Toilet paper deflation.

Remember when double toilet paper rolls were so huge that you couldn't fit them on the roll? They were super fat.

Now they're not fat anymore. They're regular size.

The regular-sized toilet paper rolls, meanwhile, have become very tiny. They only have like 10 wipes.

This is called toilet paper deflation. And I'm proud to say that I made up that phrase myself. It also works with paper towels. There is paper towel deflation.

I think various food items are deflating as well. Those 100 calorie snack packs are examples of food deflation. You're paying more for individually wrapped food, less in quantity.

I think various fast food items are deflating in size. I remember the whopper and big mac seemed to be bigger when I was a kid.* Large fries were LARGE. Now large fries are regular-sized and if you want a large you have to order a SUPER-SIZED.

But back to the toilet paper: I like to read the label and read how many individual sheets come on each roll. Then I roughly look at price and try and figure out which toilet paper brand is cheaper, based on quantity and ply-level.

You know what? They're all about the same. There might be 10 cents to 30 cents difference between the packages.

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*Note: Of course, I was smaller, so relativity-speaking, they were bigger. The quarter-pounder hamburger could not have changed sized.

PS: I also recently noticed this with garbage bags. You have to look for the largest sized bags - the "giant super-sized bags". If not, you'll end up paying for tiny, useless bags that can't physically hold any garbage

I saw 37 quilting magazines at my grocery store.

What the hell is quilting and why are there so many quilting magazines? I counted 37 today in the magazine section of the grocery store. 37!

I think quilting is like sewing. I think old people do it. Not sure because I never seen anyone looking at quilting magazines. So how can there be 37?

Let's assume they're quarterly magazines. That would mean there were 148 magazines last year at that grocery store just about quilting. If they're monthly, 444 magazines about quilting.

If each magazine has 5 articles or projects, that works out to between 740 and 2220. So we'll take a nice, round median of 1000.

1000 new articles about quilting per year - at that grocery store. That's a lot of quilting. There must be a demand for quilting or else there wouldn't be so many quilting magazines.

I must remember to ask some older people I know if they quilt. The thing is I don't know many older people. I asked my co-worker just now and she said her friend does it.

Well, her friend certainly has lots of resources in the quilting world.

Are extended warranties good or bad?

Cindy bought me an expensive cell phone for Christmas. It lasted 10 days before it stopped working. She returned it to the store and they're mailing it to the repair centre in Toronto.

Nowadays when you buy electronics, the salesman pushes an extended warranty on you. Why? Because they make a huge commission off of it (I know this from a friend who works in retail), and because electronics are made shitty.

I don't know if the extended warranty trend is good or bad. On the plus side, an extended warranty means insurance on an electronic item. On the other hand, it's a cash-grab for electronics manufacturers who no longer have any motivation to build high quality items that last.

Since when did we have to start paying a premium on top of the original price, just to ensure that the object lasts longer than a year? Overall, I'm thinking this is a bad trend for consumers.

It's related to my October 15th post in which I wrote:

Another gripe I have with the post office is insurance on lost items. You can pay more to "cover" the cost of a lost item, in case the post office screws up. Here's what the post office is essentially saying:

"Here's the cost for mailing a letter. Now, if you pay more, and we screw up, you'll get your money back." Umm, shouldn't you get your money back, regardless? They didn't do their job.