Woot, the bane of my existence

I have always had a great relationship with my mother-in-law. She's a wonderful person, and would never do anything to make my life more difficult.

That is, until recently, when she just may have committed the unforgiveable sin.

She introduced my husband to Woot!

Surely this isn't that bad, you say.

Oh, but it is. Woot! is this website that sells one product a day--often products that are interesting to those who love technology--and regardless of the product or how many you buy, shipping is only $5. The item sells until it is sold out, and then you simply have to wait until the next day for a new Woot! item. The deals are often pretty good, and the lure of $5 shipping is pretty strong, especially on larger items.

Having known about Woot! for only about 2 weeks, my husband and I are the proud owners of 2 Woot! items--an mp3 player and a programmable Roomba. In all fairness, both are good products and I'm particularly glad that we bought the Roomba, but this ratio of days to purchases is a little bit frightening. At this rate, robots will outnumber humans in our house in about 1.5 months, and once that happens, it's only a matter of time until they start bossing me around, rather than me bossing them. Not good.

It gets worse. Some days, Woot! has what they call a "Woot-off", where they sell very limited quantities of something, and then once it's sold out, move on to the next limited quantity item. My husband stayed home from work one day last week when there was a Woot-off, and every 10 or 15 minutes, he would shout upstairs, "Hey! Look at this! Do we want a [fill in the useless but extremely cool technological gadget here]?" So now, our odds of buying something off Woot have gone up by a lot, and since the quantities are so limited, the pressure to buy it the minute you see it is incredible. AARGH.

But the worst thing about Woot! by far is that I've found myself getting sucked into these deals. I like technology as much as the next person, but I'm not an avid Slashdot reader and my computer still runs (mostly) happily on Windows XP. But Woot's marketing strategy--the pressure of limited supply, cheap shipping, good deals--is pretty irresistable. Today, for example, the product was a Sony NW-s705 2GB mp3 player with noise cancelling headphones for $49.99. I already have an mp3 player that works quite well, but my first thought upon seeing this was "can I find a use for this?" Not "do I need this?" or even "do I want this?" but "can I squeeze this unnecessary product into my life?"

And during the latest Woot-off, one of the products for sale was a monkey with rubber arms. You pull him back like a slingshot, he goes flying through the air, and as he flies, he screams. Totally useless, and after 15 minutes of playing with it, it would undoubtedly be shoved in some closet. But, when my husband said that one of these was for sale, all my logical reasoning skills flew out the window and I shouted, "Get one! Quick!"

(Un)fortunately, they were already sold out.