Wanting a very minimal cart

Not having ANY luck with this component. I don't have a clue about ALL the different options that go with this shopping cart. So I am asking is there just a simple way to build my client's inventory so that a visitor can simply put items in the cart and the client receive a message that John Doe wants items X, Y and Z; without going through paypal or some other payment gateway?

I've built his inventory up to around 30 items, spent so much time on this, to have it not work for me.

Sure. Remove the "payment" view from the checkout workflow option of the Checkout tab of the configuration and that will do what you want.