This made me remember an incident.
My wife and I handle the toilet duty as a "last man standing" situation. Meaning, if you cannot tahan, then you clean it.
So usually, I cannot tahan floors which are getting moldy so I will scrub the toilet floors every once in awhile.
Whereas my wife cannot take a dirty toilet bowl, so she tends to be the one who cleans the toilet bowl and wash basin.
It's not that I don't clean the toilet bowl, but my tolerance is higher so if she wants it clean immediately, then she has to do it herself. Else, I'd wait maybe a week more before I clean it.
This is how it works for the whole house, and since I'm usually the one most fussy over any mess, I usually do all the chores. Except for the toilet bowl. She tends to do it very willingly.
Couple months back, I found out that she has been using wet wipes to wipe down the toilet bowl. As in those lightly soapy wipes, she would pull a few then wipe down the toilet bowl and the area around it, and she's quite generous when using the wet wipes.
She obviously uses the toilet scrub for inside the bowl. But for the toilet seat, the underside of toilet seat, the water storage area, the exterior area, wherever, she would just use wet wipes, pull, wipe, pull wipe...
So when I found out, I was like!!!! WHAT ARE YOU DOING!!! That's so wasteful, I mean, most people would use a cloth, wipe, rinse, wipe rinse. Who uses wet wipes. I'm sure most people don't use wet wipes. And she looks at me with this innocent look and says,"you mean you didn't know I was doing this all along?"
So I was really against this and told her, "come on, that's so wasteful, use a cloth." and she looks at me and says... "you wanna do it?"
Then suddenly I was "woahhhh wait a minute..."
My mind flashed really quickly... and I did some quick calculations
Ok we buy the cheapo wet wipes, cos it's for quick cleaning purposes, not for kids or skin, so we get them at $1 for around 80 pulls. So that's around 1.25 cents per pull. She doesn't use a whole pack when she cleans the toilet bowl. I estimated maybe 20 pulls? Maybe 30 max?
So I'm thinking... 30-40 cents for no toilet duty...
My response... "Dear, please continue to use the wet wipes for your cleaning purposes."
Totally logical right?
She does toilet duty once in 2 weeks, that's maybe a dollar max per month, $12 per year, I think I can live with that. She's happy to clean the toilet, I'm ok with not doing toilet duty. Everyone's happy.
I'm still the person who scrubs the mold off the floor though, cos she really doesn't bother much about it.
So what did I learn from this lesson?
Think bigger picture.
I don't like toilet cleaning duty.
She doesn't do it with any complaints. If I ask her to use a cloth and wipe, rinse, wipe, rinse, she might not be happy to do the toilet duty and she might complain.
I also enjoy a cleaner toilet.
30-40 cents for someone else to do the cleaning which is enjoyed by both of us... seems fair to me.
There are other easier ways to save money, like maybe I can convince her to eat zichar this weekend for dinner, maybe $15 for both of us, instead of going to a more fancy place at $30 for 2. Weekends are default eat out days, so I try to steer the decision to cheaper alternatives and try to strike a good compromise of fancy places and cheaper alternatives.
Cos food is our biggest expense, cos we both enjoy eating, so it's the easiest place where I can get additional savings if I wanted to trim any spending.
Thought that this was a good lesson to share.
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