Tightwad Tuesday

I'll continue in this vein, because it's on my mind.

As I'm thumbing through this tightwad book I keep mentioning, one theme seems to permeate many of its pages. It's a theme I've had at the forefront of my mind this week - and maybe you can relate. First, a little background into why this theme is so relevant to me...

I don't know when it started really, but I'll take a stab in the dark and guess it was probably college. I lived in dorms. I had very very little space, and even less money. I surmised that the things I would buy while in college wouldn't need to last me beyond college - and for the most part, I was right. I shopped primarily at Walmart for any non-food item I would need, and that was that.

Every piece of furniture I bought was made of particle board. Every electronic item (save my laptop) was bottom-of-the-line. Virtually everything I bought was cheap. I don't mean to say it was all inexpensive (although most of it was that, too) I mean it was cheap. You know, cheap quality.

Knowing in the very very back of my mind that these things were cheap, I had no expectation that they would last a really long time. And I treated them as such. Without my even knowing it, or paying attention, this way of buying followed me (or us, I should say) on into marriage and adulthood. After all, we've never really been "rolling in dough", so we've always tried to buy inexpensive things. And what did that leave us with? You got it: A collection of things that don't hold up to long-term use, and a long list of things that need replacing.

Which brings me to the theme running throughout the book I'm reading: Buy good quality things, and take excellent care of them.

For us, that means we are going to start saving to buy the higher quality choice within the category of items we're looking for. Why? because it will save us money in the long run. I need to get this idea of "temporary stuff" out of my cheap brain. Living frugally means so much more than spending less money - it means getting MORE for the money you spend.

Note that I did not say buying quality things means buying expensive things. Sometimes the higher quality item can be found used - which, in some cases, would still last longer than a lower-quality new item. Do you get where I'm going with this?

Note that I also mentioned taking good care of the high-quality things you buy. Taking impeccable care of a low quality item may actually be equivalent to, if not better than, taking poor care of a high quality item. I'll use one of my own possessions as an example...

Last year we bought a humidifier for Levi's room. It was a nice one - I got it at Walgreens. It was not top of the line, it was a generic, but I'd say it was a nice one. We used it every single night in Levi's room throughout the winter last year. Then what did we do? we left it in his room, full of water, all throughout the summer. Mold grew in it. I would look at it every-so-often and think "you know, I should really try to clean that", at which point I would decide that it would take too much time and effort. After all, it called for "distilled water", a requirement we never took seriously, and I figured I had probably ruined it long ago. And I had. In all honestly, it would have been better for us to have purchased a cheap humidifier, if we were going to ruin it. We would have saved some money.

This winter we purchased an equally nice humidifier with a filter. It does not require distilled water. Needless to say, I plan to care for this one very well. I intend for it to last us many winters. Speaking of winters, we are also considering the purchase of a snow-blower. As per our most recent "ah-ha", we plan to buy a nice one, with a good track record, and a good warrantee - and not settle for the cheapest workable option we can find. If it lasts, it will more than pay for itself in the time and energy necessary to remove snow from a long driveway and sidewalk year after year after year - or however long we're in Nebraska.

Please don't take this post as anything more than a reasonably-new-mother trying to get her thoughts out. If anything, I'm preaching to myself. Take from it what you want, but there's nothing I'm trying to convince you of. You don't need my convincing.

So, Your thoughts?