I am reporting on two money things that have made me happy over the last couple of days.
1. I'm buying a new refrigerator!
OK, that doesn't sound like a money-saver, it's true. But my fridge has been old and leaky for a LONG while, and I have been meaning to buy one. It is last on a list I've had since I bought my condo of Big-Ticket Items I Need And/Or Want. This list has included: a new bathroom (that was the biggest ticket), a rug for the living room (done), bedroom furniture (bed, bureau, matching bookshelves -- all done), bedroom rug (done), tapestry thing to hang behind bed so I don't wake up in the night worrying that the heavy frame above my bed is going to fall on me -- neuroses, I has them (done), new electrical (not done, but if I ever have money again that will likely be the next big thing I tackle), kitchen island and chairs ('STOOOOOOORRRRP) (done), new stove (someday, maybe, but mostly what I want is a range hood, and I think what I really need to do is look into getting my kitchen entirely redone, and that is not going to happen right now, so the 'Storp will do very nicely for the moment).
The fridge became more urgent recently because my neighbor told me there was a bit of water coming through her ceiling. This may be because of how the last person who owned my place INEXPLICABLY WALLED IN THE PORCH to make A LARGE BUT OTHERWISE USELESS CLOSET (no electricity, no insulation). I know closets are great, but I happen to have plenty of them (that's what comes of living on the third floor where the edges of all your rooms are sloped in such a way as to be largely useless as living space), and I would SO rather have a porch. Where the porch used to be, on the outside of the house, there is a square, the size of the porch, that's set in about six inches. Like, they filled in the porch but didn't make the wall flush with the rest of the house. Why? I don't know.
Anyway, this weird ineptly constructed corner area might be the source of the water. OR, it might be my fridge. Because, you see, my fridge leaks water, and has since I got the place. Not all the time, but often. This has worried me for a long time, yet I have continually put off buying a fridge. Because the water will stop, or because I need to clean it out and haven't done it, or because I need to measure doorways, or because buying a fridge is boring and buying bedroom furniture is fun. Now, of course, getting a new fridge has risen in importance. But my lack of money has also risen in importance.
Enter the Best Buy e-mail circular, which happened to be promoting a 30% off sale on a fridge that I had looked at before (the regular freezer-on-top kind -- I'm not messing around with your fancy unconventional fridges), that was cheap already, that had reversible doors, and that will fit through the doorway, which I measured a few months ago when I was half-assedly planning to get a fridge then. Thus I am able to get a fridge that I had already looked at and basically decided I wanted, for $370 instead of $599. This did not seem as if it was likely to get any better, so I went for it. So I'll have one more heavy credit-card month. BUT it needed to be gotten, I'm satisfied that I got a sweet deal (it was another $70 for delivery, but I'd call that well worth it, especially since they'll take the old one away), and after this I will stop worrying about the fridge leaking, and if the neighbor still has water in the ceiling at least I'll know it isn't that and is probably the $%#*ing porch/closet.
2. Yes, 2! This is a list! I had a 1 up there. Remember? That was like nine paragraphs ago. 2 is, I have wholeheartedly committed to a lifestyle in which I had merely dabbled in the past. This lifestyle is a lifestyle of SANDWICHES.
You see, I really QUITE enjoy a nice lunchmeat sandwich. Meat, cheese, mustard and a couple of tomato slices and I am very happy. I could eat that quite a lot. Yet I don't eat it very often, and mostly that's because I am a complete spaz about having any more than one or two of the hypothetically required number of perishable ingredients for anything on hand at any given time. Sometimes I'll buy lunchmeat, but I won't have any bread, or the bread will be stale even though it's in the freezer (this is utterly unfair because everyone knows that the freezer stops time), or I'll have bought whole wheat bread out of guilt but it's too gross and I don't want it, or the bread pieces are too small and hence the sandwich is too small, or the cheese will be moldy, or the mustard will be old, or I won't have any tomatoes. Occasionally I think "I should take a sandwich to work once in a while," but I never get it together to make one.
I know this makes me sound like the most pathetically lame person ON EARTH, and I can't really disagree. It's not that I'm incapable of making a sandwich. It's that I'm usually too disorganized to complete all the steps necessary prior to making the sandwich, and then remember to actually make it before I go to bed, or alternatively get up in time to make it, and then remember to bring it to work, and then not abandon it in favor of a burrito bowl or something. And even if I do bring it, I'm always worried that I'll still be hungry, because I have some sort of deep-seated caveman fear of not having enough to eat at lunch.
So yesterday at the store I bought:
- three kinds of lunchmeat (ham, roast beef, salami)
- provolone (a HUGE THING of provolone -- 44 slices -- which was $10 but was a WAY better deal than 8 slices for $3.99)
- two sliceable tomatoes
- some whole wheat, but not gross, and generously sized, bread
- some green bananas that will not be all brown and gross in a day and a half
- some pretzel chips
I plan to do this every day, or nearly. And I know this is like, halfway-house levels of sad self-sufficiency, but I'm proud of myself. It's not that I learned to make a sandwich, it's that I learned to be happy with a sandwich.
My alternate sandwich is going to be peanut butter and banana. Because this is the best sandwich of all time, and yet I hardly ever make it because I never have any bananas. Now I plan to outfit myself with a steady supply of bananas, so I will have one on hand when I need one. I will also have bread, and I will lay out a bit more cash for some peanut butter that is less than three years old, and then the magic will happen.
I spent way more money at the grocery store than I wanted to. But with any luck, it will provide me with like, a month of lunches.
Baaaaaaby steeeeeeps.
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