Okay, everybody…you know I don’t buy stuff. I usually encourage everyone else to stop buying stuff. I recommend that you don’t even look at stuff so that you aren’t tempted to buy it. Buying stuff generally wastes money, needs to be dusted and clutters up a house. Stuff is over-rated.
But…
You know I love jars. Jars are beautiful and jars are practical and jars get used at my house constantly. I’ve been given a countless number of canning jars and storage jars. I’ve found wonderful jars for pennies at yard sales. My house and my pantry are full of jars of all sizes.
But I don’t buy stuff, which is why I had such a struggle at the store the other day. I had Elias (9) and Malachi (6) with me at the time. We were in the “canning aisle” looking for some more of those nice plastic lids for my wide mouth jars, which unfortunately, they didn’t have. I was backing out of the aisle when on the top shelf I saw a wonderfully, incredibly cute and fantastically huge jar. It was thick and sturdy and it said “Ball” on it and I fell in love.
But I’m a person who doesn’t buy stuff.
So I kept backing out of the aisle, and the boys followed me. And then I felt myself magnetized back into the canning aisle, and before I knew it, instead of going in reverse, I was moving forward. Suddenly, I was holding the jar, examining it closely. The boys were quite bored with the whole situation, until I exclaimed something like, “think of the cookies we could put in this thing!” and then they also liked the jar.
I didn’t really need any more jars, and I don’t buy stuff…so I put the jar back on the shelf (I may have hugged it first), and then I backed out of the aisle and walked away.
We went to the produce section and picked up a few things we needed (and now I’m just rambling) but in the produce section we found these adorable, little bananas. I’d never seen such tiny bananas before and the boys thought they were the coolest bananas ever. They were only 97¢ for the whole bunch, so we decided to grab them for a snack.
Now we were ready to check out, but I couldn’t stop thinking about that jar. In my head, the jar was already in my kitchen, filled with delicious treats for my family…or filled with rice or beans and looking cute on top of my fridge…or filled with a nice batch of Limeade with floating ice cubes and lemon and lime slices…
Somehow, for the third time in fifteen minutes, we ended up back in the canning aisle. (Elias and Malachi are great sports…and are also quite used to having a weird mom.)
I made a decision. I was going to splurge and buy that jar. It was $10.47 for Pete’s Sake, which was an excellent price for such a nice jar. It’s not like I was going to be taking the meat and vegetables out of my children’s mouths so that I could “support my habit”.
I put the beautiful jar into my cart, stepping all over myself as I began to launch into a long, yet eloquent lecture to the boys about how we don’t normally just see something at the store and decide to buy it “just because we like it” or even if we love it, because that’s how money gets thrown away and we really want to be careful with money and not wasteful…
And everything I said was totally sinking into their sponge-like brains, I’m sure.
Then Elias interrupted to say, “But Mom…at least this is something you’re really going to use a lot.”
Maybe he was still thinking about the cookies I was going to put into the jar…but yes, he was right. I’m really going to use this little (big) splurge of a jar. Oh look…I already am.
See, isn’t it beautiful? (It’s okay with me if you don’t think so. I love my jar.)
(And you can’t have it.) ;)
If you didn’t already know that I am weird and obsessed about jars, now you know. And now you also know how hard it is for me to spend money on things that aren’t food or socks. Shucks, who am I kidding?
I have a terrible time making myself buy new socks.
:)
What’s your obsession? Do you love jars? Do you drag your children back to specific aisles at the store so that you can hug things? Do you struggle to spend money on socks?
