Lux et umbra vicissum…

I have a good husband.  He’s my helper, comforter, and best friend.  And he knows when to tell me to stop with the saving money thing.

You have to understand, we have five children and are adopting two more, God willing.  The money we spend weighs heavily on me.  We still allow ourselves some luxuries (occasional ice cream from the grocery store, some easy-to-cook meals to save time on rough days…), but every time we do I cringe inside… at least until I’ve had my bowl of ice cream.  Then I’m all good.

We also have learned the value of buying in bulk.  We joined Costco a couple of years ago to help us save money.  It took me a while to give in to that because I thought we’d spend more on the membership fees than we would save, but we did some cost comparisons and decided it would be worth it.  It definitely is now since we have space to store bulk items: a freezer in the garage and plenty of space for large boxes of paper products.

But there’s a time when you just have to say “no” to bulk purchases.

It’s easy to say no when you know it’s something that will go bad or that you won’t be able to use all of.  (Unless of course it’s cost-efficient enough that you can share with friends and still have saved money on the amount that you keep.)  It gets harder when it’s something that’s not going to go bad and that you know you’ll use eventually.  I mean, really, if you can buy something for less than half of the price of a smaller size and it’s something you’ll use up… er… at some point, doesn’t it seem worth it??  *sigh*

I’ve found that the best moisturizers for our Ethiopian children (and they work pretty well on our little blondies as well) are Shea Butter (pure, unrefined) and Coconut Oil (pure, virgin).  I found a wonderful website called Agbanga Karite that sells these items and a few others fair trade (meaning basically that the money actually goes to the people in Africa who farm the coconuts, etc.).  I had ordered the small sizes first to try them out, but now that I know they work well I was looking to order more.  (They also have a promotion code for repeat buyers that allows you to save 10%, so that was an incentive.)  Problem is, it’s easy to go really wild here.  There’s the 1 lb. container of Shea Butter (which I got last time), but then there’s 5 lbs., 10 lbs., 25 lbs., and up.  I’m sure there are other women out there who would understand my struggle.  I mean, I could buy 1 lb. for more than $8, or I could buy some for only $3.89 a pound!  Granted, that would mean buying a 100 lb. block of Shea butter… but think of the savings!!!  I’m almost hyperventilating as I sit here thinking about it.

My good husband very logically pointed out the shipping costs ($90 on my total order) if I got that much.  He convinced me that the 10 lb. block, which was also on sale, was still a good savings and would ship for far less.  I’m comforting myself with the fact that I really did save on shipping.

And I did buy 15 lbs. of coconut oil.