Hard to Find

We used to have 5 & 10 Cents stores, WT Grant, Woolworths, Kresge's, all gone or absorbed into larger entities.  If you needed something, they had it.  The closest we have now are neighborhood hardware stores, perhaps, but most of our errands get done at mega stores, from groceries to home maintenance to big discounters.  They have a lot of things on display though rarely those petty items you buy infrequently or at low cost.  I needed, or really wanted more than needed, a few items this week, either not finding any or struggling to find something ideal.

Being a newly dedicated treadmill walker, my ankles and calves started getting sore.  I cold use some soothing liniment, maybe a generic BenGay. Lidocaine infused potions with markups reflecting their medicinal value appeared regularly.  At one time I could get a tube of muscle rub with just oil or wintergreen or menthol at a Dollar Store.  No more.  Not even the more chemically supplemented standard BenGay.  The best I could find was a juiced up generic BenGay with a lot more than pleasant fragrance for a lot more than a dollar.  I bought a tube.

I have two grooming locations, the bathroom next to my bedroom and the powder room downstairs.  I keep hair preparation at each, though not the same stuff.  They come as aerosols which I have as plastic bottle sprays both places but metal aerosol only upstairs.  Some require wet hair, which I keep upstairs as that is where I shower.  For the dry hair, there are cremes like Brylcream, greasy kid stuff like Wild Root, and liquid Vitalis.  Ointment stuff downstairs, liquid upstairs.  I wanted to get an ointment for upstairs but those classic cheap hairdressing like the barber offers at the end of a haircut don't seem to be on anyone's shelves.  There's expensive stuff like Crew or Panama Jack, those trendies, but not a bottle of Wild Root or tube of Brylcream to be found.  

I bought some hand sanitizer, a liquid rather than a gel.  It came with a pour bottle but would do better as a spray.  So I looked for a couple of spray bottles.  I know they exist, because the barber uses them, home cleaners like 409 have them, they are used to spray plants with home designed nutrients.  But none at the Dollar Store or a few other places.  I could have bought some spray cleaner at the Dollar Store, emptied and cleaned out the bottle, and then I would have one.  I found an old one in a closet at home, already empty, and used that.

Facial tissues used to be more commonly used than they are now.  I have a crushed box at home.  Hotels offer tissues in dispensers, sometimes part of a wall unit, sometimes as a free standing metal or plastic container.  No luck finding one of those.

All these items exist at Amazon.com but since they are small purchases, the shipping cost exceeds their value.  I will just use the final dry hair dressing downstairs.