It’s not empty until I say it’s empty!

I try to instill in my daughters the wisdom of conserving our resources.  It’s not only environmentally sound, it’s also cost-effective.  Okay, I’m really talking about their unbridled waste of shampoo, conditioners and soap.  And I’m really talking about my oldest daughter.

I don’t know if my youngest daughter has the same bad habit or not; she uses a different shower than I do.  My oldest insists on using the shower in my bedroom because it has a tall shower head.  I can understand her reasoning; she is 5-feet-10-inches tall.  And it’s okay with me, except I then have the unfortunate opportunity to closely observe her rampant waste of shower products.

It’s a good thing I buy large containers of shampoo and conditioner products.  I don’t have to think about the waste until one of the bottles is empty.  Or is it really empty?  Just because nothing comes out of the pump, doesn’t mean it’s empty.  You have to unscrew the pump and toss it, then you can still get another week’s worth of shampoo or conditioner out of the bottle.  Then when it stops pouring out easily, if you put a little water in it and thin out the residue, you can still get out another week’s worth.

I use that method when she has determined the shampoo is empty, but my hair is short and I don’t use conditioner so she has complete control over the conditioner bottle.  I realized today she duped me.  She grabbed a new bottle of conditioner and put it on the shower floor last week and seemed to leave it while using up the old bottle.  Then today I realized she had replaced the bottle on the shelf with the new bottle and put the old bottle on the floor.  I picked it up and shook it and it sloshed at me.  Well, I showed her, I took the new bottle and hid it.  It’s the same with the soap.  It gets down to a palm-sized piece and she’s onto a new bar.  I diligently keep using it until I soap up my wash rag and it disappears.   She wrote “shampoo” on the shopping list.  I didn’t tell her I have a new bottle of shampoo and I’m just waiting for the old one to be completely empty.  It’s not empty until I say it’s empty!

Before you think I’m a penny pinching madwoman, I’m not.  There are probably many things in my life I don’t get full use out of because they don’t fit with my life anymore.  My husband gets upset when I give stuff away because I’m just done with it.  I believe things should be used, but don’t want the hassle of selling them.  I’ll put stuff in my free pile out front and most of it magically disappears.  And yes, if six months later I find the need to have an item back, I go buy it.

But there is something about wasting shower products that chaps my hide.  I reminisce over the days when I begged my children to take a shower and had to remind them to use soap.  There was a time in my oldest daughter’s life when she wouldn’t let me wash her hair.  We battled it out over the bathtub, probably getting far more water on the floor than on her hair.

Now I have two teenage girls showering every day.  My water bill has gone up.  They both have different preferences in shampoo and conditioners.  I don’t know how that happened.  They don’t have cars and can’t go out and buy these products on their own.  When did they get opinions on hair care products?  What happen to my babies who couldn’t care less what they looked like or how clean they were, as long as they didn’t actually have to get wet to do it?

Those days are gone.  Now I look forward to the day when they are out on their own and have to buy their own shower products.  We’ll just see how long they can make a bottle last when they have to pay for it.

Gretchen Leigh is a stay-at-home mom committed to writing about the humor amidst the chaos of a family.  You can read more of her writing and her daily blog on her website livingwithgleigh.com.