We all did some experimenting with different coping mechanisms during the pandemic and for a lot of us, that included a little online retail therapy. Some of us bought things that made sense to us at the time, but they just don’t seem to have a place in our post-quarantine lives. Lifehacker readers share the pandemic purchases that now fill them with buyer’s remorse.
- “400 masks sitting on a shelf in the corner of my entryway...there was no way to know the mask situation was definitely going to turn out the way it did, but I do regret this a bit.”
- “I bought an Oculus in 2020 that I used a lot for three months and haven’t touched since.”
- “Knowing the public pools would be closed all summer, we got a giant 10' tank, a glass media filter/high capacity pump, and built a tech-deck platform around it. All in, close to $10k. After a year it started to rust pretty badly...and of course, we’ve used it maybe a dozen times over the past few years.”
- “Burley Bee Bike Trailer. Bought it for family bike rides. Which we did that first summer of pandemic about a dozen times. But now neither kid fits it and we haven’t gone on a family bike ride since that summer. $300 for a trailer used for one season.”
- “My electric sewing machine. Turns out, I don’t like electric sewing!”
- “We bought a cute camper that needed renovations. Our plan was to turn it into a detached office. We ended up moving, and our new place doesn’t have enough space for the camper. In reality it was just a time suck, money pit, and we can’t even resell it.”
- “The piano was a huge mistake. It’s essentially just another place for the cat to sleep.”
- “Enter the rowing machine I bought on Amazon, used literally twice for its intended purpose, was then used as a slide by my nieces, and is now sitting in my family room in pieces because we suckered one of our friends into taking it and are waiting for him to pick it up.”
- “I kept the guitar, which stares at me sadly from the corner, but I WILL get around to practicing, someday.”
- “The dog. Now we have a husky/lab mix that sheds so much fur that I don’t even spend time downstairs or in the yard anymore. All the upholstered furniture is covered in dog hair. We have insect problems because of its food. Only one kid will begrudgingly take it on a walk. I lost the use of half my house because she bought that damn dog.”
Source: Lifehacker