Hobby Lobby

[kolorado]

So I went to a home and craft store that recently opened in my neighborhood. I'd never been to a Hobby Lobby before. Nothing could have prepared me for the excess of crap and money wasters that fill this place.

All I wanted was a few yards of white fabric for a conference project. I went straight to fabric, chose my item and got in line with my item and my 40% off coupon.
It was like Christmas-time in there. Hoards of people with full carts of crap. Lady in front of me bought a super ugly marble table and massive bouquets of fake ferns that looked like aquarium greens to me. $80. Lady next to me had her cart full of bunnies, plastic eggs and a gigantic yellow metal butterfly. Over $100.
I try not to spy and judge but I just could not help myself today. I live in a poor area with less than national average wages. So it's fairly safe to guess that it took two hours of work, maybe more, to buy that stupid yellow butterfly. I respect my time too much to waste two hours of my life on crap. I respect my husband's time even more. Every time I want to buy something superfluous I remember that it would be paid for by hours that my husband is away from his family. With that choice in front of me, I choose my husband.
I just wonder sometimes when I witness the masses making such different choices than we are if they are even a little a little bit aware of how self-destructive their behaviors are? Why can't they see they have a choice? It's sad. :(

[Parizade]

This is just the sort of thing you can pick up at a garage sale or Goodwill for pennies on the dollar. But I'm guessing these folks have too much "pride" to buy used.

[arebelspy]

Whoah, that is a lot of junk.

Never heard of "Hobby Lobby" before, but now I know not to bother checking it out.

[LalsConstant]

Well let's be fair.  Speaking as someone with no stake in Hobby Lobby but who is familiar with it-

Not everything you can buy there is wasteful.  As a student I regularly went there to buy supplies to make projects and I can see for people with certain hobbies that involve making things it's a store like any other.  I lived in a small city without a lot of places to buy things like foam board, etc.

Now to be certain the middle of the store, probably over 50% of the square footage, is awash with great quantities of truly weird crap.  It's amusing to see what kind of bizarre things they have sometimes.

Even then not all of it is useless, if you have a particular need for storage that doesn't look like storage there are useful things sometimes, and they have niche products like shadow boxes and display cases for things, etc.  If you were into drawing, painting, sewing etc., well your pencils/pastels/paint/needles etc. have got to come from somewhere.

That said, I've spent less than $75 there in my whole life and that was in middle/early high school when teachers go through that stupid phase where you must build and illustrate things.  I did get the frame for my diploma there when when the frame was 75% off.  <shrug>  There's probably a more frugal alternative, but the campus book store would mount it on a piece of wood for $75, and this looks very similar and I paid $9.  I'm sure someone here will ream me for paying nine bucks when you could probably make one for less than five if you had a router and a few other tools that cost a couple grand when it's all said and done.  Good 'nuff for me though.

[Somnambulist]

That said, I've spent less than $75 there in my whole life and that was in middle/early high school when teachers go through that stupid phase where you must build and illustrate things.  I did get the frame for my diploma there when when the frame was 75% off.  <shrug>  There's probably a more frugal alternative, but the campus book store would mount it on a piece of wood for $75, and this looks very similar and I paid $9.  I'm sure someone here will ream me for paying nine bucks when you could probably make one for less than five if you had a router and a few other tools that cost a couple grand when it's all said and done.  Good 'nuff for me though.

My wife's folks owned a custom frame shop for years that did the best framing work I have ever seen in my life and it was not cheap. Hobby Lobby, Wal-mart, MegaCraftStore, Inc., etc. are killing the custom framing business unfortunately and it is bad for small businesses and consumers.

For people getting nice work framed that you actually care about I'd highly encourage you find a good custom framing shop in your area. You will pay a lot more for it but the people there will likely care a lot more about your framing job, use better quality materials, and frame the piece in a way that it will not be destroyed and look good forever. A lot of places (like Hobby Lobby) use masking tape and non-acid free mats when framing which will eventually destroy whatever they are framing. Many of the frames are also made of very cheap materials that can eventually cause damage to your framed pieces from chemicals leaking to the surrounding materials.

I never cared about framing before I met my wife but when she showed me how the handful of things I had gotten framed on the cheap that were already being damaged by cheap framing materials I changed my mind. It is one of the very few things now I'd actually spend a lot of money on.

[arebelspy]

Hah, a framing Connoisseur.  There's a whole framing world out there!

http://xkcd.com/915/

(No offense, just teasin'.  :D )

[shedinator]

Hobby Lobby is like a lowgrade Michael's or AC Moore- some good crafting supplies mixed in with a lot of junk. But that's no reason to avoid one. It's like a grocery store, really; most of the stuff in there is unnecessary, and probably accounts for more than 50% of the store's profit, but if you're smart and actually go in there to get useful things, and don't get sidetracked by all the junk, it's a pretty handy place. My wife's main hobby is painting, and on the few occasions we swing by an art store to pick up some supplies for her, I find myself longing for Hobby Lobby prices :)

[velocistar237]

Sounds a lot like Christmas Tree Shops, a concept I still do not fully understand.

[Somnambulist]

Hah, a framing Connoisseur.  There's a whole framing world out there!

http://xkcd.com/915/

(No offense, just teasin'.  :D )

Hah, never seen that before, hilarious. I'll have to show it to my wife.

[James]

Awesome xkcd comic, but then they are always good...  :)

We have a Hobby Lobby in a town nearby, and I went there to get some fabric to use as a photography backdrop once.  Wow...  Whole lot of crap going on in that place.  I've noticed the same at my local Good Will, they have the normal area of selling donated goods, but then they have several aisles of cheap crap worse than what you see at a dollar store.  Don't know why they chose to try and make money that way, but it bothers me that Good Will went there...