Monday, April 28, 2008

Frugal Habit of the Week: Kicking Out Your Teenagers

Why would turning your adolescents into the cold, cruel world actually save the cold, cruel world? Consider the following specimin, taken from the first bedroom on the left in my own otherwise ecologically sensible home.

Areas of Waste:

  • P. cannot sleep without (everything in his room including) his television, laptop, and stereo on. Oh, yeah, and lights... but lights are small potatoes compared to the rest of the electronics arsenal.
  • P. takes half-hour showers and then finishes emptying the tank of water doing, undoing, and redoing his hair for up to two hours.
  • P. must have his own room and bathroom because everyone else refuses to share with him.
  • P. is the single largest garbage producer in this house. He works, and thus has a high expendable income, which is spent on stuff that he soon breaks or simply tires of.
  • On the rare occasion that he washes a dish, P. requires 15 minutes of constantly running hot water and half a bottle of dish soap to get the cup half clean. I'm surprised he doesn't dry it with a blow dryer... gues that takes too much time. Honestly, I think he is on a mission to be so wasteful in the most basic everyday chores that I am afraid to ask him to do anything because I can't afford the electricity.
  • He whines because he needs--yes, physically needs--for the house to be 62 in the summer and 82 in the winter (when I keep it at the opposite--62 in the winter and 82 in the summer). Yet another case of torture from yet another evil stepmother.

Am I really kicking out my young adult stepson this week? Of course not. But everybody needs to vent.

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