Good to the Last…

A few weeks ago, I was the matron of honor in a friend’s wedding. At the salon, we were putting on our make-up, and I pulled out my charcoal eyeliner to give my eyes that POW! effect. I have one of those automatic eyeliner pencils. Click, click, click – nothing. It’s out. The eyeliner is there – I can see it, but it’s flat as a pancake, right up against the sharp plastic edge of the dispenser. Ouch. Hmm, I could make my eyelids bleed for beauty…

Suddenly I think to myself, gee, if I can see it, there must be more than that inside. So, after spending about 30 seconds deciding that the pencil doesn’t come apart, I proceed to crack that puppy in half, pull on the little spring and inner piece that actually holds the eyeliner. Bingo! There’s easily a centimeter of eyeliner left inside the pencil. Nearly three weeks later, I’m still using it.

Almost everyone obsesses over squeezing out the last bit of toothpaste. It’s a cultural expectation – “hey, there’s still some in there!”. But how often do we throw away perfectly good product just because the packaging doesn’t make it easy to get to the last bits? I’ve got a tube of travel lotion in my purse that I bought a replacement for months ago, thinking that it would run out any day, but it seems to keep squirting out a little bit more each time. Now, I’m thinking about cutting the tube open when it stops coming out, obsessively scraping the last bits from the walls.

What do you use up? That gnarly little bit of soap? Do you swish out the dish washing liquid with water? Post your obsessive-compulsive frugal savings in the comments!