Me electric kettle is a rift in the space/time continuum

This post is in response to the Sept Coffee Talk Topic posted by Sandy over at First Gen American. Go visit her to see her Household Metaphors post as well as a list of all the participating bloggers.
When we went to England in 2008, we realized quickly that our hotel rooms didn’t have alarm clocks or even phones. It seemed like no one wanted us to get up in the morning for our free breakfast. But that was okay, because one thing every room had was an electric kettle.
Neither the hubby nor I are coffee drinkers, but we love herbal teas- we’d even brought a large selection of tea with us. We started and ended every day with a cup of tea.
While we were there, we wondered why we didn’t have an electric kettle at home. I had a cute teapot for the stovetop, but we didn’t seem to use it that often. In fact, we drank more of our own tea stash during that week and a half in England than we had in the previous three months at home. Considering we went to England in March, those previous three months were prime hot tea drinking times, so this was saying something.
When we got home, we decided we would get ourselves an electric kettle.
This wasn’t as easy a decision as it may seem. While electric kettles aren’t expensive, I wanted a cute one, and a high quality one, so the price went up a bit. We didn’t have a whole lot of spare money after the trip, and I was in my last semester of an MBA program, so our bills were going to go up soon.
We also have a tiny kitchen with limited counter space. Not even our toaster gets to live on the counter. That right was reserved for the microwave, the electric can opener, and the rice cooker.
In addition, it was now spring going in to summer. Who drinks hot tea at that time of year?
But we bought an electric kettle. And it lives happily on the counter, sometimes pushed way back under the cupboards, but it doesn’t leave that spot.
The stove top kettle got moved to the back of the cupboards over the fridge, and if I hadn’t been searching for something there a few weeks ago, I would not remember we had it.
But besides making hot tea and hot chocolate a quick and easy task, especially as fall hits, every time I use my electric kettle, it takes me back to England, to the mornings planning what we were going to do that day and the evenings simply relaxing with my husband.
Taking less time to make a cup of tea means I have more time to enjoy the cup of tea. It gives me a chance to sit and relax before I start my day or as I unwind at the end of it. Time slows down, or at least that’s how it feels.
How is this a financial lesson? We bought something we didn’t strictly need (hello stove top kettle, microwave, and just using a pot to heat up water), didn’t really have room for, and we spent more on it than we needed to just so that it could be “pretty”. By most personal finance measures, that’s a bad purchase. But for us, it wasn’t. It was one of the best purchases we have made.
It wasn’t all that expensive, and in the end, it provides us with something that you can’t put a price on- an instant return to a vacation of a lifetime and moments of peace.
Not every purchase needs to be practical. It just needs to be worth what you’re paying for it. And trust me, peaceful moments are worth a whole lot more than I paid for a single electric kettle.