Disposable Razors, Disposable Income

I use Sensor razor blades and they're expensive. I noticed some time ago that the blades I use at work (following my bicycle commute) stay sharper longer than those I use at home, but I just accepted it for some reason.

I recently decided to investigate this phenomenon and discovered that blades will last much longer if you simply dry them off afterwards. The blades at home are in the shower and subjected to continuous moisture while those in my bike pannier get dried off, consistent with this dry-it-off theory. I now dry the blade off as best I can at home. I use a razor blade as an analogy with all my consumption. I have more than enough disposable income -- I could easily just buy more disposable razors with that disposable income. But I don't. Indeed, I'm willing to take efforts to extent the life on a razor simply to save a buck or two each year.

Yet, I counter these savings by throwing every penny I get in change into the garbage. I'll extent the life of a razor but I don't want pennies in the cruising kitty. I probably throw out 650 to 700 pennies a year, 'cause I hate 'em -- you can't buy a newspaper or a candy bar with them and you can't pay your Bay Bridge toll with them. They cost the government more than a cent to produce. They are inherently worthless because of that; this is the real reason I toss 'em. I earn 10,000,000 of them each year, so this represents a loss of about 0.007%.

My hope is that in forty seven million years, when the next generation of curious mammals decide to chip away at shale formations created by several thousand years of human waste looking for fossils, they'll no doubt think that historic man was a small, half-inch, single-eyed, bearded, bodiless creature. But getting back to the present, when a clerk decides to offer me a quarter instead of the $0.23 cents I'm due, when I see she also realizes the idiocy of pennies, I throw that quarter into her tip jar. Otherwise, the three pennies will find their way down the storm drain.

Today I smashed aluminum cans and carted off the plastics into a garbage bag. I save a few cents a day by doing this. I have enough disposable income -- I could just as easily dispose of them and get on with the NASCAR race. But no, I take the time to do this. I believe that these small acts, like maintaining my 16-year old lawn mower or reusing a bolt -- when aggregated, demonstrate a belief system in the slow, gradual accumulation of wealth through frugality, mindfulness, and thriftiness.