School Vacation, Day One: Teach Your Children Well

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In our house, change seems to end up everywhere except in our wallets. I find change in the washing machine; I find change on the floor of Nathan’s room. I have even found change in the bathtub, which is most likely Iz’s doing though Nathan might try to blame it on the kitten.

Like most homes, we have a jar into which most of our spare change gets tossed. The jar is emptied every six months of so. Usually, Iz and I empty the change into a plastic bag, go to the nearest CoinStar machine, and then take our earnings to the mall for Sephora and Claire’s purchases.



In addition to the jar, change seems to build up in the cup holders in the car.



At a certain point, it becomes unsafe to put my travel mug in the cup holder due to tipping issues. Of course, I could clean out the cup holder; however, there’s a time, a place, and a set schedule for relieving ourselves of our change. And, it’s probably tied to the phase of the moon and how bored and broke we are!

I wanted to give Iz something to do today; however, I wanted an activity that wouldn’t require too much of my energy. Given it was school vacation week, I knew I was going to have to find entertainment all week; thus, I didn’t want to burn myself out the first day of the week! I proposed to Iz yesterday that we get rid of all our change.

She eagerly agreed. She asked, “Can we go spend it at Sephora?” I told her we’d think about it today.

When I got up this morning, I felt like I really wanted to clean and organize something; thus, the change activity would be a good one for both Iz and I. But, somehow the thought of going to the mall was totally unappealing. I knew I needed a different kind of gratification today given the way I was feeling, and then I had an idea.

When I was sitting on the couch next to Iz this morning drinking my coffee and watching “Full House,” Iz asked, “Mommy, are we going to do the change thing today?” I said, “Yes. But, I have a different idea for the money.” She asked, “What?”

I told her that we really didn’t need anything from Sephora, Claire’s, or any other store at the mall; we had enough of everything. I looked at her, and she still sat there listening intently without any protest thus far in regard to my “just say no to shopping” speech. I dropped the final bombshell by saying, “Instead of going shopping, why don’t we take the money and buy food for the food pantry?”

I sat and waited for her disappointed, “Oh, Mommy!” It never came. Immediately, she said, “Okay!”

I got the change jar down from the shelf, and we proceeded to dump its contents into a large plastic bag. We then went outside, got in the car, and dug out the change from the car cup holders and added it, some of it notably sticky and gooey from coffee dribbles, to the bag. We scoured the washing machine, the floor of Nathan’s room, and any other place in the house where we thought we might find a stray quarter or penny.

Iz even dumped out my purse, took all the change that fell out, and added it to the bag too; I was mugged but in a good way! Twenty minutes later, we had a huge bag of change. It was so heavy Iz could barely tote it around; she then said, “Wow! How much money do you think is in here? $20?!”



At that point, she seemed more excited about knowing how much money we had than what we were actually going to buy with it. I told her I thought we had $50. She asked, “Can we buy a lot of food with that?”

I told her that I thought we could do quite well with $50, but before we went to cash in the change, we should figure out what kinds of food to buy. I went to the food pantry’s website, and I printed out the list. Iz asked if she could carry the list since the bag of change was too heavy.

As we drove to the store, she said, “We need to buy 100% juice, tuna, jelly, ramen noodles, chicken noodle soup, soap, shampoo, conditioner, and toothpaste.” She then asked me, “Do they have shoes?” I told her that I thought everyone had shoes and we just needed to worry about food today.

When we arrived at the CoinStar machine, Iz wanted to be responsible for the change purge. I opened the bag, dumped some change in the tray to get her started, and she carefully pushed the coins down the tray. As the coins went down, she watched the screen above and every minute she shouted out how much money we had so far.

I collected all the rejected change at the bottom while she kept feeding the machine. There were foreign coins, Chuck E. Cheese tokens, and even a few wooden nickels (courtesy of Nathan’s orthodontist). When Iz had pushed the last nickel down the tray, she glanced up for the final total and screeched, “Mommy, we have $102.35!!!!”



I was amazed that we had that much. And then Iz asked, “Mommy, what do we do now?” The machine asked for our zip code, which I helped her enter, and she pressed the “Enter” button to expel our receipt. Then she said like a CoinStar professional, “Mommy, it’s going to come out right here.”

She grabbed the receipt and said, “Let’s go shopping!” She began to push the cart and walked off toward the bakery. I had never really seen her this excited; it seemed that while buying a lip gloss at Sephora made her feel like a big girl, buying groceries for the food pantry made her feel like a very good girl.

When I caught up to Iz, she said, “What do we need, Mom?” I said, “Tuna fish.” As she pushed the cart past the aisles, she scanned the sign over each aisle muttering to herself, “Tuna fish, tuna fish, tuna fish,” and then she said, “It’s down here!”

She went to grab the first can, and I said to her, “Let’s see what’s on sale and compare prices.” Iz then asked, “Can I put the things in the basket?” It became apparent to me that both mother and daughter liked all aspects (the list, pushing the shopping cart, looking for bargains, crossing things off the list) of grocery shopping.

After we had picked out 20 bags of ramen noodles, 12 four-packs of tuna fish, 10 cans of chicken noodle soup, 6 boxes of tooth paste, 6 bottles of 100% fruit juice, and 10 bars of soap, I said, “I think we’ve spent all our money now.” We pushed the carriage to the check out, and Iz began to unload everything onto the conveyor belt. Iz said to the cashier quite proudly, “We used all our change to buy this for people who don’t have food.”

I almost laughed out loud. The casher said to Iz, “Really? That’s very nice.” Iz beamed and pushed the carriage through the line.

When the last can of chicken noodle soup was scanned, the casher said, “$86.04.” I thought I was keeping track of what we spent, but apparently, my math was off. I said, “Aw, we could have bought more.”

Iz said, “Mommy, we can go back.” I said, “No. We got a lot.” And as we left the store, I thought of a good way to spend the last bit of money on another very worthy cause and said, “Iz, there’s $16 left. Do you want to go buy yourself a book or two at the bookstore?” to which I got a gleeful “Yes!”

After we put all the food in the food pantry box, we drove to the nearby bookstore. Iz spent an hour looking and finally decided on two chapter books. As an additional treat, I let her pick out a wolf bookmark, which only put us over budget by eight cents!



Lately, given the economy and my unemployment, I felt it was good for Iz to understand that there are times when you have to give up things or you give up things in order to give to others who have less. Today, Iz learned about helping others and got a well-deserved treat for her efforts. It was a very good way for both us to begin the week, remembering and appreciating how much we have and what’s most important. ♥