From Here to Bed, Bath and Beyond

This week, Kristen was available to waste two hours at the Studio City Bed, Bath & Beyond.

Bed, Bath & Beyond announced it was filing for bankruptcy back in April and that all of its stores would close today, June 30. This is a real deal bankruptcy, by the way. Not like when Chuck E. Cheese filed Chapter 11 in 2020 then immediately started selling delivery pies on Uber Eats, and you’d see it, and think, “Huh,” but not feel curious enough to order one. 

So, I obviously had to go and say goodbye to the old girl. It was my second time, actually. The first was right before the writers strike started, and my anxiety made me feel like I couldn’t possibly leave money on the table. (By money, I mean my stack of 20% Off coupons.) I have saved every Bed Bath & Beyond coupon that ever floated into my life, and I moved with them, too. At least one of these expired coupons has lived in 4 different states.

New Jersey, 2018, back when there was still hope and promise.

On the car ride over with Jason, I eulogized the place. “Remember when we registered at Bed Bath & Beyond for our wedding? When we shot the little gun together? Remember how on our first anniversary, we couldn’t afford to go anywhere, so we just bought ourselves a new duvet and spent the weekend underneath it? Remember how we’d go there to set up every new apartment? New trash cans, new shower curtains, new plastic containers with working lids. Now, where will we go?” Jason, suddenly misty-eyed, answered: “I guess… Amazon.”

Imagine my shock to learn they were no longer accepting coupons, and at that point, the store was just 10% off, so I actually spent 10% more than I would’ve on a typical, non-bankruptcy day. I left money on the table. During a strike! I bought oven mitts, which we needed. Our old ones were so burnt, Jason screamed using them to pull out the Thanksgiving turkey, and then we did nothing about it for five months. 

We wandered through the pillows and half beds and signs for kitchens that just say “E.A.T.,” and hummed This Used to Be My Playground. Jason told one of the employees he was sorry this was happening and how much he was going to miss the store. She appreciated him so much, in a way that made me wonder if someone had probably screamed at her about the lack of Soda Streams and then I felt even sadder.

Until we saw this pillow. 

It transfixed us. It broke us open. What did it mean? As my friend Melinda asked, “Did the silhouetted children die?” Here we were, in the middle of Bed Bath & Beyond, a fixture of what it meant to grow up in the aughts, from dorm rooms to apartments to houses. Now, here was a pillow in the middle of a disappearing store and a disappearing way of life, telling us to “Never Look Back.” 

I regretted not buying it as soon as we got in the car. Is there such a thing as Unbuyer’s Remorse? I have that. When we returned last week, the pillows were gone. They’re in someone else’s home, making someone else’s friends uncomfortable.

For at least a decade, I only went to Bed, Bath & Beyond once or twice a year, and clearly that’s what everyone else did, too. It had become inexplicably expensive. As my friend Brett said, “Thank god that cockroach of a store is closing.” But the place had its charms. Every store smelled the same, and it was a nice kind of smell, not like plastic fumes like in the back of Walmart. And—except for the weird beauty supply section, which, to me, isn’t canon—they only offered one specific thing, so you could go in there and get your home goods and not feel overwhelmed.

Also, when we moved to LA, we went in to buy new plastic containers with working lids, and Alexis from General Hospital was there, looking at bowls, and we said hi, and she was so nice, and I immediately called my mom about it, and she loved it.

Where will we go now? I guess Amazon.