Parents of an U10 soccer team I coached gave me two Bunnings gift cards as a thank you present.
It was the perfect gift for a bloke like me.
I love Bunnings.
It is my favourite place to shop because it has so much that is useful. I love its staff, always helpful when they can be, and sometimes knowledgeable and filled with good advice. I love its returns policy. I love its rows of fixings, especially all the bolts and screws. I think these are my favourite aisles, although recently I’ve been pulled also to the paints. I love its variety. All the plumbing supplies, light bulbs, oils, bags of potting mix if you need it, drill bits, tools.
I have other hardware stores I visit for things, one of them regularly, with squeaky timber floors. Usually I bicycle there. Sometimes I dink my youngest son. He quite likes visiting hardware stores. My eldest boy detests it. He couldn’t think of anything worse.
It reminds him of all the differences he has with his father.
I like the Bunnings TV advertisements, the way they put the staff on centre stage. I don’t mind the tool shop either, although I buy tools also from other places.
But the parents of the soccer team I coach gave me a Bunnings gift card, and they know me well enough to know how much it was appreciated.
With the money, from the Alexandria store in Sydney (visiting on a family holiday) , I bought:
a 24 oz Estwing hammer. Made in USA. I already have this hammer, but several years ago bent the shaft when trying to prise a nail from a post (will never do that again). Estwings are the best hammers money can buy. This one was $84.55. I emailed the parents, told them whenever I bang a nail, I’ll think of their boys.
A pair of Peltor earmuffs. Made in Poland. I have some Peltor earmuffs, but they’re at least 20 years old and figure it’s time to replace. These were the top range at the store. $38.86. You can never spend too much to protect your hearing. Told the parents I’d wear them to training next year. The boys do make a lot of noise.
A Lufkin builder’s rule. My last one broke, pulled apart by some young boys. Made in Sweden. I’ve been using the pieces of the broken one, but here was an opportunity to upgrade. It’s not the best on the market, as my old one was, with its bevelled edge. But this one is yellow-and-black. It’s a premiership builder’s rule.
A 4lt tin of Feast Watson Wood Shield Oil. I have no immediate need for this, but it was in a reduced-to-clear bin. Marked down from $90 to $30. I’m always using timber oils. Feast Watson is a quality brand.
Yes, I love all the possibilities within a Bunnings store, all the things that can be made or done.
But I hate some of the logging practices they’ve been involved in. I hate that recently they were caught underpaying staff. And I especially hate all the useless crap in them, all the cheap-quality materials and products, stuff to tizz-up houses and backyards, designed for profit, with a short lifespan that invariably ends up in landfill.
I hate all the useless JUNK in Bunnings. Aisles and aisles of it. Junk. Cheap and nasty. So often I see it at schools and kindergartens and elsewhere - a cheap ‘Bunnings aesthetic’ I call it - stupid stuff designed for bored or uncertain or unquestioning consumers. And the planet takes the hit. Stuff made often in China, so often plastic and synthetic materials, hardly built to last, hardly honest in its design, made for a disposable economy.
I hate that Bunnings stocks and sells and encourages this needless high turnover consumer society.
I hate it, I hate it, I hate it.
But nowhere am I happier than in an aisle of galvanised bolts, or among tubs of galvanised coach screws or stitching screws or batten screws, and so often this is at Bunnings.
I love Bunnings. I hate Bunnings.