Weekend Assignment #237 – Spending Spree: $10K, one week – GO!

In the midst of all this unsettling economic news, Karen is encouraging us to engage in some retail therapy in this Weekend Assignment.

Weekend Assignment #237: A long-lost relative dies and leaves you $10,000. But there’s a catch: the will states that it cannot be saved, invested, given to charity or used to pay bills. You’ve got a week to spend it all. (Anything left over will be used to buy tiny wheelchairs for injured pigeons.) What will you do with the dough?

Hmm, I could use some new bookcases. I never seem to have enough space for all my books, since I keep getting more of them. But I’m not talking about the IKEA build-’em-yourself kind of bookcases. I’d like some real furniture, the kind that comes on a delivery truck and gets set up in your house for you.

Something like this:

                                Or maybe like this:        

(I have to be honest – good furniture is a weakness of mine that I rarely get an opportunity to indulge.)

Two of the barrister bookcases and one cabinet would make a serious dent in that inheritance (click those links if you’re curious about the list prices of those pieces), but I’d like to keep them company with a comfortable upholstered chair to sit in while reading – one with a matching ottoman, of course, so I can put my feet up and relax. A good floor lamp close by is an essential accessory, of course. A small table next to the chair would need to be big enough to hold my laptop, my water bottle or a coffee cup, and a book or two – even with such a nice place to read, I’m sure I’ll have to get up sometimes to go do other things, and I’ll need to put my book down in a safe place.

I would want to be careful I didn’t use up all the money setting up my reading space, though. If I couldn’t wrap up this week with a trip to the bookstore, what would the point of all this furniture be, anyway? I don’t know if my local Borders would be enough for this, however; it’s on the small side. I might need to visit one of the bigger bookstores closer to L.A., or maybe make the drive out to Pasadena to visit Vroman’s. I’m pretty sure I’ll have no trouble burning through the rest of the cash that way.

Extra Credit: Excluding food and necessities, what is the most recent thing you’ve bought for yourself?

OK, people, you should know by now…what do you think is the most recent thing I’ve bought for myself? Actually, this time it wasn’t books, but it does have a book connection. During BBAW, I won a gift card for LUSH Cosmetics from Chartroose of Bloody Hell, It’s a Book Barrage!, and I just got around to spending that last week. I’m looking forward to trying out their products, since bath-and-body stuff is another one of my weaknesses.

It’s not like winning the lottery, or even coming into a million dollars; ten grand is actually a realistic amount to fantasize about spending. What do you think you’ll do with yours? Tall Paul has plenty of ideas about how to spend his.

ALSO: Looking at the economic picture from a very different angle, the sites in the Silicon Valley Moms Blog group are all featuring “Blogging About the Economy” today. My contribution to the topic, along with other participants’, may be found at the Los Angeles Moms Blog.

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9 comments

  1. Easy answer for me: I’d buy a new laptop, a new desktop,an iPhone and tons of peripherals. I could probably spend it all in an hour at the Apple store without even breaking a sweat.

    Last thing I bought for myself was 2 blouses at a friend’s garage sale.

  2. Those are gorgeous bookcases! I was just thinking yesterday how I could use a new bookshelf. My husband says no, that there isn’t room, but I think we could fit in one more along the living room wall . . . You just may have to turn a little if it carries over into the front hallway. 🙂

  3. Furniture will eat up that money easily. It’s so expensive, and you didn’t pick cheap stuff, did you? 🙂 It sounds like it would be a nice room!

  4. Sarah – My husband would have probably said the same thing if he didn’t have his eye on that new camera he wrote about.

    Wendy (Literary Feline) – We just might have room for another bookcase in the new place, but I doubt it will be one of these :-).

    Kathy (Bermudaonion) – That’s always a good option! Where would you go?

    Mike – No, I didn’t pick cheap furniture. I would like to think my IKEA days are over, but they probably aren’t :-).

  5. I *like* IKEA. Still, that furniture is evocative of a classic book-lover’s library or study, the kind of place that turns up in books or movies but seldom in Real Life any more. When as a teenager I daydreamed of a castle on a cliff overlooking the Pacific, a library like that was one of the main rooms I wanted to put in it.

  6. KFB – Sorry, I shouldn’t diss IKEA that badly. I actually think it’s a lot of fun to shop there. I just don’t enjoy putting furniture together myself anymore.