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Priorities

I have been cleaning up my house in preparation for Christmas.  Don't laugh: it really needs some work, I go pretty slow, and I'm not opposed to cleaning something again if necessary.  For example, the pantry and fridge already need a bit of work even though I cleaned them in January.

I cleaned out my dresser in May and found lots and lots of coins.  I gave them to Amanda and Luke to sort through while I decided what to do with them.  They separated out all the quarters, foreign coins, and really cool coins from the ordinary pennies, nickels and dimes.  But what to do with the rest?

My sister suggested Coinstar, which they have at our local grocery store.  It used to be that Coinstar would take out 7 cents for every dollar you put in, which I have a problem with.  It's not a logical problem: I'd probably be paying them 21 cents to take my coins out of my house and give me something valuable, which is actually a pretty good deal.  On the other hand, I hate paying 7% of my hard earned money...

However, since I didn't want to wrap the coins and I didn't want to take them to the bank, I had resigned myself to Coinstar.  I was just about to take the kids there when they came back with all the money they had sorted.  "And tomorrow we are going to sort the rest of the money and make a graph!"

On the one hand, I am responsible for keeping the house tidy and using money efficiently.  On the other hand, I am responsible for encouraging the kids to learn things and amuse themselves productively (read: not like I did when I was about their age).  So, even though I feel like it will probably be a mess, will probably not work well or get finished, will probably not yield any useful information, will probably not get us any more money, tomorrow we will be sorting coins and making a graph. And maybe I will be surprised!

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