Bread flour is one of my favorite things to buy. It is at once a somewhat specialized ingredient, as well as an uber-common consumable. We all eat bread, but very few of us bake it. Buying bread flour makes me feel competent, like a homesteader, ready to salt some pork, repair the windmill, or weld the tractor back together.
One of my least favorite things to pay for is hotel rooms and restaurant meals. Rooms, meals, carnival rides, and movie tickets are all gone as soon as you consume them. (Yes, this is also true of bread, but we all have to eat – we just don’t have to eat out.) Feel free to enjoy your restaurant meals – I make no claim to stake out right and wrong or anything like absolute truth, I’m only sharing a little about myself.
I like to buy durable goods. Things that could, theoretically, be inherited by my children. I like to buy tools. I enjoy having the right tool for the job at hand. (Installing a new faucet? Sure hope you’ve got your basin-wrench handy!) I smile every time I slot a tool home into its special nook. A tool for every job and every tool in its place.
Strangely, this behavior was not modeled for me as a child. Perhaps my efforts to create an ordered environment arise from a fear that the uncomfortable chaos of my childhood home might sneak back in at the least invitation. I suppose it only goes to show that what our children learn from us may well be different from anything we intend to teach them, but they are always watching us.