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Jun 17, 2008    |       26 comments

Do We Really Need All of Those Gadgets?

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On my post about the slicer/dicer yesterday, MeganM left a comment:

I think 99% of gadget-type purchases can be eliminated. No one needs a slicer when a plain old knife will do just fine for sandwich meat.

I think MeganM is absolutely right. I’m mentally going through my kitchen right now and we have a cute little frog cheese slicer. I remember buying that on clearance because I thought it was cute. Too bad it’s so small that it isn’t big enough to slice most blocks of cheese. Then there’s the chicken egg slicer. It was cute, and I thought we needed an egg slicer. I use it a few times a year, but a fork worked well in the past. We didn’t really need it.

Let’s not even start talking about gadget appliances. We have a waffle maker. I think we’ve used it twice in the three years we’ve had it. Oh, and the sandwich maker? We barely use that thing as well. I could go on for a while with the other things we have purchased throughout our life that could be considered gadgets.

We didn’t really need them. We barely use them!

It’s funny…at the time, we thought these gadgets would be great things to have. We’ll use them all the time! You can do so much with them! They’ll make life so much easier! Not really. They just ended up costing us money that we really didn’t need to spend.

At our last garage sale, I tried to get rid of a few of the gadgets we had and they didn’t sell even though the price was dirt cheap. I guess that should say something LOL 😛

What about you? Have any gadgets that are collecting dust?

Jun 15, 2008    |       22 comments

A Walmart Cashier Saved Me From an Impulse Buy

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There is one area of my spending that I need to keep an eye on – impulse buying. For the most part, I’ve done well with keeping it bay. However, here are certain instances where money doesn’t matter. I had such an episode last weekend.

With my husband going to the doctors and being told to change his diet (less sodium), I overreacted a bit. I see that now in hindsight. We hopped in the car and headed to Walmart. The main goal of the trip was to purchase healthier food. We went up and down the aisles, looking at the nutrition labels. Both my husband and I couldn’t believe how much sodium was in many of the foods that we regularly eat. Polish kielbasa? I don’t even remember what it said. All I know is that I dropped it out of my hand so fast you would have thought it was on fire.

I had a similar reaction to quite a few products. We love sandwiches and when we made it to the lunch meat section I was shocked. I think I looked at every brand they had and all of them were loaded with sodium. Then the light bulb went off in my head. We’ll cook our own meat and slice it. That will definitely be healthier for us than the processed meat.

After we finished in the grocery section, we headed over to the kitchen appliance section and looked for a slicer. No such luck. I did end up finding a small tool that claimed to slice things as well as create wonderful french fries (a slicer/dicer). I plopped it into our cart and we headed to the checkout.

Our cashier was friendly and started ringing up our groceries. She picked up the slicer/dicer tool and looked me straight in the eyes. She paused just a bit before speaking.

“I have to be honest with you,” she said. “This is a horrible product. It says it makes fries but it makes mush. I used to have one and it was awful.”

I thanked the cashier for giving me her opinion and I asked her to set the slicer/dicer aside. I was so very close to impulse buying that slicer/dicer. We can do without one for now. When things are looking better financially we may buy one. In the meantime, we’ll rig up something.

Thank you Walmart cashier for giving a helping hand during a time of weakness for me 🙂

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