Dancing at My Desk

This past weekend I’ve been hanging out at a conference for one of my husband’s side projects and this means the kids and I have had a lot of time on our hands. This of course has involved the hotel pool.

Now here’s the thing to know about this. I have not OWNED a swimsuit in probably 8 years (I’m 28 in case you’re curious). It’s been partly because I’m not a beach/pool kind of girl and also partly because I didn’t like seeing myself in swimsuits. But I knew that with how busy my husband was going to be this weekend, the kids would go crazy if they couldn’t go to the pool. And since they’re still little I knew I’d be in there with them. So off I went to the store to buy a swimsuit and I’ve spent several hours in the pool with the kids.

I’ve felt like a kid all weekend. I’ve always enjoyed getting away and hanging out in a hotel. It feels like an adventure. And I admit it, I’ve really loved the pool. Maybe I’m a beach/pool kind of girl after all.

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Yes, I’m going to write a post about my shower curtain. Why? Because it made me realize that I have a pretty set mentality when it comes to buying things for myself.

A few months ago, my mom came up to visit me for my daughter’s 5th birthday. I needed a new shower curtain and was planning on going out and buying one. But I came down with the flu and I was completely wiped out. So my mom went out and got one for me.

I guess I need to give you some background on this. Usually when I buy a shower curtain, I go to the Dollar Store or another discount store and buy the cheap plastic one. I always end up needing to throw it away after a few months, but for those few months, I feel slightly “ok” in that my family has a clean shower curtain. But my mom did something totally unexpected. She bought a really nice machine washable shower curtain for me.

Now, here is where this small incident becomes a blog post. My first reaction was “Why did you spend so much money on this? We go through shower curtains on a regular basis. Why did you get such a nice one?” Then I read the packaging. I read about how it’s moisture and mildew resistant. I read that it’s machine washable. And a light bulb went off inside of me. Duh. I’m buying cheap because I have a cheap mentality.

It wasn’t that long ago that my husband and I were living paycheck to paycheck and wondering every month if we would make it to the end. There was one point where I asked my husband to ask his commanding officer for a food voucher to the commissary grocery so we would be sure to eat that month (he was in the army at the time and we were living on the base). It pushed me to live extremely frugally. How frugal? We had exactly $70 a month for groceries. A month. That’s it. Not to mention the bills and other responsibilities we had. Entertainment? Forget it. Entertainment became watching our very young daughter sing and dance for us and laughing our heads off. Her first Christmas involved us spending $9 at the local dollar store. Of course, she didn’t care. She was a little over a year old and loved every item. Almost her entire wardrobe was bought at garage sales, were hand-me-downs, or gifts from family and friends.

But something in that course of time changed me. I became a knock off brand hunter. Everything was generic that we owned. Brand name shampoo? Too extravagant. Generic mac and cheese became a staple. I stretched every dollar and stressed over unexpected bills. We got checks from WIC and a big splurge was a pizza for $12. That didn’t happen very often.

But when I went back to work and we started getting a little more comfortable, I carried that mentality with me. I still didn’t buy lots of brand name items but I can remember the first time I went to the grocery and didn’t have to take a calculator. It was a sense of freedom. But this frugal mentality turned into a “I don’t deserve nice stuff” kind of thing. Isn’t that sad? This single shower curtain taught me that. How bizarre.

Now, I’m not saying that I’m going to go nuts with the money we have. While we are definitely more comfortable, we’re not exactly living in the lap of luxury. But when it comes to things for my family, I have to get into the mindset that I (and we) deserve to have nice things. Not top of the line or state of the art, but nice. Things that will last. I still love a long day in the thrift store hunting for funky clothes and dollar stores are still a treasure trove for me. I’m still fairly frugal too. But when it comes to buying things for my family, I’ve decided that we all deserve nice things. Things that will last and things that we’ll be proud to have. Now how’s that for a life lesson?

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