Hi, my name is Just an Ordinary Boo!  . Please accept this review in the spirit in which it is made - a gesture of friendliness. This is review 2 of 5 of your auction win.
My review has been submitted for consideration in "Good Deeds Go Noticed"  .
 The Title: The title definitely stopped my roving eyeball in its tracks, not quite the common example for the colour green, but not unexpected either. What could the story be about, I wondered. This curiosity is a good thing, but it should be satisfied by the look within, or else there is a feeling of something sought but not fulfilled. Did you feel the title answered any doubts as to why it was so chosen, to head this item?
The Beginning: I had a couple of bones to pick with this piece, not least with the beginning. The first sentence and first para are all that you can guarantee a reader will peruse, if you do not grip the interest within that short space of time, he/she is quite likely to make a rapid backwards shuffle and exit! So it must be gripping, powerful, interesting, yes - all of those; most of all it must be grammatically flawless. The best way to ensure that is to keep the sentences short and simple. Do not use any words of which you are unsure or tentative. Here you write: “Same as money!” That was the generally accepted idea of S&H Green Stamps when they proliferated across the business community from the 1950s through the early 1970s. Would you say 'idea of' or 'idea behind' the S&H stamps? Then again, 'proliferated' - is that the mot juste here? The Merriam-Webster dictionary chose to give the meanings of 'proliferated' variously as :
"1 : to grow by rapid production of new parts, cells, buds, or offspring 2 : to increase in number" Substitute the simpler phrase for the word and see if the meaning is what you intend to say? Did their number increase across the business community? Do you mean it was the stamps or the idea that 'proliferated'? It was the usage that grew more popular and widespread, is it not - why not say so? Bigger words are not always better words. Even assuming you are perfectly correct in the usage, after all, I'm no expert  ; it was still a sentence that was diluted in impact by its lack of lucidity.
The Setting: The era should have been set up a little more in 3-D. It is a time or place many might not have seen; I, for one, was growing up on another continent in that period. What made money hard to come by in this era? Also, how did this system work for the retailer or shop owner, what did he get out of it? If money was scarce how come people preferred a delayed reward to any immediate discount or lesser price offered by competing establishments that were not belonging to this system? I ask these questions of logic because this seemed more essay than story to me, although you title it as a short story.
The Characters: Aunt Ida is not the less entitled to be satisfied because she paid stamps instead of money, after the central premise of the story is that these were as good as money. Why was this persnickety (great adjective, that! It set her as a fussy old women of a bygone era with one deft word!) woman ridiculed by her brother for wanting her money's worth? However, the other character, the narrator, the niece of 'Aunt Ida', finds great bargains and stuff for all three of her homes, paying with the very same alternative currency? Was there some stigma attached to the wanting the ultimate prize offered by the catalog? You seemed to have an inordinate number of stamps too, did that also not require a lot of purchasing to be done, to generate those stamps? Could we have an idea of how many stamps were required to purchase - say - a picture? Then we would know how much money needed to be spent to generate that many stamps. ($1.00 = 10 stamps, X stamps = 1 picture/table/ bedspread = $ Y spent in the first place)
The Descriptions: The description of some parts are detailed, some are skimmed over.
I am sure there must have some sibling rivalry for the comment to have touched Aunt Ida so, yet we are not even given a glimpse into that. If the word count was not restrictive we could have digressed a little there, to add to the story. It lacked the feel of a story and seemed more a eulogy framed to highlight S&H stamps.
So instead of:
"As she ranted on, one of my uncles, her brother, interrupted her. With a chuckle he said, “Well now, Ida, you know you get just what you pay for!” Turning all shades of red, she whirled around and stalked away. We never heard another peep out of her about that vacation."
We could have:
Ant Ida was well into her rant, her voice reaching levels of supersonic indignation, when Uncle Joe, her brother, interrupted with a low chuckle. “Well now, Ida, you know you get just what you expect from people!” Turning all shades of red, she whirled around and glared at him with all the authority of two year's seniority in age.
"Remember that fly in your soup?" He chuckled louder and she attained the colour of a ripe beet, stalking out before the apoplectic fit overtook her.
After she went out he shared the joke with all of us; Aunt Ida had once raised ten kinds of hell in a restaurant insisting there was a fly in her soup. It was a small establishment, but spotlessly clean; the cook-cum-owner had come out to show her that it was just a bit of dried mushroom. "She has been a staunch believer in the worst-will-happen theory since childhood," he confided, with a wink.
This is just off the top of my head, it could be anything to show the characters to us as living breathing human beings. You can add anything on these lines or not, as you wish, it is but an example.
The Story as a Whole: Like I said, it does not read as a story to me. Where is the Problem? The Conflict? The Resolution? Maybe if the landlord had created some fuss about not providing better furniture, or if the old stuff had been pounced upon by the new tenants upon the first move?
Why was there a need to furnish from scratch? My daughter has little money to spare, but when she moved, she took a lot of stuff with her - there's always some odds and ends to spare! Or did you want all new stuff? Was there some need to have things that belonged to you, and only you? It seems pretty obvious that each move indicated a better financial status, why were the stamps still so much a necessity? Why not just move in with the old stuff and add more as money came in?
What I liked: It was something quite outside my experience, I like to learn. The problem was that, having learnt a little, there was much more that was unexplained. Still, it was unusual enough to retain my attention until the end.
Suggestions:
"Nearly all of the grocery stores, service stations and many of the small Mom & Pop establishments, from butcher shops to dry cleaners, sported swinging signs proclaiming, “We give S&H Green Stamps”, near their entrance." Rather than split the sentence like this, try rearranging it thus:
'Nearly all of the grocery stores, service stations and many of the small Mom & Pop establishments, from butcher shops to dry cleaners, sported swinging signs near their entrance, proclaiming: “We give S&H Green Stamps”.'
"One year my Aunt Ida decided she was going to save up the Stamps" Why is the word 'stamps' capitalised?
"It hadn’t looked nearly so depressing on my original, daytime walk-through - but a lease is a lease." I would have thought that it would have looked even worse in natural daylight. Perhaps you could mention that little natural light came in? No, wait, you'd have flipped on the light then? Maybe the light bulbs weren't working, or had been removed?
"I promptly ordered a couple of pictures for the barren walls," I am not a fervent advocate of the no adverbs school; however, I feel compelled to point out that they are not conducive to the most vivid depictions of action. Do you feel if you replaced that with a little 'showing', it might be better?
Like: "I let my fingers linger over the selected items, mentally picturing them in the flat. Those water stains needed prompt attention - I placed an order for two paintings as camouflage."
Of course, an adverb is sparing on words, if a restrictive word count exists, I could understand. This is 844 words - nowhere near 1000, the most likely ceiling beyond 750 words.
"With the purchase of the house I was again financially “strapped”, so the stamps again came to my rescue by helping me add more bookcases and even a steel-mesh table and chairs set for the small patio." Instead of long sentences and multiple conjunctions, why not have two or three shorter ones? Then there is no confusion as to comma placement either. The stamps coming to the rescue seems unnecessary, since the problem is already outlined. One can solve this by shortening the sentence thus:
'With the purchase of the house I was again financially “strapped”, the stamps transformed into more bookcases and a steel-mesh table and chairs set for the small patio.' Are you sure the word strapped requires inverted commas? 'financially strapped' is a common term.
Any comments are made as an individual opinion. Please sip what you find sweet and discard what you think is sour.
Jyo
 May your words go on to shine!
 Effort brings colour to Life
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You have already suggested that the locations are limited, there is no need for the qualifying 'however'. If you had been saying they were 'found almost everywhere, however the continent of Australia could not boast of of more than a few pockets of scattered animals.' That might make sense.
I am not quite familiar with the dialect, with its laconic vowel-free way of talking and a touch of the old English. Excellent title by the way, it gave this the feel of fable, almost.
