairs total.  My husband informed me when I told him what I got that we already have enough work gloves.  Oh, well. 

Then I found a menorah for my dd14 for next year ($4), and Chanuka candles for .15 and .23 a box, depending on the company.  I bought 20 boxes since at that price it was worth it to stock up for the next couple of years.  🙂  I bought the girls a bunch of ponytail holders – they were 70% off and someone always seems to need something around here, so I figured I’ll get enough that we won’t have to think about running out for a long, long time, like until their daughters come visit and want to use some.  🙂

Otherwise it was mostly small odds and ends, like a couple of can openers and 4 multi purpose tools; even with all the discounts, I ended up spending more than I would like.  But my dh was glad I got things that we’ll need and use, and he thought it was all very reasonable.  It was really interesting to see what was sold out and what wasn’t touched – I obviously have different taste than most people, since the things I was interested in all had full shelves.

While I’m not recommending any one store over another, if in your area you have stores that are drastically discounting their prices right now, use this opportunity to buy things that will be useful later on.  But don’t buy things you don’t really need just because it’s ‘such a great deal!’.

Avivah