What’s your craziest cheapskateness?

Lots of us are cheap, or thrifty, or abhor waste, or in some other way do our best to avoid discarding anything we or someone else could use. Some of us were raised by Depression kids, with a portion of that translating to us. Some people live in very frugal circumstances and can’t afford to waste any single solitary thing of value.

Some do this out of need; some out of fear; some because it’s fun. Few apply this to everything. Take time, for example. Time is a resource, arguably our most precious one. It could be used to accomplish something, even if that might be rest or play. How many people, having options, waste time on a regular basis? Of course, that depends on the definition of waste. In some circles, any energy or time not spent to further ultimate corporate profit is automatically considered wasteful, just as any education that does not directly lead to employability is considered useless. Some people think a server tip is wasted money because it is not technically obligatory.

And sometimes we have a savings instinct and we know it’s stupid. Maybe we just give in to it; maybe we fight it because we realize that’s going too far, even for ourselves.

What I’m going to ask you is two questions:

1. What is a form of useful thrift you practice that you think few would resort to?
2. What is a form of foolish or pointless thrift you either practice, or realize you should not and resist the tendency?

I’ll go first.

In order to avoid purchasing my own for things I sell online, I save a good percentage of the packing I receive. Not all, but a fair variety to accommodate varied needs.

Every time I find myself backspacing over single characters to retype a missing letter, rather than arrowing to the spot and just inserting it, I have this little wastefulness warning that goes off. It’s idiotic. Not only has a typed character zero intrinsic value, I backspace and retype because it’s faster and doesn’t require me to shift to the mouse or arrow pad. Even then my brain nags me that I am just throwing things away like a wasteful dunce.

Yet it doesn’t when I am editing, or when I am throwing away a whole sentence or paragraph I deem pointless. I can, without conscience, delete a whole article from this blog if I consider it past its prime. For heaven’s sake, I deleted or hid my entire personal Faceplant timeline. I deleted ten years of life story. It took over a year. I felt no sense of waste.

Please feel free to share yours. No judgment from me.