Tuesday, December 1, 2009

I Feel Like a New Man

Every now and then I end up folding laundry. (I have a kick ass wife who usually does it for me - stay at home Mom's are the shiz, fo sho.) But when I find myself folding laundry, particularly socks, I'm confronted with an unfortunate state of nature.

Very seldom do all my socks wear out at once. There's the one pair that's been tucked away at the bottom of my drawer, so it never leaves the queue... it's pristine, like it's just from the package. Then there's the others in varying states of wear. When I find one with a hole or an irreparable stain, I throw it out. Eventually, I start running low on socks, so I have to go buy some.

But I'm kinda cheap when it comes to my socks, so I usually just get whatever's on sale at Wal-Mart. The end result, then, is that I have a drawer full of similar-but-not-quite-identical athletic socks. Pretty much all white, low-cut types. This isn't really a problem, except that it's a pain in the arse to find a matching pair when you're folding the laundry. Who wants to spend 10 minutes rifling through the hamper trying to play mix-and-match?

So this week I made an executive decision: I threw out every pair of athletic and black dress socks I owned, and replaced them en masse with new ones.

It's amazing how such a little thing could bring so much joy... but it's got me thinking - are there other hidden areas of life where I apply the same logic? Do I spin my wheels on things of little or no significance in the name of saving a couple of dollars?

For instance, do I spend an extra ten minutes and five miles of driving to get to the "cheap" gas station? Is it really worth it for the net $0.50 savings? Not remotely... I think a future experiment could be brewing somewhere in all of this, but I need to percolate on it a while first.

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