I got the oil changed in the car and went to Costco today (exciting!!!). It’s actually one of my favorite places to shop as far as “big box” retailers or major grocery chains go. The reason? Product curation. That may sound strange considering how much stuff is in their store, but category by category, there aren’t that many options, which is GREAT. And you can bet that if they do have something in a given category, it might not be the best, but it’s pretty good. In the Amazon/Wayfair age we’ve been in with boatloads of crap, I love the simplicity of just either taking it or leaving it at Costco.
Side note: Why don’t they carry halloumi?!?!
There’s certainly better places I could spend my money, but sometimes I just need a break from decisions.
Of course, a lot of stuff at Costco IS excessive in quantity, and I thought about this recent thing I read about Drano (via Gar’s Tips & Tools newsletter, which is awesome):
Years ago, a plumber told me to never follow the directions on a bottle of Drano (where it suggests pouring as much as a half the bottle into your clog). “That’s marketing hype to get you to waste your money,” he told me. “Just use about a shot-glass worth at a time. Then a kettle of boiling water. And repeat as needed until the drain clears.”
I’ve been doing it that way ever since. A small amount of drain cleaner. Wait 20 minutes. Then pour of a kettle of hot water. Repeat. In my experience, it has worked most every time on the usual suspects: bathroom hair, sink sludge, and kitchen grease slowdown.
The logic, as he explained it, is simple. Most clogs aren’t epic blockages. They’re small, localized buildups. You don’t need half a bottle of caustic chemicals sitting in your drain trap. A small dose often begins the breakdown. The hot water helps move things along. Less chemical, less waste.
Another thing that made me smile today was this blog post from a couple of years back:
Those pics of Vivian and Sam are crazy.
Finally, this is probably ironic that I’m putting this in here with the Costco reference above, but I’m doing it anyway because we have to hope, and The Wayfinders is a remarkable book.
“Before she died, anthropologist Margaret Mead spoke of her singular fear that, as we drift toward a more homogenous world, we are laying the foundations of a blandly amorphous and singularly generic modern culture that will have no rivals. The entire imagination of humanity, she feared, might be confined within the limits of a single intellectual and spiritual modality. Her nightmare was the possibility that we might wake up one day and not even remember what had been lost.” (Wade Davis, The Wayfinders)
