Lootin’ Tootin’ Good Time

We Simciks get excited when stores close. You know what that means—big discounts! In the last few months we’ve been truly blessed—both the Tom Thumb and Albertson’s near us have closed.

Shopping at these going-out-of-business extravaganzas takes a delicate, strategic plan. You can’t go too early (not enough of a discount) and you can’t go too late (not enough merch left). You see, it takes stores about six months to officially close so you gotta get the timing just right.

With TT we went too late. The store was probably going to disappear the very next day. Most of the shelves were bare except for random, unwanted products. And then, of course, there were bins of crap. That doesn’t mean the store wasn’t crowded. People didn’t care what was left—they just wanted cheap stuff. As we trekked through the remains of what was once a “Flagship” Tom Thumb, I really felt like hurricane victims, looting a store (except for the electricity, lack of flood waters and the fact that we still had to go through a checkout line).

So here’s what we got on that visit:
One bottle of wine
Two Pria bars
One bottle, hot sauce
One can, matzo ball soup
Total: $8

On Saturday Frank came home, bursting with the news of the Albertson’s closing: “There’s a man standing on the street corner, wearing a sign saying that Albertson’s is closing!” (By the way, we were wondering why stores always hire a person to wear sandwich signs rather than just sticking them in the ground. Frank thought maybe the store thought it was more effective. I said that having a homeless man stand on a corner smoking a cigarette and wearing your sign isn’t really more effective than the sign just standing there on its own. We decided it must be illegal to just stick a sign in the ground so they have to hire someone).

Anyway, because of this smokin'-sign-man, we went to Albertson’s and got the following:

Three bottles of wine
One bottle of Nadia
One bottle, conditioner
One tube, mascara
One pound, ground turkey
One box, Smart Start cereal
One bag, frozen veggies
Two boxes, brown rice
One bottle, nail polish remover

Okay, I can’t remember everything but somehow it all added up to…
$100

Ah! In the end we decided that since a lot of stuff was just 10% off, it was now equivalent to shopping at Wal-Mart. So we’re not sure we really saved much. In fact, we think our visit was premature. We plan to wait a few months and return, when the real lootin' begins. We'll probably need some matzo ball soup by then.