A month without Walmart contiunes: (I'm too lazy to count the days)

Spoiler alert: this blog post is about a Kitchenaid Mixer.

In November, I decided I was going to attempt to go the month of December without shopping at Walmart just to see if I could since Walmart is pretty much the worst company in America (OK, so maybe not the worst, but it's close).

What I found was that it was incredibly easy to do so. Want to know what the secret to not shopping at Walmart is? It's not shopping at Walmart.

That's it. I just don't go there. I thought it would be hard, but it's not.

I mean, sure there are times that it would be cheaper and faster to do all my shopping at one store in Mountain Home, but it's a small town so I pretty much have to drive past both Paul's and Albertsons on my way to anywhere else in town. Now I just make two stops on my way home instead of one.

(One time on a paid day off from my job, I drove my car to Boise for the sole purpose of getting things I could get at Walmart cheaper. I thought about every privilege I was exercising on the way there.)

It's so easy to avoid shopping at Walmart, I haven't shopped at Walmart since the end of November. I stopped blogging about it because doing so bored me because I realized every post would be either "I went to Paul's," "I went to Albertsons" or "I went to Paul's and Albertsons."

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

But this weekend I had to enter a Walmart.

Last May my family got me a graduation gift for completing a degree my contract with the Mountain Home News prevents me from mentioning on this site and it has been sitting in storage for the past year while I lived with some amazing people as I studied for a test that I'm probably also not allowed to mention and opened a business I know for sure I am not allowed to mention.

I've recently decided to move into my own place and took everything out of storage, including the KitchenAid mixer I received from my family. I've been told these things are amazing and are simply the best thing ever and ever since a really good friend taught me how to make bread using one, I've wanted to use one to make bread for myself because rolling all that dough together with my just my hands, well, it's really not that much work, I'm just lazy. So I asked for one and was surprised that despite my family literally flying in from all over the world to attend my graduation (Seattle, Hawaii and Germany), one showed up on graduation day with my name on it.

The only problem with the one I received was that it was white and I think the red ones look really, really cool. And so, I wanted a red one sitting on my counter instead of a white one.

I spent Sunday running around Boise trying to figure out where my sister picked mine up from so I could trade it in for a red one, but first I went to Target to get some other things for my new place.

I had assumed she got the mixer at Bed Bath & Beyond but learned that the store doesn't carry that particular model. (I also learned that the Bed Bath & Beyond store next to the Boise mall is out of business. Readers should not attempt to visit the store at that location unless they would really rather visit Nordstrom Rack instead.)

So I called my sister and was said, "Hey, where'd you get this KitchenAid mixer from? I mean, it's cool and all, but it's white and I want a red one."

She told me Walmart.

I like great, now I'm going to have to go to Walmart.

Boooooooo.

My mom said I was going to have to break my anti-Walmart streak. I said no, that it wouldn't count because I wasn't shopping there, just making an exchange for a purchase that was made before my self-imposed boycott. I'm not really sure if this is true or not, but I believed it at the time.

So I walked into Walmart and learned that they too didn't carry that particular model.

Being at Walmart after not being there for so long was like rediscovering it again Christopher Columbus style (You know, when you stumble upon something that already exists but it's new to you so you tell people it's new because it's new to you, but no one wants to make you feel bad so they don't correct you).

The store is huge! They have so many items! And for so cheap, too! It's like the dollar store with "quality" products! (And higher prices.)

They even had carts of $0.50 PowerAids, which typically cost $0.88 cents at the next cheapest place and anywhere between $1-2.22 at other places.

But I said no to the temptation and did not give in. I walked out of there with nothing but the mixer I walked in there with. I'm almost at the end of month six, I refuse to start shopping there again now. I'm completely Walmart rehabilitated.

Next I went to Target, which accepted my mixer and allowed me to trade it, along with some of my cash, in for a red one.

Then my sister and I laughed.

Because of course she got it from Target.

In Seattle, where she purchased it, she lived half a block from Target and about 40 miles from the nearest Walmart. Just neither one of us thought about that until after I drove all over Boise trying to return it.

But Walmart, it's still not for me.