It's not news to most of my readers that I loathe shopping.
If I know exactly what I want and can head directly to the store and immediately zero in on the item, purchase it without hassle, and be pleased with it when I get home, then I don't mind so much and the experience is even somewhat satisfying. You know how many times this happens over the course of a lifetime.Shopping at amazon.com isn't so bad, because (1) I can take all the time I want to make up my mind without making multiple trips to the store, (2) no sales clerk ever hassles me, and most of all (3) I'm buying books. I'd rather buy a book in a local store where I can actually hold it in my hands and get to know it better first. A bookstore is one of the very few shops where I can enjoy browsing, and maybe coming upon something good I didn't know about before I walked in. But the sad truth is that bookstores rarely have what I'm looking to purchase, and what good does it do for the clerk to cheerily assure me he'd be happy to order the book for me? I can do that myself—and usually do.
Shopping at Whole Foods can be a treat, too. I think that's about it, though.
Basically, I find most stores to be creepy. The constant assault on my senses from all the attempts to get customers to buy, buy, buy—not to mention the almost ubiquitous piped-in music, often at objectionably high volumes—makes me want to get the job done and out as fast as possible. Sometimes the sheer volume of choice—and, let's face it, the sheer volume of junk—makes my skin crawl. I know; I'm weird. Most people seem to enjoy the experience.
My wardrobe (or lack thereof) is sufficient evidence of how much I like to go shopping for clothes. Furniture? Our house is generally furnished in Generous Relative Hand-me-down Style—not because we can't afford anything else, but because anything else would require actual shopping.
Appliances? That's my current nemesis. I'm the kind of person who would rather make toast in the oven than replace the toaster oven that finally gave out after many years of good service. I lived for three years without a mixer rather than shop for a new one; the only reason I have one now is that Janet and Porter took matters into their own hands and bought me one for Christmas. Really, mixing things by hand—even egg whites—is much easier than shopping.
Our refrigerator was bought used for our tenants when we
rented out the house while we were in Boston.
It's been making funny noises for years. The stove and the freezer are working
fine, but I'm steeling myself for the day they must be replaced, because they're
each 30 years old, and would be considerably harder than a mixer to live
without. The dishwasher doesn't owe us anything, because it's about 20 years
old, but it hasn't cleaned very well since we returned from Boston. Must be the tenants' fault. 
So we've been looking at appliances. I really wouldn't mind shopping if I could find something I liked! But all the reviews are at best mixed, and often negative. Large appliances are now expected to last five or at most ten years, not thirty. Toaster ovens of all sorts have a disconcerting tendency to burst into flames at random times, even when not in use.
We paid $26 to join the online version of Consumer Reports, but so far have been disappointed. The dishwashers they reviewed are mostly not the ones I find available, and in any case their results are skewed by giving an unreasonably high priority to how quiet the machine runs. Quiet is good, but nowhere near as important as effective, efficient, and convenient. Their toaster oven reviews weren't much help, either—again, they mostly tested models I don't find in the stores.
Eventually we did get a new toaster oven, because Porter dragged me out of the house one day, determined that I should have one as a birthday present. I finally convinced myself that if someone had just given me a toaster oven, I would have found it fine and used it gratefully, so I stopped worrying so much and just picked one. I would gladly have spent more money to get what I wanted, but since I found nothing good, we chose a Euro-Pro at Best Buy that cost us, after a 12% discount and a $5 coupon, about $28. That's only $2 more than the Consumer Reports membership. And guess what? It makes toast! And otherwise seems to perform like a reasonable toaster oven. We did take the precaution of adding a switch to the cord, however, so it's easy to disconnect the appliance from the power. Reading the instruction manual, I was glad to discover that the manufacturer had recognized and addressed the issue of spontaneous toaster oven combustion: It is clearly stated, in several places, that one must always unplug the appliance after each use! So if your toaster oven burns up, it's not because of faulty manufacturing—apparently the machines are designed that way.
