Day 72: Big Spender

Grant has two identities: Work Grant and Real Grant.

You see, Grant works from home. This means that all of his business associated waste stays in our household, and all of his business related purchases have to be done by him personally. You would think this would be an advantage to the clean bin competition project because he has complete control over what he does or does not purchase. However, it’s not true.

Work Grant makes music and films which are, inevitably, burned onto CDs and DVDs. This requires a bunch of stuff including printer ink and discs not to mention hardrive space. “Your employer buys all your work supplies for you,” he says, ” so you don’t have to worry about office purchases or office garbage.” It’s true, it doesn’t really create a a fair playing field.

So, we reached a compromise.

We each have our own waste bins, plus “Work Grant” gets his own bin. He’s like an ever-present fourth roommate.

On the “buying list”, which is stuck to the fridge and lists everything we have each bought since July 1st that isn’t food or medication, Work Grant has his own column. And I’d say that he is definitely the biggest spender of us all.

For one thing, he bought a printer.

I know, it seems like blatant cheating in our consumer-free project; however, we have pledged to be completely transparent about purchases we make during this year, and Work Grant does have his rationale. He had been going a bit crazy from borrowing my brother’s printer from halfway across the city every two weeks just to print a couple of DVD’s (and I’m sure my brother was too), and we couldn’t find anyone in town who would print on less than 50 discs at a time. So, we classified a printer as necessary (as opposed to fun things like new musical instruments or camera lenses), and Work Grant dropped into a solid 4th place in the buy-nothing portion of the clean bin project.

At least he was eco-minded enough to get a secondhand printer off craigslist. (Unfortunately, it actually turned out to be an unused printer complete with styrofoam packaging, so his garbage bin took a bit of a hit as well. . . . . but that’s another story.)