In the larger scheme of things, the death of my crock pot, is, well, a very minor glitch in my life.
On Friday, I took my crock pot down from its shelf, after having retiring it there for the summer (I don't do hot chulent during the summer), dusted it off and noticed a very large crack in the liner (the "crock" part). Hoping it was just a surface wound, I tested it by filling it up with water. Instant fail. Yeah, that crock was history. Ba-bye crock pot.
It's a little annoying when only part of an appliance dies, and it's a crucial part renders the entire appliance unusable, like when I smashed the carafe on my coffeemaker. I did a little research and just as it costs more to replace the carafe than the coffeemaker, it costs more to replace the liner than to replace the crock pot. I'll do better value-wise replacing the entire appliance. So, sadly, the crock pot is going to follow the coffeemaker into Freecycle (I'm sure someone out there can make a planter out of it, or something), and my frugal quest for a new slow cooker has begun. Charge! Hi ho Silver! Go Cheapskate! Etc.
Now, notice what I didn't do. I didn't rush out to Target and say "one crock pot please" and buy whatever was on the shelf. The most unfrugal way to buy anything is to rush into it. If I was suddenly having ten teenage boys over for a Shabbat lunch next week and desperately needed a crock pot, I would either 1) take my Passover crock pot out of storage, use it, and then shop for its replacement or 2) borrow one. As it stands now, there's no rush.
I have a confession to make. The crock pot that just died was part of a crazygood purchase I made at Target about a year and a half ago, when I bought three stainless steel 6 quart crock pots for $15 each. Yup, $15. One became a shower gift, one became my Passover version, and the last one is the deceased of which I speak. So, for a $15 purchase, I'm not all that broken up about the demise. Truth is, I've been hankering after the three-in-one Hamilton Beach slow cooker that my friend Sally A. has for quite some time. It comes with 3 crocks: 2 quart, 4 quart and 6 quart. This is a great feature for me, as I can size-down when it's just my husband and me for lunch, and size up-when we have a million Shabbat guests or I want to make a large pot of comfort-food soup. I've kind of been waiting for an excuse to buy this, but until my current one died, I had neither the room nor the reason to. And now, on to the quest.
I'm going to wait around for one of those seasonal $5 off $50 promo codes and see if I can time it to stack with a ShopAtHome.com Extra Cash Back Event. My goal is to pay no more than $45 for this. I'm also going to take into consideration that I have hundreds of dollars of credit in my Amazon account from Swagbucks, that I have a stack of $5 Target gift cards from sales promotions, and that I have at least $300 in Home Depot cards in our house emergency fund, redeemed from credit card points. So in effect, anything I buy at these three store will be free, or at least, no cash out-of-pocket.
I'm going to post Part 2 of My Frugal Quest when I'm just about ready to buy. For now, I watch and wait.
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