Sharing is Hot

Sometimes I wish I were a more practical blogger, like my friend Karen over at Living Well on Less. She has a fantastic blog today about the benefits of sharing a car. My first thought was, "Oo! Oo! That's something SCL and I do! Yay I'm doing something smart financially." I don't know if any of you read financial blogs, but most of the time, they depress me and make me feel like I'm not frugal enough. These feelings of inadequacy can only be alleviated with chocolate or new shoes. So, I don't really read them much anymore. I'm contributing to my IRA, consolidating student loans (finally came through!), and not going into debt. And SCL and I are still on track with our budgeting. We're even building up a balance in our joint account; imagine that!

But, Karen's post had me thinking about sharing and how it can help your relationship, not just financially but in other ways, too. Sharing a car means 1) less gas money needed 2) one parking permit rather than two 3) one insurance policy instead of two. We also just drive less in general. But, sharing a car means another shared space that we have. Most of the time spent in the car is together time for us, driving to an event or going to the grocery store. It reminds me of being a little kid and having good conversations with my mom when she took me to my millions of lessons every week, bless her.

Sharing, I'm learning, is about having another person in mind, not just splitting things in two. Whether it's the last piece of pizza or the first one to get into the bathroom in the morning, we try to be mindful of the other. Honestly, I think SCL is better at this than me, even though I'm the one with siblings (though to be fair, I have two older brothers, and if I wanted the last of anything, I had to snatch it when I had the chance. Survival mode, baby.) But, I'm learning to be better at sharing. Trying to better anyway.

Sharing also means a lot more work sometimes. Every time I do laundry, I complain that there are way too many white undershirts to clean. (WHY DO MEN HAVE SO MANY WHITE T-SHIRTS????) There are more coffee mugs to wash, more hair on the bathroom floor to try to vacuum up with little luck, less time for the DVR to record all of my favorite shows--and believe me, there are a lot of them.

This will be the first year we're sharing on holidays. We'll spend Thanksgiving with SCL's parents and Christmas at my house. Even harder than sharing is being shared, I think. It's another lesson, another opportunity to grow together, and more than anything, I'm thrilled to finally be sharing the holidays with the one I love.