Come on over and pick up a gift from my Christmas gift table. It’s first come, first served, so I recommend that you come sooner than later. The best stuff get taken first of course.
LAUNDROID.
I saw a Laundroid at a recent landlord convention. The salesman said: ‘All your tenants will want a Laundroid!’ I have no doubt that he was right about that; however, you aren’t going to see a Laundroid at my Christmas gift table. A Laundroid is a clothes folding machine. It works this way. You take your clothes out of the dryer and put them in a Laundroid. Using artificial intelligence, the machine figures out what each item of clothing is, folds it, and puts it in a neat pile with other clothes of the same type – shirts in one pile, pants in another pile, etc. It folds everything except socks. Apparently, folding socks is too complicated for the machine to figure out. A Laundroid is quite large, about the size of a stacking washer and dryer; however, that isn’t the reason I’m not putting a Laundroid on my Christmas gift table. It’s the price. A Laundroid is $16,000. So sorry, I know rent in Berkeley is high, put you are going to have to continue to fold your own clothes until the price and size of this machine comes down – a lot. Laundroid video.
GIFT CARDS.
If you get gift cards this Christmas, remember that gift cards do not improve with age, like fine Spanish sherry. If you have gift cards from troubled retailers or restaurant chains, you should spend them as soon as possible. Once a company goes bankrupt, its gift cards can become worthless overnight. Americans are holding onto millions of useless gift cards from bankrupt retailers. When Toys R Us declared bankruptcy and closed all its stores, their gift cards became worthless. Even though Toys R Us stores remained open for months after they declared bankruptcy to hold inventory liquidation sales, they would not allow customers to pay for stuff with Toys R Us gift cards. Now, what about Sears? Sears declared bankruptcy last month. For the time being, Sears continues to honor their gift cards, but if the company is forced to liquidate, Sears gift cards could become impossible to redeem. Sears is the parent company of K-Mart, which is also in serious financial trouble. I wouldn’t hold onto K-Mart gift cards either. My advice is to spend gift cards from financially troubled companies as soon as you can and for whatever you can get.