You Get What You Pay For

There is the old saying that you get what you pay for.   Every day I can be reminded of that.  It’s not hard when you’re a cheap bastard like me.  But should I say I’m a cheap bastard or a broke one?  A combination of the two would be fair.  I’m like a lot of Americans who are pinching pennies.  I can easily sell out a quality product for the so-called “bargain”.  The question is why?  Times are tough, but it doesn’t seem that the word “bargain” or “cheap” have much to do about doing with less because we have less to spend.  Instead it creates a positive image in our head that we are sniffing out the savings by buying more for less.  Something inbred into our psyche for the past 5 decades.  Give me more for cheaper.  I call it the Wal-Mart affect.  Give me the cheapest price and I’ll over look the actual quality of what I’m buying.  It doesn’t matter because when it breaks, there’s another cheap one I can buy, so just throw this one away.  Quantity over quality.  Once upon a time “Made in America” was thought of as the stamp of quality.  But as the words “bargain” and “cheap” metamorphosed and our belief that a brand name is worth more than actual quality, we began to accept some things.  Accept that in order to get those bargains, those things needed to be made in China or somewhere else because they would cost too much if they were made here.  As we make less money and we’re trying to keep a roof over our heads and food on the table we accepted that anything that might make a product more expensive is bad.  Who can blame us?  As we are looking for jobs we accept that quality control doesn’t need to be regulated. “Those damn regulations just make things more expensive and kill jobs”, is what we hear the politicians yelling.  But maybe what has killed our jobs is our acceptance that cheaper is better.  That profit trumps quality and a belief that the “market” will answer our demands for better quality.  “Give us a quality product made by people earning a quality wage and produce it in a way that takes in mind the quality the environment.  One needs only to take a trip to China (or Houston, for that matter) or a walk through the aisles of any Wal-Mart or Target to see what we must really be demanding.  We’re getting what we want to pay for.

I can preach and attest to this because I, like most, am a victim to this acceptance.  I go to Home Depot for the cheaper price.  I’ll pick the non-organic apple because it’s cheaper.  I’ll go to Arco and put crappy gas in my truck because it’s cheaper.  As I attempt re-focus the definition of “doing with less” back into the word cheap by attempting to re-build my garage on next to nothing, the temptation is overwhelming to overlook the quality of something when you are getting it for free. 

I wish I took a picture of how I stuffed this thing

I pulled the roof off my garage.  Generally when I have massed a pile of non-recyclables I put it into my trash can in small portions so I don’t have to pay the $30 dump fee at the transfer station.  That’s cheap. However, the roof was a big item and to discard it in my usual method would take about 3 years to have it disappear.   So I put a crow bar into my wallet and paid for a dumpster.  This was not only worth the $250 investment for the various pains in my butt it saved me, but also because the hauling company did the sorting of the trash for me.   (Marilyn’s recycling rules. They bring the dumpster on a truck with a claw and can gingerly place it where you need it rather than just drop it in the street.)  Of course I was too cheap to pay the extra $30 bucks for a dumpster with the locking lid.  I will not make that mistake again.  Where there is a dumpster mysterious trash will appear.  I naturally had to use every inch of this dumpster efficiently and get my money’s worth, so I tore down my deck as well.  That was a frightening thing to look upon.  The person who built it perhaps thought getting the treated lumber was too expensive.  Perhaps they made an environmental choice and wanted the deck to eventually break down and return to the earth.  Who can say?  What I can say;  is that it was getting close to that state and I confirmed my suspicions of where the carpenter ants where living.  The past owner of the house did a pretty good job of hiding the rotting beam under a layer of treated lumber.  When I tore the deck apart, I thought I’d hire the neighbor’s boys to help.  Give them a chance to earn some spending cash. I think they were pretty excited to help smash the deck apart, but the thing came apart so easily that by the time they picked up their friend and came back, I had the entire thing in pieces.  I didn’t even use a crowbar!  All that was left for them was to help clean up.  They made $10 each which hasn’t motivated them to help me out anymore.  Go figure. (What a cheap bastard!)  What frightened me most was how the main beam literally crumbled in my hands.  Think of all the BBQ’s I’d hosted on that deck… then again…  Let’s not.

Now you see it

Now you don't

So it took me two days to pull the roof off and clean up the debris. (This would have gone faster with the neighbor’s boys helping me.  But they respectfully declined.  Go figure!)  Now with my roof gone, the load was lighter but I still needed to keep what was left in the garage dry.  I needed a huge tarp!  I wanted to spare my neighbors the visual trauma of seeing a blue tarp sitting on this garage for perhaps the next year or so.  I wanted a brown tarp so it still looked like a roof.  To my excitement, a co-worker had just that.  He offered me a huge brown tarp his son left in his basement and that he wanted to get rid of.  I took it with great enthusiasm as a new tarp big enough to fit on the entire garage would cost upwards of $50 to $70!  It was a bit worn but I figured it would work.  Besides, who can complain?  It was free.  I marveled at my good fortune when I had it secured to the top of the garage.  That was until it rained.  The tarp had all the water repellant qualities of an old bed sheet.  As I said, “You get what you pay for.”  

A piece of advice if you are a novice scavenger:  Free is good.  Free is valuable.  But when you are receiving an item from a very willing donator, check the quality of that item before dragging it home.  I have stated before the old saying “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure”.  But there is another old saying,  “One man’s trash really can be one man’s trash”.

I am happy to report that I did procure a better tarp.  A green tarp to go with my yellow garage.  Go Packers!  (next season).

Now that the load is lighter, stuff emptied out and the structure secured, it's time to start digging!