My Mom is notorious for grabbing all the freebies she can get, which has resulted in my embarrassment on many occasions. (Don’t make me share the tartar sauce incident!) Maybe that’s the reason I only take what I need at restaurants. Plus, we have a ‘condiment basket’ at the office–if you don’t use all the ketchup you get with your fries, you toss it in the basket, so it’s there for the taking for anyone else who needs it. It works pretty well for everyone, so I don’t really find myself needing to resort to freebie-snatching.
But for some reason, I do help myself to the hotel room stuff. Maybe I’m more like Mom than I thought! :smack:
No because it always backfires on me. I’ll toss the extra catsup packages in the junk drawer and eventually one of them will get pierced and start oozing all over the bottom of the drawer, then harden and glue everything into place.
I don’t think I’ve ever had a leftover condiment package come in handy, so I stopped taking extras a long time ago.
I rarely take more than I might use because I know I’m just going to end up throwing them all away later, when I wonder how old they are or whether I can use the space for something else.
I have a habit of throwing away my sweetie’s packets, if they’ve been in the fridge for ‘too long’. <which to me is 6 months>
I usually speciffy how many packets I want to prevent getting a baggie with 16oz worth of ketchup in little packets. I guess I may take a bunch of napkins to have extras in the car.
Freebies at community functions/expo’s etc. I pass up too, don’t need extra cheap pens, notepads, nailfiles, flying discs(if they gave away whammo frisbees I’d take two!) magnets or other junk.
Now when the hubster goes to the houseware show or the furniture show yes bring back freebies!
Those self serve packets are wonderful for traveling. Always before I would leave for a trip I’d start saving salts, peppers, mustard, relish, ketchup, vinegars, duck sauce, chili sauce, soya sauce, whatever I could get my hands on. Throw them all into a small ziplock and into one of the pockets of my daypack, which is on my shoulder as we board planes, trains, buses etc. They take up next to no room and can seriously improve life on the road, if you keep them at hand.
Beyond that, I am not a collector, because they just pile up.
Here in Budapest, the fast food emporiums (McDonalds, Burger King, KFC - we got most of 'em here - no Taco Bell yet though) charge for ketchup, bbq sauce, mayonnaise, whatever. No freebies. They used to only give out one thin napkin, too (i.e., it was like they took a paper napkin, opened it all up and then cut it into four squares and gave you one square; and no helping yourself to them either), but they’ve loosened up some on that.
So you really only buy what you need for right then.
I don’t, mainly because I don’t use any condiments to begin with. Now, even ketchup covers up the taste of the food: it’s doesn’t accent it or help it. But I do remember one summer: I was in summer school, and we found out that the cafeteria would not be serving meals. My church sent me to school with a whole bunch of groceries. One person had collected a grocery bag full of utensils from Wendy’s (still wrapped) and gave them to me for the summer.
Like blondebear, I always take fruit from the hotel breakfast bar, which becomes lunch later in the day. I also pick up liquid creamer cups from any restaurant we stop at, because the powdered stuff in the hotel room is an abomination.
In the hotel room, I take shampoo, conditioner, lotion, soap, and pens. It always gets used at home, since the kids will run right out of something before they put it on the grocery list.
I don’t take any more than I plan to use. My mom used to collect packets and napkins and plastic ware until you couldn’t open the fridge without having to catch them as they fell out of the butter cabinet or the egg shelf. It was ridiculous. I won’t save even one.
Not usually, they never get used. Sometimes I take extra condiment packets or napkins when I’m eating at work, in case I forget next time, but not usually (I don’t usually buy food here, though).
My grandmother, like many grandmothers, had a thing for packets of Sweet ‘n Low. They were everywhere in my grandparents’ house when my parents cleaned it out after their death - and they weren’t hoarders, she just liked to know the Sweet 'n Low was there.
One can never have too many spare napkins stashed in the car. I’m not greedy about it, suppose I think I’ll need 2 napkins, I’ll take 3 or 4. Condiment packets tend to be forgotten about before the make it back to the house, so I only take what I’ll use of those.
What I would take, if it were available, is True Lemon packets. I like unsweetened iced tea with lemon. Fast food places either have fresh lemon wedges or nothing. (Sometimes they have packets of liquid lemon juice concentrate, which are acceptable but prone to puncture so not easy to carry around.) True Lemon is Da Bomb. I try to keep a few packets in my purse for those times when I have to resort to bottled tea, but I always run out.