There are Machines That Count Your Change for You...Automatically!

I love these things.  The Coinstar machines you find scattered around area grocery stores.  They now figure into what is fast becoming a ritual for Kate and me.  Each night we chuck our pocket change into one of two old spaghetti jars (Prego for the purposes of this story).  And then cart them over to the Coinstar down the street from work once they're filled.

Normally Coinstar charges you, I believe, eight cents for every dollar you dump in.  But, if you have your change converted to a gift certificate, the counting fee is waived.  You get a free, dollar for dollar counting and conversion of your change.  So our ritual ends with a gift certificate to Amazon.com, and a spending spree.  It's a great excuse to go crazy and buy a few small things for ourselves without feeling guilty.

Since change sometimes doesn't feel like real money (and in denominations less than a dime it almost isn't) using the Coinstar sort of feels like playing a slot machine that always pays out.  Like we've found a machine that converts Monopoly money into spendable cash, or a key to the service hatch on one of those robotic arm / stuffed toy contraption filled instead with all the stuff we've been wanting for the last six months.

Really.  Try it if you haven't.  You'd be surprised how quickly pocket change adds up to a big hunk of cash.  This last time, after collecting for somewhere in the neighborhood of eight to ten months we had 133 bucks.  Not too shabby, coming from a couple of spaghetti jars.

One caveat.  Empty your spaghetti jars before placing any money in them.  Otherwise over time the law of displacement will send rancid tomato sauce all over your nightstand, and down into your sweater drawer.  Have you tried getting spoiled Prego out of cashmere?  After the second time, we learned...