Don't Skimp the Small Stuff

Sometimes, it's the little things. Like getting excited that your ice cube tray actually makes ice cubes.

Our teeny little RV fridge supposedly has an icemaker. I say "supposedly" because it's never worked. We haven't bothered to get it fixed, and in the meantime we're using a temporary ice cube tray. Have you ever seen one of those minature ice cube trays that come with the dorm-sized refrigerators? Each ice cube is about the size of a marble? That's what we used the first six months (yeah, temporary). Eveuntally we got tired of using the entire tray ON ONE DRINK. We didn't go so far as flipping a coin for who got the ice cubes in their beverage, but it was close a couple of times.

So I was at the grocery story a while back, and decided to browse the ice cube tray selection. My choices were:

$1.99, pretty blue trays with fancy oval-shaped cubes, and STACKABLE!
$2.99, your basic white ice cube tray.

It was no question... stackable! pretty! blue! cheap!

As it turns out, those trays were totally not worth the $1.00 that I saved.

The blue trays were crap. Yeah, they stacked, but they had one major design flaw: they did not give up the ice cubes. You would spend 10 minutes just trying to get two cubes to pop loose. You could twist that tray until the plastic cracked (which we did), you could turn it upside down and hammer on the bottom of it for hours... those ice cubes were not coming out.

A few weeks ago, I went back to the store. I splurged the extra dollar on the standard white boring-looking tray. It advertised just one selling feature: easy-out.

And the promise delivered. You barely have to touch it and the ice cubes slide out like butter on a hot stove.

Is it sad that a working ice cube tray can totally make my day?