Flourish in Progress

Every Monday, I’m picking from the List of Things to Try, Places to Go, Possible Acts that Help and Possible Fun to Have. It’s a list I made before The Project started and I’m still adding to it. If you have suggestions, please, feel free to throw them my way. I’m calling the list my Monday Dares, as I get overwhelmed just looking at the words “challenge” or “goal.”

This week: I will leave other people’s junk valuable possessions alone.

By other people, I mean my family.

By alone, I mean I will no longer throw away anything when they are not at home.

I will practice honesty and integrity with my family.

By honesty and integrity, I mean I will now wait until they get home and badger the life out of them until they either donate or throw away the offending item.

Are hole-y socks more comfortable?

Is underwear with crispy elastic easier to wear? What’s crispy elastic? Please don’t feign ignorance. You’ve never held on to a pair of socks or ratty underwear so long that the rubber loses all malleability and when you stretch it, it makes an actual creaking noise and then it just stayed stretched?

I don’t want to single anyone out, but someone I live with in my home, who is not a 10-year-old girl and to whom I share a marriage bed, owns a pair of charcoal gray slacks that are so worn, the dry cleaner calls every time we drop them off to verify that we do, indeed, want them cleaned.

I will no longer stuff the slacks in the bottom of our give-away bag and pretend not to know anything when  this someone asks where they are with a little glint of suspicion in his eyes.

I will no longer throw away my family’s hole-y socks with the crispy elastic, only to be met with complaints and accusations that my biggest satisfaction in life is to throw their stuff away. They will learn on their own how uncomfortable it is to wrestle a sock that falls just a centimeter with each step, eventually bunching up inside the shoe, causing the wearer to stop, pull the sock up and repeat the process 87 seconds later.

When they come to their senses, I’ll be waiting on my pedestal where I should have been all along…with a garbage bag in my hand.

photo via jcrew.com

No one has ever verbally confirmed it, but I’m pretty sure I’m a genius.

Shortly after Harv and I started dating, he confessed that he had never used a coupon. Actually, confessed may be the wrong word…too repentant. Harv proudly declared that he would never be a victim in The Coupon Scam.

I took a few days to mull over our relationship.

Negative: This man threw away pennies and refused to clip coupons.

Positive: He was patient, loving, kind, intelligent, diligent, confident, generous, honest, handsome, understanding, empathetic, modest, funny, sincere, thoughtful, proactive, insightful, forgiving, attentive, romantic, an excellent cook, amenable to housework, not controlling, not prone to jealousy and understanding of girl time.

No side was the clear winner. Obviously, I had a lot to think about.

Undeterred by his lack of interest in saving hundreds and hundreds of cents, I secretly formulated a plan. For a whole week, I studiously clipped coupons from newspapers and scouted the internet for money-saving deals. I tracked my savings in a little notebook and circled my discounts on all the receipts for added emphasis.

At the end of the week, I smugly revealed my secret, weeklong experiment. I laid out all the receipts and calculated our total savings. I even modeled a beautiful pair of shoes I purchased with the money we would have spent had I not been so diligent and thrifty. Surely, he would see the merit in coupon clipping now.

Genius. Pure genius.

He looked over the receipts and then gently took my hand between his.

“It’s pretty amazing that you saved almost $45 this week using coupons.
You were right. I was wrong.
But the shoes cost $300. That’s not saving money.
That’s Lizanomics.”

It’s a shame my listening skills only picked up

“It’s pretty amazing that you saved almost $45 this week using coupons.
You were right. I was wrong.
The savings paid for the shoes!
That’s Lizanomics!

When smart people comment:
I’m just sorry that Harv is so bad with math. -Jenny, the Bloggess

In shoe money, $300 and $45 are pretty much the same thing.
Lizanomics is awesome. -Dana