I Smell Fruit

I do not consider tissues to be a necessity. I know this is a shock to my husband, who believes that people need tissues like people need food and water, but really, until I was an adult, I never never bought tissues, Band-Aids or paper plates. Now, as a mom, I believe in the immense healing power that one Band-Aid can bring to a minor boo boo, and I do buy those. But I have never been an adult fan of paper plates, especially since we have a whole cabinet of perfectly good, washable dishes to use. I also never think to buy tissues (use some toilet paper, if you have to...how often do most people blow their noses, anyway?).

Until now.

I discovered these Kleenex tissues, and I'm in love (no, this is not a paid post...the Kleenex people don't know how geekily in love I am with their tissues). We found the watermelon box at the grocery store a couple weeks ago, and Kevin was surprised when I bought them, no coupon or anything, just because they were cute. Then when I was at Target last week with the kids, we found them on clearance ($1.47 a box) and picked up several boxes, including the kiwi and the pineapple. We were so taken by them that Joseph and I spent about a half an hour on the deck, fiddling with settings on the camera to get the best shots of them.

Joseph came up with different ways to stack and configure them:

I just love how they look like giant wedges of real, juicy fruit. I cannot explain why I like to see giant wedges of juicy fruit on the back of the toilets, which is where we keep the open tissues, but I like it. The colors of these are really vivid (they look even better against that purple Adirondack chair), and they just make me happy. Not bad for $1.47.

We have gone totally the route of fabric napkins for the past month or so. I am not, however, prepared to go to reusable handkerchiefs. I do the laundry here, and I actually enjoy it (thank you, new front loader. I love you). But Kevin blows his nose quite a bit, and I don't want to wash reusable tissues. These boxes will last us quite a while, since he is really the main (or only, really) tissue user in the house. The rest of us just get to enjoy the beautiful colors. And I know I will find some use for those beautiful boxes when they're gone. That's recycling.

The only box we couldn't find, which I know they make, is the orange wedge. Now Joseph is obsessed with finding the orange wedge box, and he looks for it every time we go out. I told Kevin that if we find it on our vacation, be prepared to make room for several boxes of the orange wedge in the Meredith Van, since we're buying them. The collection feels incomplete without it.

I'm greedy for more color.