convenience shopping.

an admission and some gentle encouragement.

Last week, I walked five hundred feet and bought two small brass hinges for an old wooden wine box that needed new ones. If memory serves me, I found the box on a stoop a dozen or so years ago. It’s the place where I stash various bits of stationery and office supplies—and where I once kept outgoing wedding invitations and the stamps we used for them. Constructed more or less as a disposable item for shipping bottles of Mastroberardino, the original hinges on the box were flimsy. One of them yanked itself out of the wood entirely a few years ago. While I was recently disassociating from the cruelty of this administration organizing my home office, I decided it was time for a fix.

I wish I could tell you that walking five hundred feet to my local hardware store to buy new hinges was my first impulse and that I hesitated nary a minute to lift myself out of my well-worn desk chair and slip on my coat in order to walk three-quarters of a city block. I didn’t. I can blame the weather. (March.) Or the fact that I was drinking hot coffee and had a few minutes to noodle around at my desk while it was still drinkable. Mostly, despite the fact that hardware stores are some of my very favorite kind of stores, and that one of them is very close to me, I was momentarily pulled into the hypnosis of online shopping. It was only when I found myself toggling between different browser windows to compare exorbitant shipping costs for an exceedingly inexpensive item, that I was able to snap to attention and get myself out the door.

Ten minutes and less than five dollars later, I was back home with a set of hinges and eight small screws. Ten minutes after that, I had a functioning box. Convenience shopping in practice and the convenience is only the half of it.