Last year during a girl's weekend my friend and I went into a store where I found some boots that I REALLY liked. When I saw that they were $100 I slipped quietly into my inner struggle of whether to buy them. Once my very wise friend realized what I was doing, she asked me, "How often will you wear them?" She then went on to help me see the wisdom in projecting how often you might use something and then dividing the purchase price by that number thereby figuring a "cost per use" rather than getting hung up on the sticker price. She's so smart! So... I bought the boots, wore them out of the store and have worn them at least 100 times since then - that's less than a dollar per use!
Using that wisdom I've purchased a few other items that I use all the time and appreciate how much they have improved my life. Here are a few examples.
Our counter top surface is pretty limited and I was constantly reorganizing it to accommodate the wood block holding all of our knives. We also often ended up with multiple knives jammed in each slot because we had more knives than the block would hold. I decided that a magnetic knife holder would do the job and solve multiple issues. I found the one I wanted but it was $40... But we use it every day and it does knock out two of our space problems in one shot! It also keeps the knives where guest chefs can find them easily.
Another issue is around the wood stove. The biggest issue is that when wood is brought in from the wood house, inevitably the scraps of wood, leaves etc ended up dumping all across the rug from the door to the hearth and I had to vacuum every day. When I spotted the heavy duty cordura wood tote with ends in the Duluth catalog I bought it almost immediately. It was exactly what I wanted and more! It also is large enough to fill the wood box in two trips instead of the three or four trips that the old flat canvas sling required.
In the same picture with the wood tote is a steam pot for the top of the wood stove. We had an old one that looked like a kettle and it would often boil over which caused our brand new wood stove to rust (which makes me unhappy in many ways...). When we saw this one at LL Bean during a Christmas shopping trip, we put off buying it because it was pricey and we are both frugal. After my friend's advice... and more boiling over and rusting... I bought it. (I was actually kind of happy we didn't buy it that day in the LL Bean store because it's heavy we'd have had to schlep it around Freeport for hours since we had parked so far away.)
So... Every time we have a big purchase to make now we use the "cost per use" method to decide if it's worth it and have never been unhappy with our decision either way. It works for us!
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