Rule of retail - If you still have summer clothes on 4th of July, you will probably take a loss to move it.

Very well said Dawn. And now back to my box

But much of Hobby Lobby's stuff is just flat out decor now, no crafting and assembly required., Amy. I wouldn't mind if it was only crafting stuff, but who needs to buy Thanksgiving table decorations, napkins, serving dishes or ready-made autumn garland and door wreaths in June? Oh, it just makes me crazy. I'm probably halfway crazy all the time, and this sort of thing just pushes me over the edge. I hear you about the stocking caps. Warm winter gloves are the same way. Don't wait until Thanksgiving to need to buy either. Gee, maybe I should take a week off from gardening and do all my Christmas shopping right now before the stores sell out of stuff. Ha ha ha. That is just what they want us to think and to do! Carol, I know you are right but it is ridiculous. On the other hand, parents can buy warm-weather clothing on clearance right now for their kids to wear back to school in August because those kids won't need all those cute sweathers, leggings and long-sleeved shirts in August, will they? Well, unless we have the oddest August weather ever. I used to think it was nuts when Lowe's and Home Depot put out their Christmas stuff around Labor Day, and that was only a few years ago. All the retailers just keep pushing the seasons earlier and earlier. I wonder where it ends?

Of course, if it is January or February and the big box stores get in their first shipment of extra-early tomato plants, that is okay with me. Early gardening stuff always is welcome, as long as the folks buying them understand they cannot go into the ground that early.

I refuse to buy things that I have to find a place to store until it is the season to use them. I can always order on-line.

I agree. I order more and more online all the time. Our UPS and FedEx guys probably wish I'd never discovered online shopping, especially around the holidays.

Don't get me started on Hobby Lobby. I don't buy many decorations, but I used to spend a lot on knitting/crochet supplies. I don't do as much of that anymore, so I get to stay away. I refuse to go "shopping", and can proudly say I haven't been to a mall in at least 8 years, maybe more! I haven't even driven to Tulsa since late 2014.!!

Shopping for summer items in the summer or winter items in the winter has been awful for a long time. My youngest daughter has taken her 5 year old on a 2 week excursion through the Rockies, the Tetons, Yellowstone, and Mt. Rushmore. They flew into Denver this weekend, and the first thing she noticed was she didn't pack enough short sleeved things, thinking the mountains would be cooler. I told her to stop and grab a couple of t-shirts, but thought to myself, "yeah, right". (She should have listened to her mom).

I'm pretty sure my UPS guy hates me. I order nearly everything online. If I could order groceries online and have them delivered to the front door, I'd do that, too.

Mary

The folks that run American corporations just can't get enough money. Just sad really.

I really wish they could relearn the simple pleasures of life and quit squandering our finite natural resources.

Mary, It is amazing how little I shop now (online or off) that we live out in the boondocks. There's just almost no place I want to go badly enough to spend all the time driving there and back when there's always so much else to amuse me at home. It is just as well. The money I used to spend out shopping at the mall (conveniently located midway between my place of employment and our house when we lived in Ft Worth), well, that now is money spent on the garden and on food preservation supplies....and I am much happier now than I was then. Our idea of a big shopping excursion is to drive down to the metroplex, go to CostCo, get gasoline at the CostCo station, then go next door to the Steak and Shake place for lunch and then head home. On the way home, we'll stop at Sam's Club in Denton if there is anything they have that we need and which CostCo does not carry (often it is certain supplies for the VFD), and then if we can think of anything we didn't get at one of the big warehouse clubs, I pop into the Wal-Mart next door to Sam's to get it. Our final stop is a Lowe's or Home Depot if we need anything they carry. It sounds like a long day, but we do it all rather quickly....bam, bam, bam. In and out of each store quickly, getting only what is on our list and zipping on to the next place. The whole time I'm thinking of what I could be doing if we were at home. There's always so much work in the garden and kitchen calling out to me. Because the garden provides so much of our food, we buy a lot less food than we once did which further shortens the shopping trips, other than buying he kinds of things we need to can or to preserve our food in some other way. Malls just don't hold the same attraction for me that they once did. I'm too busy to spend time in them. Maybe once every month or two, we add Central Market to the list to pick up a few favorite items that are hard to find. After even a half a day down in the D-FW metro area, I'm ready to go home and to go back into hibernation.

Johnny, That's so true. One of the things that drives me crazy is how much fossil fuel is used to ship food not just across the country but around the food. The average food item in a grocery store travels at least 1500 miles to get to the store. The average home-grown food we love travels 150 feet at most from our garden to our kitchen. Which one is more sustainable?

Dawn

Amen, co-sign, and ditto that!