Are cutoff rules efficient?

We were at Mount Vernon yesterday and K1 wanted to buy something from the gift shop. I set a limit of $5 and rather quickly found out that there was very little that she wanted that was under $5. She was determined however, and in the end she did find something for herself and K2. As for myself, we spent a lot more time in the gift shop than I would have liked and wondered to myself if I should have set a higher limit. In any case, if I did set a higher limit I would have had all kinds of conditions attached to it e.g. no more stuffed animals, nothing breakable, etc. There were more things in the gift shop that I did not want than I would have been able to address with various conditions a priori, so in the end, yes, I think the cutoff rule was efficient although we were in there an awful long time.