Alex in Adultland

When I first moved into the apartment I live in, I showed up with two, small suitcases of clothes.  The guy moving out of my current room sold me his futon and that was all I had - a bare futon and two bags of clothes.  Once I had been waitressing a few weeks, I had saved up the money to buy sheets for the bed and supplies for fixing up the room (a drill, paint, ect.) 

Then I was fired and spent the next four months living hand to mouth.  So, whenever I needed something that wasn’t food, booze or a bill, I wrote it down.  Now that I’ve been working the office job for a minute, I’ve started working my way through the list.  Scratch that - the list is going pretty fast.  You don’t realize the big difference all the tiny things make until you go without them for awhile.  My nails were always dirty, but the other day I bought a nail file and some nail polish.  BAM!  Problem solved.  Which is why I made this list. 

THINGS I BOUGHT AT THE STORE AND HOW TO LIVE WITHOUT THEM

1. I bought shampoo and conditioner.  I generally had been using the stuff you get for free in the showers at the gym.  Or I would just put olive oil in my hair and then wash it out.  
2. I bought an iron.  It feels like my most major and extraneous purpose.  But their pretty cheap and I don’t think it’s ok at my job to show up in a heavily wrinkled shirt.  And dry cleaning sucks, it’s expensive and keep inconvenient hours.  That being said, it’s going to be fun figuring out what to do without an ironing board.
3. I bought tampons.  For the first time in months.  I had just been counting primarily on bunched up paper towels and napkins and toilet paper from bathrooms.  Sometimes I took a few from houses were I worked jobs or girls whose house I spent the night in.  I thing when I bought them in a store the other, in my head I kept hearing “God as my witness, I will never not be able to afford tampons again!”  
4. I bought air freshener and laundry detergent.  You actually be surprised, when your living with no real form of soap in a windowless room, how long it takes you to start smelling bad all the time.  You have at least a solid month or even two before deodorant and cigarettes stop covering it.