Did you order something online recently? If you did, you’re not alone — we asked you to share what you’ve been putting in your cart, and you told us: a scythe, a treadmill, raspberry-colored roller skates, a wax melter, a foot-powered washing machine, a green screen, a cat-scratching post, a pitching net, an outdoor ping-pong table, a vitamix blender, juicers, a recliner, face masks, a $70 foot bath and massager, and bulk amounts of food; including six pounds of unpopped popcorn, an enormous bag of peanuts and enough toffee to get cut off by Amazon for being a perceived “hoarding risk.”
While Arun Rath browsed the web for obscure books on magic tricks, Tori Bedord bought a fifty pound bag of flour (for sourdough!) and a pet stroller.
We heard from Noah Wood, who found a collection of more than 4,000 records on Craigslist for cheap and is now starting a record-selling business. We headr some of the music he loves the most from the collection (with mixed reactions) and a little bit about Wood’s experience falling down this rabbit hole amid the pandemic.
“I don't think I would have done this outside of this whole thing going down,” Wood said. “It was a chain of events that brought me to this insane moment.”
And finally, we hear some wisdom from WGBH News producer Stacy Buchanan, who started making her own soap and bath and body products. While Buchanan said she could see this becoming a professional endeavor, it’s also been an amazing way for her to connect with herself.
"We get so caught up in our everyday lives, so much so that I don't think we have the foresight or the awareness to be able to truly take a step back and see what it's doing to us or who we are,” she said. “I think it just happens. I mean, one day you wake up and, you know, you're ten years older.”
As Buchanan pointed out, it’s not that we have more time — nobody really does — but it’s more that people are being forced to entirely restructure and recalibrate what our day-to-day lives look like now and will look like in the future.
“I think a lot is going to come out of this because of that,” she said. “Like people are realizing, wait a minute, I don't have to just do this thing for the rest of my life. I'm good at all these other things. And I think that part is amazing.”
For next episode, we’re looking for stories about how you’re staying sane, now that we know we’re in this for the long haul. What are you doing to cope? What have you found to be helpful? What keeps pushing you forward? Send a voice memo to tori_bedford@wgbh.org and put “THE CHECK IN” in the subject line.
