Dateline Boston — Last weekend Husband and I went to one of my favorite stores—an organizer’s dream. This store has tools and containers for every room in your house. Need to arrange your spices? Hang your special dresses? Sort your socks? This store has it all. You’ll go in there and find things you had no idea you needed, but are so glad you found.
On this particular day, they were doing a promotion. Watch the wrapping-and-bow demonstration, then enter a drawing to win a prize! I like prizes, so Husband and I filled out a card each and put it into the prize shopping bag. I crumpled ours up before I put them in, because I read once that if you do that, your ticket will be easier to capture. I told the demonstrator I was doing that, and she said, “I do that, too!” She went off to encourage more people to join. Husband wandered away to look at stocking stuffers.
After a minute, Demonstrator breezed back to whisper, “Not many people are interested, your chances are good!” In the end, there were five of us: me, Husband, another husband and wife couple, and a woman who was very loud and talkative. She filled out her card, saying, “Now, you’re not going to send me emails, right? I get three a day from Store X.”
We watched the demonstration. We were shown how to wrap a box using a creaser tool, and how to make a bow using ribbon. The bow demo was cool, even though I usually just get the kind you stick on the present at the last minute. You can buy a bag of them for $1 after Christmas.
The loud woman kept me quiet. She kept exclaiming how wonderful the products were, and how she was going to buy them for her daughter. She had enough makeup on to impersonate an elf, but the colors of her clothes suggested the Sand People in Star Wars. She was a real character. After listening to her go on for awhile, Husband broke the tension by bringing me hot apple cider from the snack cart. I thanked him for saving me.
Finally, the demonstration was over. Demonstrator reached into the shopping bag and pulled out a card…Husband! We won! Our prize was a giant box with small boxes inside where we could put all of our wrapping paper and bows. We also got a $20 gift card, which we used immediately.
At home, I took out the wrapping box I’ve had for years and divided the paper. Now we have one box just for Christmas, and one for birthdays and other occasions. One can never have too many organizing tools. I just have to find room under the bed for two wrapping paper boxes.
Ms. Vaillancourt may be contacted at snobbyblog@gmail.com
