Cat of the Kisa

I didn't buy an ironing board. The cheapest one is $10 at Target, too much, so I use a towel over a hard suitcase. For the first time in a long while I made a genuine sacrifice to save money, and it feels really good. Not much of a sacrifice, but then not much savings either. The trick to saving money is evaluating value, and this is hard. What is the true cost of buying a lower-quality item? There is no feedback for this, there is no way to look back on a decision and compare that item's value with what you would have gotten otherwise. Without hindsight there is no learning, and you get advice like "Buy quality so you only have to buy once." The line where this starts to be a post-purchase justification is completely invisible.

We are making our own bread, we made hamburger buns for the first time, we are putting together a weekly menu that lets us manage ingredients, we are tracking groceries by more than just total/month. I am finally getting genuinely motivated to making our own tortilla shells. My girlfriend made the most wonderful yarn coozie that I use every day. This is a real change in how I approach money, that I can feel, the process of shifting my approach to money from adversarial (spend as little as possible) to cutting money out completely. The connotations of money are clear to me, and I am convinced of the importance of learning to disconnect money and value. But I don't yet know how.