I did something last week that was so far outside my comfort zone that I could barely bring myself to unclench my hand to do it. All my life I've tried to avoid it. I had spent months looking at the elements, trying to figure another way out. It was something I had never done before in my whole life, no matter what the circumstances: I threw out those little pieces of soap that are left when you use the bar up till you can't hold onto the nub any more.
There were about five of them sitting around the soap caddy in the shower. They just stayed there, taunting me. In the past I have always been able to mush them onto the new bar of soap, or use them until I could barely see them and the last sliver the size of an almond slice fell down the drain. Something is different about the Dove soap these days. I don't know if it is harder, or shaped infinitesimally differently, or what, but try as I might, I couldn't get the old chunk to stay on the new one. Then the new one would get used up, the old piece was still in the dish and then there was a new new one and it would start again. Before you knew it, there was a whole litter of those little suckers and something had to be done.
It took me almost a month to get up the courage, although I had been toying with the idea for quite some time. And then....I just grabbed them and tossed them. It was very, very hard. I can't quit thinking about them.
"I've been rich and I've been poor and rich is better." Mae West said that first but I can relate. Not that I've really been either, but let's say that I've been richer than I am now, and poorer too. It doesn't matter how "rich" I was, I still could never give in to wasting something. You know those pump bottles of hand cream? When you can't get any more out you can take a kitchen knife, cut around the bottle about a third of the way up from the bottom and there is still an inch, maybe more, of good cream in there. Same thing with liquid dishwasher soap. Don't believe my kids if they tell you I take the toothpaste tube to the garage and run the car over it to get the last little bit from the tube, but I am a pretty strong squeezer!
Here's one I bet you didn't know. The straws from Quick Trip can be cut in half to a size to use for kids' cups (bring them home when they give them to you at Olive Garden or wherever) and they then fit in the dishwasher on the prongs of the top rack and you can just keep on re-using them. And, of course, I always take my cups back to QT for refills. (They go in the dishwasher too.) You save a dime on your next drink.
My mom used to go to the Goodwill that was on the street behind our high school while she waited for me to come out sometimes and I thought I would just DIE. "Don't tell anybody you're my mother!" Now some (most) of my favorite clothes are from Goodwill. I do draw the line at re-using aluminum foil or washing zip lock bags to re-use. My mom did that. Come to think of it, she cut up the plastic bags from the cleaners and used it instead of Saran wrap for wrapping leftovers. There are levels to which I won't stoop. But I do re-use stuff. What used to be pickle jars now hold home-made strawberry jam (Yes! I washed them.) and those plastic bags from Wal-Mart line my trash cans. There are Christmas gift bags here that have gone back and forth between Robyn and me that are older than the grandkids.
Okay, so I'm cheap. I admit it. But, guess what! If you live long enough things tend to come around. When I re-use stuff now it's called "Re-purposing." When I use real plates instead of disposable ones and cloth napkins instead of paper ones (no, paper towels are NOT napkins, that's just tacky) it is "Gracious Living". And not wasting gas by letting the car idle while I'm just sitting forever in the drive-through, or especially if I am already home and gathering up my stuff or talking on the phone is "Environmentally Friendly."
Now, if I could just think of a way to re-cycle some of this extra weight I'm carrying around...
P.S. Just so you know, I couldn't stand it. I dragged the soap pieces out of the trash, soaked them in a bowl of water until they were about the consistency of cookie dough, wrapped the dough around the new bar and now it is good and stuck and it's like the large bar instead of the medium. You suspected it all along, didn't you?
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