I was on such a roll too. I was feeling triumphant as I handed the guy at the loading dock my receipt as proof of my purchase. I found a great chair sitting on the floor of the house wares section of the local Goodwill that I have been haunting on a weekly basis. It wasn’t dirty or grubby…had no tears in the fabric and it was comfortable! The price tag said $25.00. I was thinking that was a pretty good deal. Sold. I wasn’t sure where I was going to put it but a deal is a deal and I was going to make room. The guy at the loading dock said “Nice chair” as he loaded into the back of my minivan. I said “Thanks! I’m usually not this lucky but I think I found a good one!” And I headed to work from there with my new chair in the back. Not 2 minutes into my drive did I realize that I might have made a mistake.
Now anyone who has shopped in a Goodwill will know what I mean when I say the Goodwill has a distinct smell. It is kind of a hybrid aroma….a musty smelling cross between the smell of the local dry cleaners, mildew, and Febreeze and another odor that I can’t quite put my finger on…that is until I got into my car. Since everything in the store smells anyway, I didn’t put my nose to the chair before I happily plopped down my $25.00. My new chair it seems came from the home of a smoker. I was driving down the road when it hit me. It was subtle at first, but after sitting in my van in the hot sun while I was working for a couple of hours there was no mistake. When I came out to my car to head home the odor of stale Marlboro’s or Camel’s hit me in the face when I opened the door. My new chair was starting to make my van smell like an ashtray!
As soon as I got home I put my new chair in the sun and gave it a heavy duty spray down of Febreeze. I let it bake in the sun for a couple of hours and then moved it into my husband’s office to surprise him! He was surprised alright! Let me just finish by saying that was two days ago. The chair is now out in the garage. We can’t take it anymore…the smell that is. The chair will be making a re-appearance on the sales floor at the Greensboro, NC Goodwill sometime this weekend and I have learned a $25.00 lesson. It is a good thing that I believe in what the Goodwill does and I look at my lesson learned as a donation to a worthy cause. :)
