Efficiency in Shopping and Packaging

My mom bought some type of weird rack thing yesterday. When she got home, she asked me to put it together. No problem, I don't mind assembling stuff. So I get at it, find the tools needed, start unwrapping all the pieces and putting it together. My mom comes down and tells me to wait a moment. She takes a piece with her and starts looking around at where it might go. She then concludes that the rack won't be "fancy enough" for the main entrance, it's too big, and it doesn't fit in my sister's room, which was plan B. So, after all this, she tells me to stop and just put it all back into the box.

Of course, knowing how things are packaged these days, I looked at the small box in awe and wondered how I would fit everything back in. It seems like just about every square inch of the thing was used and I simply could not figure out how to put everything back into the box. I spent 20 minutes trying to figure this out, then my mom tried some really ridiculous ideas which I knew off the bat wouldn't work. Eventually I gave up and signalled to her that "I think you bought it now...".

My mom often has this problem. She's one of the annoying types of people who will buy tons of stuff without really thinking it through in a logical manner, get home, try it out, and then realize quickly it won't work at all. To begin with, she didn't measure this thing or figure out how it would look once set up. She didn't even bother. Just waste 30 minutes putting this thing up and then we'll see...

So now my mom figures she can just take this thing back to the store (which she bought in Montreal, I gather, which is even dumber) with a bunch of loose shelves and other pieces which just won't fit in the box. Real smart.