Replacements

A few years ago I sat at a scrap booking crop, looking down at my picture. Someone mentioned I could crop more of my picture. I told her that would defeat the purpose. I liked having my car in the background. I notice trends when I look at old photos, and I want my kids to see pictures of cars and anything else that was a trend of the time. I thought about that conversation when I looked at my new Costco purchases.

I heavily rely on my toaster oven. I use it most so I don't have to turn on my large oven and raise the temperature in my house on hot days in Hawaii. My Black and Decker toaster oven had been on it's last leg for awhile. It was a wedding present, so it was almost ten years old this summer. Some days it would toast, and some days I would coax it to work, firmly holding the door closed so it would start. All that ended the other day when I smelled something burning. Ding! I pulled out Son1's cheese toast, and glared at a flame coming from the heating rod. I blew out the flame, unplugged the toaster, and threw it in the trash. I called Hubby and told him we were going shopping for a new toaster oven. That was just the beginning.

Once we got to Costco, Hubby figured it was time to replace our smaller digital camera. After all, we purchased it new 3.5 years ago. Since then, it has withstood a lot of crash landings. Unfortunately, our camera became a senior citizen despite it's titanium body. The camera aged. We took several shots just to get a few clear pictures. What once was a clear shot now had unpredictable clarity. Plus, I dropped it when Hubby tossed it to me from the second story in December. Then there were the phones. There was a Costco coupon for cordless phones, so a set of new cordless phones was a planned purchase. I ruined one of our handsets when I spilled a glass of water, and the phone was in it's angry path. The ruined phone has a screen that no longer works, and hardly holds a battery charge for five minutes. But in case of an emergency it works! The coupon for phones meant it was definitely time to trade in our old phones. Our last large purchase of the day was a package of high thread count sheets. We previously bought a set and found they are the only set we like.

So what does this have to do with the scrap booking conversation? It struck me how all of these things have changed in a protracted amount of time. When we were first married Hubby and I used the toaster oven all of the time to bake smaller amounts of food. Now, ten years later, the toaster oven is the same price, but I get so much more for my money! It is stainless steel, toasts six slices instead of two, has a convection oven, defrosts food, and dehydrates, too. But my favorite feature is the pull out tray for crumbs. The new camera comes with some more mega pixels, and more internal memory. The cordless set we bought is about the same price as when we bought the last cordless set some years back. Then, we thought it was a deal that the set came with two bases, handsets, and an answering machine. The new set comes with five handsets. That is a bit much for us here, since I keep phones to a minimum with napping children. But they may come in handy if we ever move back to our Virginia house. Finally, when we bought high thread count sheets at Costco we thought we were in heaven with 400 thread count sheets. Now the sheets we bought are 540 thread count, for the same price.

So the trend seems that the cost of these items hasn't gone up in the last years, but the quality and quantity has improved for the money.