One of the best ways I’ve found to save money on this and that is to stop in the middle of any task – no matter how mundane – and ask myself if there were a way to do it cheaper.
But that’s boring.
So instead, I started asking myself how a pioneer would have handled this. If it doesn’t give me a burst of tremendous cost-cutting insight, it at least will give me a chuckle. Let’s see: how would a pioneer have solved the problem of movie storage with a curious infant in the house?
To get in the right frame of mind, first you have to imagine that you can’t run to the store. The store is something that happens once, maybe twice a year. Take the crops in, pick up a couple things, back home you come. And until next year – improvise.
So, what would the pioneers have done when they really wanted to finish mopping the playroom floor, but their Clorox Ready Mop was out of pads and cleaner? (Yes yes, they didn’t have Ready Mops, just work with the spirit of the thing here!)
Well, they’d have to just scrounge around for substitutes!
Hmm, well, let’s see. I’ve got paper towels and a spray bottle of cleaner…no! Wait! Hold the phone! I’ve got a plain cotton flat diaper, I can fold that around and tuck it in like a pad – it holds better in the hooks, has a ‘scrubbier’ surface, and it won’t tear up if I get a little crazy trying to get the apple juice up! And I’ve got some Lysol hard floor cleaner designed for the Floor Mate (which I’m not using because it is extremely noisy and it’s only 5:35 in the morning and I’d really rather not have all the Denizens downstairs rubbing their sleepy little eyes and saying, “Whatcha doin’, mommy? Can I have juice? Can I have cookies? Can I have cake? Chocolate? Juice? Mommy? Hey! Lookit! Puddles!!!! {jump splash jump splash}”), but I’ll bet if I just dilute it a bit with water in the empty Clorox bottle – viola! Saaaaaaaaaay, it works pretty good. And guess what? That cloth diaper is washable, and the $7 bottle of concentrated Lysol will refill that bottle at least fifty times, if not more. (And, it smells better than the Clorox stuff, IMHO.)
16 pads and a bottle of Clorox cleaner runs me $9 and will get me through about, oh, three weeks of cleaning. I’ve just saved myself $12 a month without giving up one whit of convenience. Hot dog!!
Good old pioneers. Still a source of inspiration in the modern world.
Now. On to the more pressing question: How would they have stored their DVDs…?
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2 comments:
I just want to know what kind of a sick mind puts "really want to mop the playroom floor" and "5:35 a.m." in the same set of thought.
I ask you.
Jan
sleeping at 5:35 a.m. unless someone's immediate urgent needs are not being met
I washed my kitchen floor with one of those Clorox moppers (with a dishtowl as a pad) and when I came back from vacation my floor was the filthiest I have ever seen it. I know my son had a party but he swears no one ran out and stomped in mud puddles before they came into the house. I believe that the cleaner in that thing leaves just enough film on the floor so that you have to clean them twice as often. Very clever of them......
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