2.4.15

Have you ever been lectured at the grocery store? Not by a family member, I mean, but by a total stranger? A year or two or three ago, I saw these "pods" for the first time. 

I reached over my cart for a package and I was considering the cost, convenience, environmental impact. I had just about made up my mind that I could continue as I had long been used to; hefting the heavy container off the shelf, guessing where the line might be in the cap so I don't over detergent the wash, pouring it out over the wash, then digging around to find my glasses among the soiled and now damp and detergent coated laundry. 

I wear reading glasses--cheaters--most usually on top of my head unless I have to read something up close or look at where the line in the detergent cap might be. When doing the laundry, my glasses invariably fall off either into the wash or in that narrow space between the washer and dryer where they take a bounce and head for the back wall.

"That's what's wrong with people today," barked a gentleman trundling his cart from up the aisle closer to my cart, "always looking for the easy way." 

I instantly imagined his wife beating his shirts and jeans against a rock, just as his grandmother did for his grandfather. I imagined I knew a lot of the important points of his personality. I imagined I knew his political leaning. I imagined I knew what "news-er-tainment" channel he watched. I imagined I knew what he had for breakfast: eggs his wife gathered from chickens she had raised, butter from the cow she milked, bread she baked after kneading it herself, and bacon from the pig she slaughtered in the back yard.

"You may be right," I answered sweetly. (I HAVE learned a thing or two from my parents.) 

I had been planning to put the package back on the shelf, but instead I put it in the cart and grabbed another. (No one has managed to beat the rebelliousness out of me. Or the sarcasm.)

Later, I returned to the detergent aisle and exchanged my "easy way" pods for the detergent I usually buy, after making sure my self-appointed mentor was not around.

That was a few years ago. Now I use those pods every week. Not only that, I bought the same type of product for my dishwasher. 

I found out that my laundry pods cost one cent more per load than the large container of liquid (which I cannot lift), and two cents more per load than the size container I CAN lift. 

I am living dangerously. I spend $.04 more a week on convenience. That is $2.08 more a year.