A Tale of Three Wick Candles

After work on Friday, I decided it was time to make a trip to Bath & Body Works.  I realized a day or so earlier that I was running low on hand sanitizer, a very important part of my everyday life.  That’s right folks; I’m a germ-a-phobe.  My family and friends will tell you I’m a little too obsessive about it, but I have seen one too many TV specials about the germs lurking everywhere around to not be. 

Anyway, I found a coupon online for $10 off a $30 purchase and decided that I would also treat myself to a couple candles and some scentportable refills for my car.  I saw online that the candles were on special for $10 a piece and I have been dying to get my hands on a couple more of those Honeysuckle 3-wick candles! 

When I approached the store I couldn’t believe my eyes.  The semi-annual sale was still afoot!  I thought for sure I missed it!  I made the quick decision to only buy lotion, shower gel, hand soap, etc. if it was in the scent Twilight Woods or Honeysuckle.  Let’s be real.  Even if I did find those scents, I have enough of that stuff already to last me until I’m 35 but I wanted to set attainable goals for myself!

My plan was quickly thwarted when I found a candle holder for a 3 wick candle half off.  Crap. I’d wanted one of these for a while and it would only be $3.25 so I decided this would be my “bonus item”.  I did a quick sweep of the rest of the store, decided on my 5 scents of hand sanitizer and my two scentportable refills, picked up my two candles and was headed for the checkout.

Here’s the breakdown of what I got!

•         5 hand sanitizers – 5 for $5, Sticker price $1.75 each (Japanese Cherry Blossom, Caribbean Escape, Pink Chiffon, Coral Reef, and Aqua Blossom)
•         2 Scentportable refills – 2 for $5, Sticker price $3.50 each (Caribbean Escape and Island Margarita)
•         1 Candle holder – $3.25, Sticker price $6.50
•         2  3-wick candles (Honeysuckle. Duh.) - $10, Sticker price $22.50

I successfully made it to the cash register without picking up any other items.  (There was a brief moment when I was going to buy some Japanese Cherry Blossom cream shower gel, but I quickly came to my senses and put it back.)  I gave the cashier my stuff and proudly presented my coupon.

This is the part of the story where I have to say, touché sales girl, touché!  After she rung up my stuff she told me, that since I was already at $35, if I got $15 more worth of products, I would only have to pay $5 more!  Now I usually don’t fall for this kind of sales pitch.  I can do math in my head pretty quickly to calculate what I’m really saving/spending.  However, in my heightened emotional state and moment of self-control-less-ness I lost myself.  I smelled one of the Honeysuckle candles I had already laid on the counter and said “well, OK, maybe just two more candles.” SARAH!  Seriously?!?

I know what you’re thinking.  Wow, can’t believe she fell for that.  But I did, hook line and sinker.

So instead of spending $25 after coupon, I spent $35.  However, I can justify this completely because everything that I bought was on sale!  The 4 candles alone are well worth the $35 that I ended up spending!  Plus I got several other things that I “needed”. 

I saved $79 off the sticker price of all these items but technically it was only the $20 that my coupon took off that I actually “saved”.  But hey, that’s two Honeysuckle candles and boy do they smell amazing!

Moral of this story, always go to Bath & Body Works with a plan.  And a coupon.

Thanks for reading!!

~Sarah