The pale green cotton comforter on my bed cost $100. It seemed an incredible amount to pay for bedding, but I really, really liked it. It matched my brand-new Anne Klein sheets. And I had a new job, and a new higher salary, so I could afford it.
It went against my whole sense of thrift, but I bought that $100 comforter. In 1985.
Twenty-four years later, I am still using it. It isn’t quite as pretty as it once was, and there are a few small rips, but I have never found another I liked as well, at any price.
I have tried to retire this comforter several times. The new blue one, which cost about $20 at Marshall’s, was too stiff. I ended up giving it away, barely used. The pale green duvet cover for $29, the closest I ever found to the old comforter’s color, was soft enough but it was really too heavy for all but the coldest South Florida nights. Those bedspreads were cheap, but the $49 was wasted, because they weren’t right.
The green cotton comforter was a replacement for a calico-print comforter I’d bought in college and used until the fabric began to disintegrate, after only 10 years. I swear I don’t have a Linus complex. I didn’t intend to hold on to this green comforter for nearly half my life, but here it is. Still.
We all have seen things that we just had to have, even though they were more than we really wanted to spend. Some of them really do turn out to be worth the splurge.
And here is where I am supposed to give you four bullet points of advice about how to know which splurges will stand the test of time and therefore are worth it. But some things in life can’t be condensed into bullet points. It helps to know yourself. It helps to wait a few days to see if the pull of the item is still strong. You have to have the money, of course.
And then sometimes you have to just take a leap of faith and go for it.
