Getting low on anvils.

Drawing up the ol' shopping list for the week and realized that we're in need of some of the things that would encourage a trip to the ol' warehouse club -- paper towels, TP, coffee, and so on.

Good price on anvils!

I kind of enjoy my bimonthly-ish trips to the warehouse store. It's no good for the regular supermarket run; I read years ago that the club stores have about 400 different items, whereas your supermarket has thousands. Much better choices of meats and produce. But once you drag your humongous packs of facial tissues or dog biscuits home, you don't have to worry about buying them for a while. And you save money... or do you?

It doesn't feel that way when I pay the annual fee, which is about $55; it doesn't feel that way when I drag my loaded cart up to the checkout and fly past $300 (usually that high if I've bought toner for the damn printer). And of course, as the movie Wall-E wanted us to know, buying in bulk will destroy the entire planet. (If you haven't heard of Wall-E, it's a small art house science fiction film by some anti-capitalist outfit called Disney.) More practically, or at least more immediately, not everything in the warehouse store is actually cheaper than in a typical market.

My real concern is waste. Not food waste; while some economists and environmentalists are concerned about food waste from people buying enormous loads of meat and such from the club store, that's not something I typically do. I rely on the club for the less-perishable goods. Besides, the way I eat, there's little food waste in this house. In my experience, houses with children are houses where a lot of food winds up in the garbage, because parents shop in the produce section with great intentions and kids wind up snacking on buttered saltines or scooping Jif right out of the jar. No, the waste I mean is behavioral -- the way I act when I know I have a huge supply of something.

I just have a feeling that bringing home a skid of paper towels makes me overly cavalier about their use. Wash hands? Why use that towel hanging by the kitchen sink when there's a more hygienic roll of paper towels right there? Taking a shower? Here, dry off with a roll. We've got tons of it! We're rollin' in it! Hyuk hyuk.

It's the kind of attitude that makes us imagine rich people lighting $1,000 cigars with $100 bills. Why not? It's fun! There's just so many of them!

This goes completely against my upbringing. My family had not gotten over the Great Depression by the time I came along decades later. It was like it had all just happened, and was just waiting to happen all over us again. Waste not, want not would have been our family slogan, if we'd had one. (Despite that I was a spoiled kid -- a very, very guilt-ridden spoiled kid.)

But back to the wasteful habits of bulk shoppers: Has anyone studied this? I haven't found any studies, only krexing about food going to waste. I want to know about the wasteful habits for nonperishables bought in bulk. We have two big dogs and believe in self-preservation through good hygiene, but if I know I only have one roll of paper towels left I'm going to be cautious with it. Not so if I have a package of a dozen.

As much as I dislike mindless anti-consumerism, which is as fractious as mindless consumerism is dumb, I would suggest some clever economist with a means of getting grants look into this. You could start right here. When we buy anvils at the warehouse club, we go through them awfully fast. When we buy them individually at the anvil store, they seem to last longer.