Important Life Lessons

I have learned that there are some products that you can buy generic forms of, and be perfectly happy. For instance, contact solution. I am a cheapo and went with the $3.00 contact solution instead of the $9.00 solution, and I have been happy with it. Or take laundry detergent. It may not smell as nice, or have a pretty box, but it works just fine.

There are some things, however, that I have learned that you do NOT want to skimp out on:

1. Garbage bags that have "odor blocking technology". When my mom and sisters first helped me move into our house we went on a shopping spree. My mom paid for a lot of nice things for me, one of those being odor blocking garbage bags. After we had used up all of those, Jeff and I went shopping to get new garbage bags. We went with the cheapo ones that you can get a million of, for only a couple of dollars. We have since found out that odor blocking technology is not fake. It is real. I especially realized that the other night when I opened up the garbage can to throw something away and started gagging. I almost threw up, people! Next time I will pay for the good ones.

2. Drain declogging solution. I don't know what our bathtub has against us, but it is constantly clogging up. So we originally tried some Drano, and it worked like a charm. A little while later, we had our drain clog up again. This time, we tried some generic stuff that was much cheaper. It worked a little bit, but within a week the drain had clogged up again. Then we bought some other generic stuff that was on sale--it didn't work at all. So, we gave in and went to Walmart at 11:00 on Monday night to get some Drano. Again, worked like a charm. I think we learned our lesson on that one.

3. Orange juice. Now you could go for the cheaper version and get some sort of watery/sour drink, or you could get oranges squeezed right into your mouth. That is seriously what drinking this sweet nectar of the gods tastes like. Yum yum yum. Also, their apple juice is to die for.

4. Dog treats. When you have a finicky princess like us, you have to get the goods. She just refuses to eat cheap, generic brand treats, which makes behavioral reinforcement training somewhat hard. Luckily she adores human food, so if we really want to train her we can just pull out the ham and cheese. Little monster.

There are probably a bunch of other things that I am not listing, but I just can't seem to think of any others. What am I missing?