Yesterday evening I laughed at myself as I realised I was busy washing up a zip lock bag to reuse for probably the hundredth time. In fact it was one that I had brought back from Uganda in the container! I did only bring the ones that were in pretty good shape, not the cloudy, sticky ones...
But even though I chuckled, I can't see any reason to stop reusing them. One thing I did put my foot down about, years ago, was the habit of my very first housemate in the missionary life, a 60-something American lady called Doris, who insisted that we wash clingfilm (plastic foodwrap) to reuse it. This is almost impossible - when you put it in the sink it goes into a tight thin stuck-together string, and then you have to tease it out into a square again, somehow scrub it, and then stick it up on the tiles to dry. When it has dried it never has its same useful stretchy tension anyway. What a pain! I vowed that after I stopped living with Doris I would never do that again, ever.
I am wondering what other "missionary" habits I have not yet lost. I keep teabags on a little dish in case I might reuse them - although often they end up just being thrown away. I tear the many letters from the children's schools into quarters and use the backs for my shopping lists. I keep every plastic tub and ice cream box to use as storage containers. I still clip the picture side off cards we receive, and recycle them to write notes to people on, or to make new birthday cards with. Recycling was invented by missionaries, after all.
On a different note, one habit I think I might never lose is when out of the corner of my eye I catch sight of a shadow moving or a bit of dust blowing. I still always look quickly again, poised, in case it is a cockroach. But here, thank goodness, it never is. (The ones that came over in our container didn't survive, it seems!)
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