Wishbone

One of Linda's fears about moving to Tasmania was that it would be hard to find good stores, or if we did find good stores, it might take weeks for stock to make its way down here from the mainland. My concern was that this remoteness would lead to sticker shock as prices soared above what we were used to in Sydney. (Which, of course, were already shocking compared to what you would pay in the US, but that's a whole other issue.)

For a little while this week, LK was quite sure her worst fears would be realized as we went shopping for some furniture. And yes, I can hear you all saying, "But hold on, you shipped your furniture down and you're moving from a larger house to a smaller house. What could you need?"

The answer is "a couple of things". First we needed a couple of chests of drawers for the bedroom. Our house in Sydney had a huge number of closets and many of them had shelving, making it unnecessary to have a chest of drawers. We also need a smallish, casual dining table next to the kitchen for meals when it's just the two of us, which pretty much describes the table LK gave away before we moved. I can't argue too much about that, though, since the fridge we had to buy when we got here pretty much matches the specs of the one I decided to include with the Sydney house when we sold it.

Anyhow, a few visits to the obvious furniture places was getting my bride pretty discouraged. Very little variety at the leading department store's home store; the classic lack of quality at the chain furniture store. Then she saw a store listed online and when we checked it, my sweetie was smiling again.

Wishbone is the store's name, and it had lots and lots of furniture that was stylish, well-made and with enough variety that LK was able to find exactly what she wanted. The service was great, and the woman waiting on us went out of her way to help us find what we were looking for.

But wait, there's more. We went in after noon on Saturday, and they are delivering everything on Monday. The prices for the table and chest of drawers are lower than either of us could imagine a Sydney store even contemplating during a going-out-of-business sale. And then the woman who was waiting on us apologized that she couldn't cut the prices any more because they already had been reduced but - out of the blue - told us she was going to knock 10% off the chairs for the table and throw in free shipping.

Linda was in heaven, absolutely overjoyed that her worst shopping fears were unfounded. Not just unfounded, but in fact better than we had experienced in ages. The whole thing went so well that I could see her straining to see if there wasn't something else we should buy for the house while we were there. She did manage to add in a bolt of fabric for curtains she needs to make, but really there wasn't any more to buy, and the final bill was much less than either of us had dreamed it would be.

So, for slightly different reasons, we both left the store feeling extremely good about our experience and quite confident that we have made a smart choice in moving here.