Mr. Economical

 

My dear husband prefers the Mr. Economical title over “cheapskate” or “tightwad.”  I don’t blame him.  I like to refer to him as Mr. Wallet.  :o)  He has earned this name throughout our 20+ years of marriage by continually amazing me at his new and improved money-saving, penny-pinching schemes to prosper his family.  Albeit, these are a few EXTREME examples, they are factual and worth mentioning for posterity.

The Moldy Cantaloupe Conundrum.  Somehow a perfectly ripe and inviting cantaloupe snuck its way to the back of the fridge behind the giant jar of apple sauce and remained hidden until successfully deformed and fermented.  I discovered the disgusting lumpy melon and placed it in the trash.  The next morning to my astonishment, the cantaloupe had climbed out of the trash, rolled its lumpy self over to the fridge, pried open the door and scaled the shelves to the most prominent place in the front.  OK, Rick found it and put it back in the fridge.  Sick!  So I put it back in the trash, where it belonged.  Then I found it again in the fridge….  I left it there until I had the perfect plan.  A friend of mine stopped by and as she was leaving, I grabbed the rotten fruit and pushed it inside her coat.  “Please take this home and throw it away!” I pleaded.  She did.  And the fridge-garbage-fridge-garbage-fridge cantaloupe was never discussed then… or ever again.  One point for me.

The Acrid Trash Bag Affair.  Rick’s dad visited our house one summer and kindly mowed the gargantuan lawn for us.  He tediously placed all the clippings in 8 or 9 garbage bags, ready for transport to the dump.  Behind our house was a sloping hill of trees and an old, dead 1960-something truck carcass.  Finding all the trash bags full of grass, Rick carried each one to the back of the property and emptied them down the hill, where he always put the cut grass.  Next, being Mr. Economical, he folded the bags now lined with cling-on grass blades and put them at the bottom of our garbage can for future use.  Well, 100 degrees + grass clippings in plastic = smelly mess.  I believe I did mention the assaulting aroma, but continued to fill the bags until they were used up.  Next came a trip to the dump, being that there was no garbage removal in our remote town in Northern Alberta.  When we arrived at the crater-size hole half filled with bulging black trash bags, I gasped and exclaimed to my dear husband in an excited voice, “Honey!  Look!”  He looked, but wasn’t quite sure at what.  I pointed to the hole and proclaimed, “Look at all the FREE trash bags just waiting to be emptied!  We’ll never have to buy garbage bags again!”  He rolled his eyes toward heaven.  I believe he was thanking God for ME.

Tags: canteloupe, dump, economical, family, garbage bags, husband, marriage, penny pinching, thrifty