talking about consumers today

Sometimes I get really miffed at how the people who write commercials try to portray us. With so many commercials for say household products or cleaning products in particular, we as a people are made to look like we never clean, are lazy & want everything to be disposable. Wow … is this really what we have become? Not me. And not a lot of people I know.

I am so tired of seeing one commercial after another trying to sell us, as consumers, some new fangled disposable or otherwise wasteful product.

Not long ago I saw a commercial for a popular brand of paper plates. They touted how strong they were, even better than before. They now will hold up to even the messiest of dishes you serve. How they would save you so much time after dinner (or other meals) by being able to just throw them away. No dishes to do! You can spend more time with your family. The average family … how many of them truly spend time together after dinner these days? Or after any meal? Why not clean up together? Teach your children how to clean up after themselves. Teach them that it’s not such a weird thing to know how to do dishes, or wipe a counter, or put away leftover food. Teach them not to be wasteful.

Is it really that hard to do a few dishes after a meal? Or if you have one, to load a dishwasher? I’m not one who loves to clean or wash dishes. But I am also not one to just be a part of the use & toss society we have created. It really doesn’t take long to either load a dishwasher or wash up those few dishes from any given meal.

So then … there is the trash. One company shows how strong their kitchen garbage bags are by stuffing them full, pushing the limits of the plastic the bags are made of. Then, a young child has the duty of taking this full bag to the trash can. It’s great to know the bag can handle being dragged, rolled & otherwise mildly abused on its journey to the trash can. We are shown the trash can in the garage … it has another bag in it! So we’re throwing a bag full of kitchen garbage into another bag lining the trash can? Huh? So, come trash day we’re tossing out a big bag full of smaller bags. Lovely. Not to mention how they are all better & stronger bags too.

All of it just frustrates me sometimes. Don’t create so much garbage to begin with & you won’t have a need for such a strong bag! Hmmm… maybe try using real plates instead of paper ones?

I also laugh at the commercials for paper towels. Well, actually I laughed at the commercial for the Sham-Wow chamois even more. The guy says something stupid like “you already spend $20 a month on paper towels …” Who in their right mind throws away that many paper towels in one month?? I know he’s trying to make a point on how much money you can save, but geez. All people hear tho, is save money. At any rate, hubby & I ended up buying a set of them recently. And they work great so far. I don’t really use them in place of paper towels, but I also don’t really use many paper towels to begin with. We use rags & towels for most everything most people use paper towels for. I will wipe grease away with a paper towel tho, if I’m like wiping out a pot or pan. Why did we have to become such a disposable society?

I could get into product packaging too. And single serving everything. Oh the waste!

Just Monday ramblings

Why is it that when people don’t reply to your posts you feel lost? Or forgotten? I don’t know. Really. Most people I know who have an online journal, write for themselves. So who cares if anyone replies? Allot of people tho, blog for interaction with others. I think I’m somewhere in between. I enjoy the interaction with my online “friends” but I also write to get the thoughts out of my head. It allows me to keep track of the daily goings on in my life where I otherwise might forget them. Then why do I get the little feelings every now & then of … why do they get all kinds of comments & I get none? Am I an outcast with my online people too? I know, it’s dumb. Sometimes I envy the fact that it appears that several people seem to have a real connection with the people on their friends list. I used to feel that way about a few. These days, it seems I am all alone again. How sad is that?

I have been doing way too much thinking lately I guess. Way more than I could ever take the time to write out on here for the world to see. But anyways ….

So the weekend was alright. We ended up not doing the market Saturday morning. Photography & rainy weather are not a good match. We ended up down there saying hello to several of our people & they all commented on the bad weather in the morning. Glad we skipped it. Was nice to stop & visit with some of them tho.

The 3 of us went out & hit a few yard sales instead. What fun we had. I think we all found a few treasures for way cheap. Been a long time since we got to enjoy going, much less actually finding fun stuff for cheap.

With Tim now being online, we didn’t spend much alone together time Saturday. It’s okay tho, I know the newness & novelty of the computer will wear off for him in awhile. He now has a Facebook page tho. I’m wondering if MySpace is next. We’ll see. He does enjoy being able to chat with his friend Joe on there. Next thing you know, they’ll be playing the Flight Simulator game together. We just need to get him a better system put together from the parts around here to handle the gaming stuff better.

We got a little of our alone time on Sunday. Wasn’t the same, but nice. We totally ended up not doing much of anything all weekend other than the Saturday morning outings. In a way, it was nice.

On the house front, the news is not promising. Well, not in the way we’d hoped. We got all the info to the mortgage guy. He ran credit reports, numbers & figures. We can’t go VA like we’d hoped. We’d have to go FHA. To do that we’d need at least 3% down. There are 2 programs that offer assistance with that. We’d have to get the seller to agree to stuff to be able to use that. You know how the legal mumbo jumbo goes. Funny thing.. with our combined incomes, we can qualify for that house we’re looking at. The house payments would be .. are you ready? Oh, only about 1300. Yes, One thousand and three hundred dollars. A month. I don’t think so. Nice to think the bank thinks we can handle it tho. That in itself is actually cool. To get the payments down to where we’d feel comfortable, we’d have to get the sellers to come down about 40 grand. And pay the closing costs. Right. I don’t see that happening. I know it’s been empty a long time, but I don’t think they’ll come down that far. But …. You never know till you ask I guess.

So, we’ll either keep looking for another place that’s smaller & cheaper, or just tough it out here until the place that Kati has is ready. I’ll email her about it again tonite too I think. We got the letter that says our rent went up effective with the September payment. Another $25 a month. May not seem like much, but when you watch the units around you get remodeled, and you still have the same old crap … it doesn’t feel right to pay more. I really would understand the yearly hikes if we got some improvements.

Oh, to make today a real Monday, I had dryer issues. Yup. Did a load of the man's work pants. Went to put them in the dryer. Closed the door. Hit the start button. Nothing. After finding out it was the washer we had the extended warranty on, I made an appt with the place we bought them from to come out & fix it on Tuesday. Told the man when he got home. He says let's see if we can find out where the possible part is that could be the problem. get online, Search. Find part. He proceeds to try to remove it only to have it be the wrong part. Hehe... I show him what looks like the right part. He gets that out. we try what another repair place said to try. Nothing. Dammit. So, canceled the appt with the first repair place & made one with this other guy. The other guy was much more helpful even on the phone, and more friendly. Oh, and cheaper. So yeah ... I've listed a few things on our local craigslist to see about trying to get the cash to cover the repair bill. We're all in the wrong business. They get anywhere from $80 to $100 just to come to your house. Finding & telling you what’s wrong, is more. Installing it .... more. Geez.

I’m really getting hopeful about the whole mall store thing. I hope that I can sell a bit more before then to make some cash to buy more stuff to make more stuff with for the holidays. Think positive …

I’d love for any of you who read this far to go check out my Etsy shop. See the stuff I’ve listed… do some shopping? Tell your friends? I’m working on promoting … it’s hard on a $0 budget tho. Free is good, but without it seeming like a full time job in itself, it’s next to impossible.

Ok, enough for now I think.