unsanitary.

i felt sort of bad leaving them there… but there is something even too gross for me about picking up pennies on the mall bathroom floor. also, how does one skirt the stigma? place was packed. am i emotionally resilient enough to overhear mothers tell their young daughters how dirty i am?

brass in pocket.

it was time. no etsy sales, no takers for my personal organization service, i had to put at least a little something into the pot today. time is running out, and i am doing a piss poor job getting it together. coinstar to the rescue! well, sort of.

after a serious bout of searching in couch cushions and pants pockets, i came up with a fairly sizable sack of pennies, nickels, dimes, and one random half dollar to cash in. you may notice the conspicuous absence of quarters from the list. unfortunately, we are still tethered by the shackles that are pay-laundry. all quarters (without exception), are to be placed in the laundry fund. bummer.

still, i had a pretty good wad going on. to the grocery store!

what’s great about coinstar is that it’s everywhere. pretty much ever major supermarket in town has one of these bitches, and for the very small fee of $.02 per dollar, your 10 lb. sack of pennies gets turned into dollar bills in about 5 minutes.

but is it $.02 too much?  as far as coinstar is considered, they always give you the option of donating the full amount to a non-profit of your choice. or at some machines, you can get the full amount on a gift card for cvs, old navy, itunes… or some other crap i don’t care about.

but if you want all your money in cash, you do still have a couple other options.

anyone up for some good old fashioned change rolling? this doesn’t entirely qualify as free, unless you already have some/can score some coin wrappers for free. otherwise, you’ll have to buy some– and it looks like they can cost over $.04 each. also, i can’t imagine anyone actually wanting to hover over a pile of loose change for hours quietly counting and rolling… but hey, just letting you know what your options are.

but seriously, your best bet for fee-free coin counting is definitely the penny arcade located at TDbanks.  it’s pretty much just like coinstar in function, except that an adorable cartoon girl leads you through the process. AND, you get to play a game where if you guess your total change within $1.99, you get a prize. despite copious googles, i have yet to find out exactly what the “fabulous prizes” actually are (although this story is really tragic). anyone? anyone?

i chose coinstar because the bank  is closed on saturday, and i didn’t feel like waiting anymore (or carrying all my fucking change across town). regardless of the fee, i still and managed to finally put $14.72 toward my $1,000 goal. $985.28 to go. fuck.

add it up.

i’ve found them in hotel bar couch cushions, underneath potato chip racks, chipped them out of the ice with a ball-point pen, and rescued them from laundromat lint trays.  i’ve scanned sidewalks and check-out lanes from portland to jonesport (and all stops in between- and a few below), and dodged sideways glances from people who either thought i was a complete weirdo, or were jealous they didn’t get to it first.  all in all there were:

885 pennies

56 nickels

177 dimes

51 quarters

8 pieces of paper money (2 twenties, 1 five, & 5 ones)

1 golden dollar

*i also found 9 canadian pennies, 2 chuck e. cheese tokens, 1 boston subway token, and a few other assorted pieces of undefinable foreign currency.

for a grand total of $93.10. that’s roughly $.25 a day. not bad.

which means that cassie– with your guess of $89.50 (the closest without going over), you are the winner! woooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooot! good times.

p.s. extra props to the boyfriend who counted and cataloged every last penny of it on his day off.