Overbuyer

IN “The Happiness Project,” its author Gretchen Rubin wrote about the overbuyer and the underbuyer.

And that’s how I discovered I’m an overbuyer. I’d rather overbuy toiletries, rubbing alcohol, face masks, office supplies, food, and books, than panicking at the last minute because oh my gosh I have nothing to, say, read.

The pandemic lockdowns taught me to overbuy. Remember those days? We were all staying home except for the essential people, so, no one was making toilet paper. We could have gone back to using leaves. And finally we saw why the need to be a plantito and plantita then.

We ordered everything online. Bought the biggest bottles of shampoo and hair conditioner which lasted till 2022. I still have that urge whenever I’m at the supermarket: Should I buy six? Oh, no more lockdowns—whew, hard habit to break.

But I still have that hard habit to break: packs of bath soap, boxes of toothpaste, 20 rolls of toilet paper, four huge packs of wet wipes, six bottles of hand wash, four huge boxes of facial tissue, three plastic containers of ball pens with 25 pieces per pack, all sizes of brown envelopes from long to the shortest, boxes of staple wire, staplers with staple removers, boxes of paper clips, Scotch tape, masking tape, I hoarded packs of pocket tissue and pocket wet wipes, ad infinitum, ad nauseam.

And here’s more. I seldom eat processed food now, but I bought six cans of corned beef, somehow forgetting there were still six cans in the cupboard. And I don’t even like corned beef because it’s too salty.

But I figured, we’re going to use all these, anyway, so better buy more.

When I switched to low-carb and learned that my most favorite macadamia nuts are in the safe list, I bought several packs of that, only to discover later that my body doesn’t like them anymore. This is one of the perks of an elimination diet: it’s easier to pinpoint the culprit. So, yes, no more nuts, especially peanuts, cashew nuts, and pistachios since these are in the caution list.

But at Shangri-La Mactan, I kept looking for peanuts since at least they’re not highest-carb goodies, and it was only at Tea of Spring, the Chinese resto there, that I found them. And that’s after our nightlife at the hotel’s bar Cowrie Cove where spicy popcorn was the only chicheria. I imagined a panel of judges looking at a checklist and saying, No peanuts, therefore, no longer five-star. Haha.

Anyway, Rubin’s thoughts on the overbuyer and underbuyer have this most important tip: Buy needful things. It’s the essentials again. The pandemic has definitely taught us about the difference between essential and non-essential.

The overbuyer and underbuyer have their respective pros and cons. The overbuyer may have a closet filled with rolls of toilet paper, thus, leaving no available space for the boxes of facial tissue that she also overbought. Meanwhile, the underbuyer realizes he has run out of toilet paper just when he desperately needs one.

“The Happiness Project” was published in 2009 when the pandemic was merely a figment in the biological chemical war freak’s imagination. Rubin was an underbuyer then. Has the pandemic created an overbuyer out of her? Hmmm.