I know, I know. This is one of the weirder post titles I have on here. And I’ve had some weird ones …

My mom was basically a professional shopper. She excelled at finding deals and cutting coupons, and she bragged to me about those times when she somehow finagled such a deal that the cashier at the store actually owed her money after she finished checking out.

My mom wasn’t above buying several copies of the same newspaper just to clip a specific, extra juicy coupon. And if the coupon could only be used once, she had no shame in checking out with her single item, dropping it off in her car, then walking right back into the store and buying the same exact item multiple more times until she used up all of her coupons.

That I use the phrases “wasn’t above” and “had no shame” says something about me, not her.

More than once, she tried to enlist my help redeeming her multiple coupons. I would ever only go as far as to check out separately from her. But I would only do it once. I absolutely refused to go back into the store and buy another one of the same item.

Looking back, I don’t know why it was such a big deal to me. I don’t know why I was “above” doing this and felt such shame at the idea of it. And so, coupon multiple-dipping has become one of those trivial but also weirdly significant things I regret not having supported my mom on when she was still alive.

After she died, this is just a smattering of what I came across that she had left behind:

Well, correction. This is a better representation of what she left behind:

Boxes and boxes of new and unopened home supplies, most of which was still usable. I just chose to arrange everything neatly onto those shelves, so I could take what I wanted and give away what I didn’t want.

June 2020 is when I started sorting through my mom’s house. Up until June 2020, I was a bar soap kind of guy. In June 2020, I switched to body wash — and those adorable little poofy poofs — sole because I didn’t want my mom’s valiant shopping efforts to go to waste.

Flash forward to October 2025, and I finally finished my mom’s last bottle of body wash. Thanks to my mom’s shopping efforts, I didn’t need to buy any bodily cleaning products for OVER FIVE YEARS.

And to be clear, this is not an accidental self-own. I am an avid showerer, probably an over-showerer if I’m to be honest. So it is stupidly impressive that my mom’s stash of body wash lasted me that long.

And that takes me back to the topic of trivial things that are weirdly significant …

I feel an odd pang of sadness that I have finally used up all of the bottles of body wash my mom procured during the last few years of her life. Because she was so good at amassing random home items, I just kind of took for granted, for decades, that I wouldn’t have to shop for things like soap, or shampoo, or toothbrushes.

It’s not for thriftiness that I feel a pang of sadness that I have to buy these products for myself now. It’s that I’m realizing how all the random little ways she impacted my life are inevitably fading, one bottle of body wash at a time, as the years continue to go by. Looking through my home today, I see far fewer reminders of my mom than I would have six years ago.

And yeah, that does make me a little sad.