I'll Save it for the Next Time

Did you ever get the feeling that you buy some things just so you can throw them away? I guess I have a short memory, because it seems like the same things get thrown out almost every time I buy them.

Fresh herbs. That’s number one on the list. We’ll pick out a recipe that absolutely has to have three or four different fresh herbs, but only a sprig or two of each is needed. Then six weeks later, I look in the refrigerator drawer and there are those little plastic boxes with a few withered and moldy remnants of the herbs we just had to have for that recipe that wasn’t nearly as tasty as it looked in the cook book.

Another item is lemon juice. No matter if I buy one of those little yellow, lemon-shaped containers or a big bottle, at least 90% has to be thrown out when it turns brown and rancid. And of course, then I have to make a special trip to Wal-Mart to get another container of lemon juice...so it too can die a slow death in the refrigerator. Ditto for Louisiana hot sauce. Use a dab…store it on the shelf for a few months…throw it out…buy another bottle. The cycle never ends.

Then there are apples. With good intentions of improving our diets by eating more fresh fruit, I buy a half-dozen apples. We eat one or two, but the rest always remain in the drawer until they look like one of those wrinkly-faced granny dolls you see in the craft magazines.

Oranges are nearly as bad. I buy two, and they're as sweet as honey, so I buy several more from the same bin. Naturally, they are as sour as persimmons, which means those that are left are banished to the back of the drawer to shrivel up until the next refrigerator purge banishes them to the compost pile.

In the non-food category it’s paint. No matter which project I buy paint for, I always have too much left over to throw away, so it winds up on the shelf with a dozen other cans. However, the day always arrives when I need a little bit of that exact color I saved. I’m so brilliant and frugal! Then I open the gallon can and find a quart of rubberized paint, flecked with rust.

I can’t forget nails either. I’ll buy a pound of bright finish nails and use half of them. Instead of just throwing the rest away at the time, I store them in one of my little plastic bins for a few months, and when rust has finally taken over completely, I throw out the nails and now I get to clean rust stains from the plastic drawer.

There are many more things I could add to the list, but I don’t want to embarrass myself any more than I already have.