Light Comes in Many Colors

The Joys of Being a Tightwad

I had a wee moment of joy this a.m. when I started a load of clothes.

A little background. I am a tightwad. I enjoy good food, nice clothes, a comfortable life. My standard of living is probably several steps above our income level, though, because I am a tightwad. I want my good food, nice clothes, etc., at a much lower cost than society in general seems to be satisfied paying, and so I make it so by various means.

That's being a tightwad. I am not a miser, I spend freely, just always with an eye to the biggest bang for my buck. That doesn't mean "settling for" lower quality in anything that I deem a "quality of life" purchase.

I recycle. No, not send stuff off for others to recycle. Example: I was watching a DVD of an old Bob Hope/Bing Crosby movie the other day. While doing so, I was sitting on the floor with my grandfather's mini-anvil (made, appropriately enough, from a scrap of railroad steel :-), straightening nails taken from a bunch of lumber scraps discarded from a neighbor's demolition project.

Pure pleasure. Recycling used nails (which I could have purchased for pennies... pennies I now have for other things) while watching an old movie. At the end, a slightly sore wrist from wielding a 2# machinist's hammer (some of the nails were concrete nails), a bag of mixed nails I can use in projects recycling the discarded lumber scraps and a sense of satisfaction that I had not wasted the time enjoying the movie by simply slumping on the couch.

That's being a tightwad.

And then there was the tightwad's joy I experienced this a.m. when I started a load of clothes. Because I use a laundry soap that is rather special, it has a higher price per purchase than equivalent volumes of store brand laundry detergents. Not to worry. It's per use cost at the manufacturer's recommended usage is lower than store brand detergents. But being the tightwad that I am, by experimentation I have discovered that in our machine and with our water, we can get our clothes clean using half the recommended amounts. And its more effective formulation allows us to wash almost all our washloads on the washer's "delicate" setting, which uses less energy, is less wearing on the machine, is less wearing on the clothes themselves, etc.

Now, do you understand my smile when I do laundry? I get to have clean clothes, clothes that will last longer because of less stressful washings, using a less expensive (per use) cleaning agent, all the while lessening wear and tear on an expensive appliance and using less electricity to boot.

A tightwad's joy. All from making the choice to use one product that is more expensive per unit amount, while keeping an eye on the total picture regarding that price. Cost in many ways is less. For an end resut of a higher quality of life. (Now you know why I have virtually taken over doing laundry: it's a pleasure. A lil grin each time I do it. :-)

And so it goes. A bread machine, you say? What an extravagance! Well, consider just the cost of buying pizza versus making your own. In just that one example, one can save enough in a year to buy two bread machines...

Being a tightwad is such a joy.

Spreading the light of tightwaddery...

:-)