We get mail: Going buckwild at Williams Sonoma for $100 challenge

The ragged breath I released after reading this message! Here it is, what I was born to do: pretend to shop for someone else! I’m already very good at putting a lot of things into my own online cart and then leisurely reading reviews and removing each one, but to get paid to do it? (I’m not getting paid to do it.) Even better! If I had $100 to spend at Williams Sonoma and wasn’t going to spend it all on one big item or a serious cook’s tool, here’s what I’d do:

The absolute first thing I’d do is hit up the Homekeeping>Soaps, Lotions & Scents section. I never feel guilty about buying scents blind when it’s a gift card. Life is short! A victimless crime! Out of all these scents, I’d go for a Meyer Lemon or maybe Rosemary Eucalyptus – they can’t be too bad or different from what you’re expecting. However, I’d never waste even fake money on a scented hand soap and lotion set; go for a solo hand soap and use your own favorite hand cream after. I also wouldn’t waste it on expensive dish soap, but go to town on a fancy scented all-purpose cleaner or countertop spray, things with a scent that will linger longer. These candles all seem like a snooze but you know I love a room spray, and if you’re a diffuser person they have some good sales right now.

Next I’d buy a pack of kitchen towels. Our current kitchen towels are a real ragtag bunch of misfits unfit for company, and what better way to appear to have your shit together than to have Williams Sonoma dish towels on display? “Oh, these? Yeah, I don’t lie awake worrying about anything, especially money!” Buy a bundle on sale and feel smug.

If I didn’t already own silicone oven mitts, I’d buy two, but I feel like the sort of person who gets a Williams Sonoma gift card is probably covered here. They’re on sale for $15.96 each which seems ridiculous when you can get a set of two for the same amount? Ok, skip this.

I looked through their cookbooks and immediately felt both over and underwhelmed until I saw Drinking French by David Lebovitz. There’s $28 that will be pretty to spend and provide the illusion of travel. Ha! Hahahaha!

Trap that sob right there in your throat because we’re going to splurge and buy just one or two cute champagne or cocktail glasses, something that would feel like a treat to make one of these new drinks in. (You might be getting annoyed at my pick-a-little shopping style here, but I have to tell you that my ideal treat package is A Lot of Little Somethings. Just last week I had some January blues and spent 20 listless minutes on the Anthropologie website where I bought a lipstick, some periwinkle nail polish, and a candle without smelling it first. When it arrived yesterday it felt like a care package.) Annoyingly, Williams Sonoma seems determined to sell these in a set of four so that’s a lot more of the gift card; your call. (West Elm is better about this.)

Next, since this isn’t real money, I’d be super decadent and choose something from their Fortnum & Mason line. Winter is long and life is hard and you deserve $14 marmalade or $22 cookies! For real though, these prices are bonkers. On our last trip to London we blacked out inside F&M and came home with a suitcase full of jams and teas and an earthenware pot of Welsh rarebit, the latter of which now sits in our kitchen window like we’re fancy (our kitchen towels say otherwise).

Now I’d go functional and buy a set of measuring cups with the increments engraved on the handle. We have about three different mismatched sets, all with missing one cups, and all cheapo ones whose measurement rubbed off long ago. Why do I live like this? Williams Sonoma takes it a step further and has them in gold for the real Fall of Rome feel, but actually, why don’t these include 3/4 or 2/3 cups? Williams Sonoma, quit taking the piss and commit yourself to this nonsense!

I wanted to suggest a fancy wooden salad or serving bowl, like a nicer one than you think you deserve, but Williams Sonoma is marketing to people with waaaay bigger egos than me: they have a $185 salad bowl!! Hoist that salad bowl up on the barricades and buy this one at World Market instead – we have one for fruit and another for actual salads.

Ok, we gotta get out of here before the revolution starts so my last item is a milk frother for $19.95. This is a nice way to feel a-little-treat-every-day-rich, not Christmas-car-commercial-anti-vaxxer-rich. Man, I still cannot get over that salad bowl! This country is doomed.

Do you have an item you’d like me to shop for you before the seas rise and we’re all living on The Road? An elusive candle scent or the best hand cream? Let me know, I live for this shit!