My favorite places: The NPS Store

On Friday I was up by the airport and stopped by one of my favorite shops, the NPS store. They had a bunch of Le Creuset pots in stock and I snagged this braiser for a great price.

The NPS store is kind of hard to describe. It’s sort of like Goodwill in that you never know what they’re going to have and that it’s fairly dingy. But everything is theoretically new. They sell misdirected, unclaimed or damaged freight…so basically stuff that fell off the back of a truck. And apparently all sorts of stuff falls off of trucks.

The NPS store is actually made up of three different stores: the grocery store, the industrial store, and Market Square. We haven’t spent much time at the grocery store, but they seem to have a wide variety of items, including produce. The industrial store has aisles and aisles of indescribable machine parts and tools but we’ve also seen interesting things there like car bumpers, a fully-assembled sauna, kickboxing dummies, original oil paintings, and a Ben & Jerry’s ice cream freezer.

We usually spend most of our time at the Market Square which sells kitchen items, jewelry, cds and dvds, clothes and shoes, toileties, fabric by the yard, etc… There’s also a separate room in the back full of “collectibles” including fine jewelry, wedding dresses, and original pieces of art.

When we get to the store N. usually makes a beeline for the cd section and picks it over. He’s found some rare releases for $2 or $3. I usually spend my time browsing the kitchen section. I have a couple of Le Creuset pots, all from the NPS store. I bought my big French oven there for 1/3 of the retail price. It was so cheap because the plastic handle on top was broken but then I called Le Creuset and they sent me a new handle for free so it worked out well.

It seems like the store is getting more popular. There don’t seem to have as many crazy sales as they used to, but the prices are still pretty good. I think it’s worth checking out if you’re up by the Salt Lake airport; it’s at 1600 South Empire Road. Let me know if you’re planning on going–E and I will meet you there!