We hit a significant milestone in the house not long ago. We ran out of tinfoil.
Now, you ask, what the heck kind of a milestone is that?
Well, it is in the sense that we have not run out of tinfoil for the past 10 years. That is to say, in terms of the same roll of tinfoil...
I’ve run out of time. I’ve run out of patience. I’ve run out of sunny optimism. I’ve even run out of things to say.
But I’ve never run out of tinfoil.
That’s because we had more tinfoil than patience, time, optimism, and most everything else – thanks to a big box warehouse store that sells massive quantities of everyday stuff.
My wife – generally a minimalist in most respects – ventured in there about a decade ago, and was overcome by the bigness of it all. She temporarily lost her mind.
She came home with enormous quantities of dish soap, toilet paper, canned mushroom soup, shampoo, and one immense roll of tinfoil.
That thing was at least two feet wide, and long enough to ... well, last 10 years.
There was enough tinfoil on that tube to make protective anti-alien-ray hats for 500 whackos.
Instead, it wrapped 500 roast chickens and barbecued salmon.
And thus, a long legacy came to an end (puns intended).
I’m not big on mega-quantity purchasing. That’s not too surprising, I suppose, considering our small family of three.
Oh, I get the cost savings attraction. A box of Cheerios the size of a Smart Car is cheaper than 20 normal boxes of Cheerios. And a whole lot less packaging, too. That’s definitely a good thing.
But then there you are, a small family stuck with all that cereal.
Or that 45-gallon drum of shampoo. Now you have to use it every morning of every day, for as long as it takes to use it all up.
I like variety. Who wants to see and smell the same shampoo for 1,295 days?
It’s sort of like eating the same thing for dinner for months on end.
Which is something you can also do if you buy an entire skid of Can ‘o’ Goo pasta.
That only makes sense if you’re feeding an army of children with undeveloped tastebuds.
And there it is – mega-sized purchasing does work for mega-sized families.
But it doesn’t explain the stationery supplies.
Who could possibly need 36 (plus one more as a bonus!) ballpoint pens?
For that matter, who uses pens anymore? Certainly not for writing letters!
Grocery lists, maybe. Imagine how many grocery lists you could write with 36 ballpoint pens.
But if you shop at the mega-warehouse, then you probably only do a half-dozen grocery lists a year, since you buy enough supplies in one go to last two months.
Maybe it’s just me. I like going shopping every weekend, poking around the aisles, buying the bits and pieces I need ... or don’t need.
And if I don’t need them, why would I want 24 of the same thing?
I think this part of the world has become a bit obsessed with the “bigger and more is better” concept.
We’ve become so acquainted with excess that it doesn’t even seem excessive any longer. In fact, we welcome opportunities to super-size the excess.
A visit to a Third World country would do us all good.
I am going to miss that big old roll of tinfoil, though.
I never did get around to making myself a protective anti-alien-ray hat.