I have never used Bitcoin directly to pay for anything, but I have used it to buy gift cards. I make use of the BitPay wallet and it has always been my means of spending my Bitcoins whenever I want.. I ordered for their Visa card last year and I have been using it, it's really cool, except for the fees. But, they don't charge any fees when you want to convert your Bitcoin to dollars.
There are lots of gift cards that you can buy from the BitPay wallet, so instead of withdrawing my Bitcoins I can simply just buy the gift card I need, whether Amazon, Delta, XBox or any gift card, and I can then spend it on the platform on whatever I want. That's really one of the coolest things about Bitcoin right now. I have also done face to face transaction with a local Bitcoin exchanger, and have him make fiat payment to my bank account. Using Bitcoin is really cool.
Not bad but we need to begin to try to push people to accept bitcoin transactions directly, all of those methods to convert your bitcoin to fiat first are decreasing the effectiveness of bitcoin as a currency.
But I understand you, there are not many options at the moment where to spend our bitcoin and it is difficult to have your money there knowing that you could use it for something that you need and realize that there is not a store that accepts bitcoin as payment for what you want.