Convenience is not a Virtue

Whenever we settle for the convenient choice, we pay a higher price for less value.

Two examples:

Fast food.

• Costs more per serving than an actual, from scratch home cooked meal.
• Far less nutritional value, much higher load of empty calories, fat, and sodium.
• Social value of eating a meal together is diminished.
• Lose opportunity to work together to prepare, partake and clean up.

Disposable diapers.

• Far more expensive, even when costs of water, detergent, and wear on washing machine are taken into consideration. (Even when we had to use a laundrymat, it was less to pay to wash diapers than it would have been to buy disposables.)
  
• Ever smell the inside of a diaper genie? With cloth, waste is flushed away pretty quickly. (Even poop in disposable diapers is supposed to be flushed--read the package if you don't believe me. But who does that? It wouldn't be convenient.)
• Once you have a supply of cloth diapers, you don't have to buy anymore. No more monthly trips to a big box store for something that you intend to throw away. Independence.
  
• Generally earlier potty training. I'm certainly more motivated--after all, it's inconvenient to scrub those diapers.

Obviously, there are far more examples (and arguments in the ones that I did list). The main point is that whatever we do, we should do well. We should take pride in our work. If we settle for something out of convenience, we're cheating. And on some level, we will feel some level of uneasy dissatisfaction, even if we can't quite pinpoint the cause.