I needed an envelope for something this morning. Usually I have a few on my desk. Those were all gone, so I went to my supply closet to grab a few more. I pulled a handful out of the gigantic box and realized…those were the last ones!
Yes, the 500-count pack of Amazon brand letter-sized envelopes is officially used up. In the modern era, one can learn the burn rate quite quickly. I went into the Amazon app and saw that I purchased the box of 500 envelopes in October 2019. So basically 5.5 years to finish the box. We seem to use approximately one and three-quarters envelopes per week around here.
With 7 people currently living here full-time we’re probably at close to our max on the burn rate for a lot of items. Milk. Eggs. Hand soap. Laundry detergent. Coffee beans. We go through a lot of snack-sized mozzarella packages (three little balls of cheese) but that’s mostly due to one child. Sandwich bread. I’m curious how the velocity of all this will change when one child (not the mozzarella one) moves out this fall.
Speaking of velocity…I got an exciting email from Australia Post this morning that my shipment of miniature furniture was in the system. This has been quite a process. Last November, I ordered a handful of items from a small business that’s located in Australia. I had ordered from there before and the items came quite quickly, so I’m not sure quite what happened — perhaps the owner was on a long summer vacation? I finally got a note in February that my order was on the way. Then I got a similar note in March. There was a tracking number from Australia Post, but it said they were waiting on the items. But this morning I learned the items are in transit! It says they’re being sent air mail, so we shall see how long they take to get from WA, which I assume in this case is Western Australia. Stay tuned!
What items do you go through quickly in your house?
We are also reaching the peak of our burn rate. We have another 15 months with our 17 yo at home and the 12 and 9 year olds are getting VERY hungry. As a result we go through large quantities of certain food items. String cheese and pasta seem to go very quickly. And we go through several pints of grape tomatoes and a 2 lb of baby carrots every week. And printer paper. Between school papers that occasionally need to be turned in on paper, my preference for editing on paper and my youngest son’s various art projects and stories we go through a ream of printer paper pretty quickly these days.
@Gillian – oh yes, the printer paper. I’ve put some limits on it! That’s kind of cool that your kids eat so many grape tomatoes and carrots 🙂
I have launched one so far (nine to go!) and have a graduating senior about to launch and although my sample size is small in my experience one kid moving doesn’t make a huge difference in consumption volume of food as teens are often not eating at home anyway…and all the younger kids are also growing/possibly eating more. What I have noticed is there are certain items that our consumption changes on…for example our college aged daughter was the only grapefruit lover in the family so I went from regularly buying a grapefruit or two to buying zero. So that’s my take…as of yet no big overall volume adjustments just particular item changes.
@Melissa- I guess that is true that one child wouldn’t lower it too much, especially as the little kids will get correspondingly bigger and hungrier at the same time. But I know we will go through less pizza dough next year for sure…
We have the same giant stash of Amazon envelopes (I think I still have several hundred to go).
What do we go through quickly? CHEESE. I cannot keep enough cheese in the house. Cottage cheese, aged cheddar, smoked gouda, and Swiss to be specific. Peanut butter. We consume an alarming amount of PB. And berries. If I buy berries they disappear in seconds.
@Elisabeth – inventory management is challenging because sometimes we wind up with TOO MUCH of something, and then in my mind we always have too much…until the day we are out. This happened with peanut butter recently. But we do still have six gigantic bottles of ketchup after running out a few months ago and then over correcting.
When our daughter left for college it took me a couple of months to figure out how much food to buy for dinners for the 3 of us remaining.
This biggest shock was in the laundry detergent (and Lysol additive). I have it on Amazon auto delivery and without her around it started piling and piling up. Between an extra set of sheets every week, her regular and workout clothes, it was a lot of laundry.
@Calee — one reason to always check on the subscribe-and-save deliveries!
Cheese, eggs and a particular brand of soft drink…
@Natalie – we’ve been going through a ton of seltzer around here. That might decline slightly in September…
It’s amazing how quickly the burn rate decreases when young adults start moving out! It’s taken me a long time to recalibrate my grocery buying in particular.
@Denise – yep, I think this will wind up being an interesting experiment over the next few years. Food buying will go up during times when people are there, down when they’re not, and as the number of people living in the house changes…although even when I’m down to two kids they will be two teenage boys and there is just a substantial volume that happens in these situations. Kid #1 needs lactose-free milk, and he was complaining on Sunday that we were out and I was like “huh?” because half a gallon had been purchased on…Friday.