So I’m sure you have all been dying to hear about the JCREW ADVENTURE. Right? Ok, probably not really, but I’m stil so excited about it that I am going to share anyways.

First, I need to say that I have always considered myself a pretty good shopper, even under crazy conditions (Cincinnati Gap Clearance Store anyone?????). I can sift through unorganized piles of clothes, go for a long time, seek out bargains, the whole deal. Remember les soldes? I thought that was as wild as it would get.

And yet.

Nothing prepared me for the madness that was the jcrew warehouse event.

We left at 4 am on Saturday morning. This is pretty early…. or late, as I had that awesome girls’ night the night before and then I was so anxious/excited about getting up early that I DIDN’T SLEEP AT ALL. Someday I will write a blog post all about what it’s like being a crazy who takes out any form of anxiety/life change/ excitement/ stress/ insert reason here by not sleeping. Poor James.

Our two-car caravan headed to Lynchburg ready to shop. We rolled in to a McDonald’s about 7:30 for a quick breakfast and then were waiting in line to get in to the massive warehouse by 7:45. By this point, there were approximately 100 people in front of us, which means that there are a lot of sleep-deprived crazies about to get their shopping on.At 8:00, they let us in. And that’s the last ordered thing that happened.

As we went in, we were handed a giant trashbag (think, summer camp dumpster bun size) and a set price list. Then people just kind of went wild. For the first 30 minutes, I think everyone forgot that there was a whole warehouse of clothes, so we were just grabbing things wildly and throwing them in our bags. Handful of belts? MUST HAVE. Size 2 pink jeans? MAYBE IF I SUCK IN. Men’s fedora? OF COURSE.

I want to describe the shopping process, because none of these pictures do justice to the total insanity that it was. You are in a huge factory warehouse floor full of tables covered in boxes. While there are some *general* delineations (shoes, tops, men’s, women’s, kids) there is no further breakdown. A box could have a wedding dress, 2 winter coats, 6 tank tops, and some skinny jeans, of all different sizes. This means that you just randomly riffle through hundreds of boxes, hoping you find something. Oh, and there are no dressing rooms. Instead, everybody wears the minimum clothes possible – leggings, work out tops, etc. – and you just yank things on overtop. For the first hour, I kind of just wandered lost, fantasizing about making snow angels in the discarded clothing on the floor and crying, because it was just so overwhelming. You realize that all those things that look so pristine and lovely in the store, just merge into a wrinkled mess on the warehouse tables. You are also aware of how many truly ugly things jcrew is tricking us into loving. I offer the following as proof:

But slowly I got the hang of it, largely because our gang was a pretty rocking team. Yes, we all forced Brooke to try on everything in tiny sizes and even forcing her into children’s clothes, but we also worked together pretty well, finding things for each other and offering top-notch fashion advice like “Don’t buy that. It’s shapeless and awful.”

I didn’t find a bridesmaid dress because some family got in first and swept ALL OF THE PALE PINK DRESSES for their daughter’s wedding before anyone else could get in. But I still managed to come out with 2 formal-ish dresses, an orange Origami Sheath dress, a black one two, a black lace Madewell dress, black sequined dress (totally practical), grey cotton sundress, dress shirt for James, 2 dress shirts for me, one fancy tank top, one t-shirt, colored bangle, amazing scarf, and two pairs of tights. Original estimated price for all that: $1,607.50.  I paid: $162.  WINNING.

And then I came home and went to bed by 8:30 and slept for 13 hours. WINNING.