Its in the bag

Last weekend was pretty quiet.  I wasn't sure what I was going to write about, until the CFO spent the beginning of the week preparing to start a research project at a nearby high school.  She is working on using technology to help people with disabilities live on their own and this project involves grocery shopping.  I don’t know all of the details of the study; I just know that I was asked to go to the store to pick up some products that matched products that we already had at home.  I did my part to help out and ran by the store during my lunch break and picked up the stuff on the list.

That night, she started dumping stuff out of containers into plastic baggies and Tupperware containers.  Evidently she needed a “full” and an “empty” version of each product for the project.  I didn’t really question it, until what I thought was only going to be a couple things exploded into at least 20 different items.  We now have salt, pepper, cinnamon and other spices in small baggies.  Bread, chips, pasta and other larger quantity items are now in larger zipper bags.  We also have Tupperware containers full of things like jelly and butter plus Aquafina bottles with honey and syrup in them.  “Good luck finding stuff,” she said with a laugh.

She then handed me a 2 liter bottle of sprite, “time to drink up, this needs to be almost empty.” Of course, I wasn’t about to drink a whole 2 liter bottle in one evening, so the remainder was poured into a water pitcher with plastic wrap rubber banded around it.  I doubt that will keep the carbonation in for long, but it was worth a shot… I’d hate to see it go to waste. 

This is a good example of how the two of us differ… I like a good plan, figured out well ahead of time and she is a last minute procrastinator.  I would have had a list of what empty containers we needed a few weeks ago and would have started saving containers then.  Over the past month, I am certain that we have thrown away many of the containers that she now needs… 

I continue to try to introduce her to the “Five P’s” (Prior Planning Prevents Poor Performance), but she seems happy to continue with her last minute ways…

Just a sample of our new storage system.  Yes, that is honey in the water bottle.