Bigger Lots

A few weeks ago I was told that They are putting a Big Lots where the old Garner Wal-Mart used to be! This is heady stuff. I love Big Lots in the way I wish I could love Target. I would love to express my lurve for Target the same way I can for Big Lots, by buying lots and lots of stuff from them all the time. Target is for days I feel rich.

Thanks to Big Lots I have developed a taste for the finer things, Twinings Teas for example. Gawd that's good tea and if you can't even buy it at my Kroger! If I want to spend retail for it I have to go all the way to Harris Teeter and that's like going to Whole Foods almost and I've never wanted any tea that much. My great hope is that I will find boxes of Twinings green tea  at my 'Lots once again.

The Big Big Lots officially opened this weekend and it is to my great disappointment that I forgot about it and missed the opening festivities. I imagine they handed out gift bags full of Israeli chips and Polish jam, Peruvian sodas and  Jamaican dish washing detergent and probably 300 count boxes of Twinings green tea! 

And I spent the day spray painting my railing! Oh! to be able to turn back time.

I finally got there, too late for gift bags but Grand Opening Week none the less.  It does not actually take up the entire Wal-Mart. It takes up about a third of it - which is still gargantuan for a Big Lots store that are not by nature overly large - but it not technically a genuine Wal-Mart sized  Big Lots.

The put a Big Lots into a Wal-Mart and it didn't magically turn into a Target . Hopes dashed.

It is bigger and brighter with shorter shelves than either of the two BL I shop at and at least at present, cleaner and better smelling. The greeting cards are nicer and there are more of them, they have  brand name vacuum cleaners and record players and microwave ovens and enormous commercial grade George Foreman grills -  which is nice but  I wanted more stuff not  a few nicer things. It doesn't have more stuff stuff than my BL. I don't think they changed the amount of inventory they sent to the store to to really suit the expanded square footage but instead sprinkled a few higher ticket items in to mark the opening. The real test will be if they still stock the vacuums in four months.

 The wheat is easier to find in the chaff but no one shops at BL for wheat.

 It seemed a little sparse for a BL. BL is always full of stuff, crammed together and crowded. It makes it kinds of an adventure really, you never know what might be hiding under all those just slightly out of date bags of  exotic Chinese noodles, there might be some other even more exotic noodles hiding beneath than or some interesting  German toothpaste or two boxes of very odd Dominican cookie product. You never know.

 I went to an Asian market expecting a profound noodle buying experience but instead found the same noodles I see at BL. Really, even the varieties I don't under stand how to eat. If its weird and you can boil it? It's at BL.

I didn't feel I was at a better or a fancier BL. Slovenian branded canned peaches are still Slovenian branded canned peaches. I went to my favorite sections and did not see anything new and exciting, they did not have a huge selection of yard art or picture frames or chotchkies and  while they did seem to have a lot of toys, they did not have the fairy costume selection that I would have expected to see. They did have  appear to have more cereals and condiments but it might have just been the lower shelves and better lighting. Lets hear it for commercial design.

 The furniture was over priced as it always is at BL. I would think that by the time its hitting BL the dream of making a profit is gone. No one wants it, there is something aesthetically offensive about the piece and no one is going to give you $199 for that bench, it's time to give it up and that lamp? Its cursed, you aren't going to get $90 for it. Give in and mark it down. It stopped being a Broyhill anything a long time ago its at Big Lots now. Let it go. To me for 85% off.

I did see a lady trying on a bra. They don't sell bras at my BL and now I am glad.