Thursday, April 5, 2012

Frugality? Or incipient hoarding?

I have mentioned before that I tend to stockpile stuff. Like food, because who knows when I'll be able to get to the 7 [SEVEN!] grocery stores/markets within 2 miles of my house [how do they all stay in business? Is it my bulk shopping? Seriously? SEVEN?] when I am in danger of running out of beans [Note: I will never run out of beans, because I keep buying both cans and bags of dried beans because I keep thinking, "You know what would be great? Bean soup!" and then I never make bean soup.].

The corollary to this is that I tend to try and get all the use out of something before I get rid of it.  Well, not everything, because I am perfectly o.k. with having thrown away Ziploc bags without reusing them [sometimes] and deciding that once is enough times to use plastic utensils from a party [always].

But the things I do tend to try and get my money's worth from are lotions.  I get super, ridiculously dry skin / eczema some winters and I have pretty sensitive skin all the time, so I end up paying a lot for lotion.  Which is actually a bargain, because there is no price to high for non-itchy, non-peeling skin. 

Of course, you can never get that last bit of lotion out of the tube, so I end up with almost completely empty containers of hand and body lotions, jeering at me with their wastefulness before I relent and set them aside to . . . use later? I don't know what my plan is, exactly, as I can't get the lotion out without cutting open the container, and I do not have that kind of time [I could be on Twitter, instead]. 

Today? I discovered 5 almost completely empty lotion containers under the sink.  Five.  Containers that I keep telling myself I'll somehow, magically, miraculously open so the tiny droplets of lotion left will be made available for my use.

So I shut the vanity door and walked away, vowing to deal with it . . . later.  Because that's just too much crazy to deal with all at once.

Do you keep stuff you know you shouldn't? I'm not the only one, am I?

22 comments:

  1. Girl, I totally cut open the lotion. That shit is expensive! In fact, I pretty much exclusively buy the kind that comes in a soft tube so that I can cut it in half and scoop what is left (which is a quarter of it!!) out of the bottom. Then you just put the halves back together to cover up the unused portion adn keep it fresh for days while you use it up.
    To summarize, you are not the only freak out there. Lucky for me all of this "being green" stuff is popluar so I can use it to seem cool and green instead of cheap and crazy.

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  2. Hahahha. Coughcoughhoardercoughcough. :P

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  3. I am like that with lube and ketchup (don't tease me). Our lube is $30 a bottle, and at the end I turn it upside down for a few days. It works like a charm

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  4. On MY Move we have a great infographic to help you decide if you're a hoarder, just a collector or what. http://www.mymove.com/blog/infographic:-are-you-a-hoarder?/?blogId=730069

    We all have hoarding tendencies. At the moment I have 3 old kitchen tables in my basement, because who knows when I might have 3 kitchens.

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  5. I sympathize with your bean problem. When I moved, I had a total of 16 bags of various types of dried beans in my cabinet. It was hard, but I threw them away. Those things might have been several years old... there is no way I'd have made bean soup from ancient beans!

    I'm still not sure what possessed me to purchase & hold on to them in the first place. Probably the same mania that causes me to refuse to throw away clothes that either don't fit or are damaged in some way. I might need those buttonless jeans someday, dammit!

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  6. I was just getting laughed at yesterday at work because I kept trying to get lotion out of nearly empty bottles and lip gloss out of empty tubes. I finally started throwing stuff away. Sweet release.

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  7. I think I would vacillate wildly between hoarding and complete austerity if left to my own devices. But my borderline-OCD husband would not tolerate it. So his borderline-OCD ramps up my borderline-OCD and we basically throw out everything or give it away before it hits the floor or the closet.

    But just let him try to touch my shoe collection. Then all bets are off.

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  8. The upside down bottle of almost-gone lotion on my dresser salutes you.

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  9. I have the worst dry itchy skin all winter long. It makes me miserable. I can't wait for the warmth to return. Then I start to less resemble a lizard. I don't use lotion anymore. I make a mixture of shea butter, cocoa butter and coconut oil. It works better than lotion.

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  10. Here's what I think: you should just take all of your tubes of almost empty lotions, hot glue them on a styrofoam wreath in a artsy-fartsy manner, hang it your front door, take a picture, and then post it on Pinterest.

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  11. flip it and then squeeze them all into a witch's cauldron to discover the eternal fountain of youth.

    also - the best lotion i've used for dry skin is not that expensive. it's called Cerve and you can get it at the drugstore. the best.

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  12. I'm not a saver. I'm a throw shit outer. Lotion though, is expensive, which is why I buy cream in a tub. Which is not a community product for those dirty assholes I live with so in that sense I am a hoarder.

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  13. I decided to feng shui the cabinet under my bathroom sink, where lotions and expired Tylenol goes to die. When I was done, I had a hefty bag stuffed with crap (i.e. Advil from '04) and I'm not gonna lie, it felt great. Get in there and throw it out...it'll feel good...I promise (and if it doesn't, I owe you some L'Occitane).

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    1. oh! I'm on the verge of doing that too!!! It's a terrible place under there!

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  14. I know why you keep those containers of lotion. It's the same reason I keep that last, barely squeezable BLOP of sensitive toothpaste: IN CASE I RUN OUT. Of course, this makes no sense, but yet, it does, right????

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  15. I am doing some spring cleaning now and getting rid of stuff I should have let go a long time ago.

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  16. I have taken a razor blade to a toothpaste tube before- NO shame in it at all Mamma!

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  17. I have a HUGE supply of beans, but not because I plan to not make soup. Some day the world is going to end and my family is going to be the only one to survive because I had enough forethought to stock up. I actually delved into my stockpile and made a pot of mixed beans a few days ago, and felt guilty!

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  18. In the last few years I have learned to throw those kinds of things away but mind you it has been a slow and painful process. As far as hand lotions go Neutrogena Norwegian Formula is my jam. My hands were nightmarishly dry and cracking at the knuckles before, mostly because I am a lunatic who washes his hands twelve to twenty times a day. But stuff made them 100% better.

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  19. Whatever you do, don't look under my bathroom sink..

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  20. I used to have that same problem with left over lotion in tubes and pump bottles. Now I only by lotions that are in jars.

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  21. I've reached the point with my current bottle of lotion that I have to unscrew the cap and wipe the tube attached to the pump directly on my face. This makes me feel closer to you.

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Every time you comment, I get a lady boner.