You get home after a rough day, you go to roll the first one and you realise you have run out of everything. Or worse: you still have some material, but you open it up and it smells like hay because it has spent three months in a drawer soaking up heat.
It has happened to us so many times we could not even count them. So today here are four tricks to stretch what you have and never end up empty handed.
1. The first thing to run out is not what you think
Nine times out of ten, what leaves you stranded is not the contents: it is that you have no papers left, or you have run out of tips and end up rolling with a leaflet from the bank.
It is the easiest thing to avoid and the one most people neglect. A booklet of rolling papers costs 1.50 € and a pack of tips another euro. Always keep a spare in the drawer and you save yourself 90% of the misery.
If you want to forget about it for a long stretch, the full box of papers brings the price per booklet way down, and the 420 Pack sorts out papers, tips, grinder, lighter and all three trays in one go.
2. Weigh what you roll
It sounds like rationing, but it is the trick that makes the biggest difference. The reality is that the product is limited and so is your wallet.
If you get into the habit of weighing the amount (a 0.3, a 0.5, a gram), you stop eyeballing it. And when you eyeball it, it always goes up: the more you have in front of you, the bigger the joint gets without you noticing.
The good part: you keep your spending under control in a measurable way and, along the way, you get a real sense of how much you use. Plenty of people find out by weighing that they smoke a fair bit more than they thought.
The bad part: your joints are going to come out smaller. But they are going to last you twice as long.
One thing that helps: a transparent grinder lets you see how much you have ground without opening it, and a rolling tray stops what you have already weighed from getting lost across the table. It sounds daft until you add up what goes missing over a year.
3. Store it properly or you are throwing it away
This is the one people ignore the most. Light, heat and air break down the terpenes, which is exactly what makes it smell and taste of something. Well stored product lasts months; badly stored, in three weeks it turns into hay.
The rules are simple:
- An airtight container, not the open little bag from the day you bought it
- No direct light: do not leave it sitting on the windowsill
- Cool and dry, away from the radiator and the kitchen
- Not in the fridge and not in the freezer: humidity and temperature swings ruin it faster
And then there is the discretion side, which in a house with kids, visitors or flatmates is not a luxury. That is where the camouflaged Safe Stash jars come in handy: from the outside they look like a cleaning product or an ordinary tin, and inside they have their own airtight compartment. You store it well and you store it smart.
4. The trick nobody tells you: alternate
If what you want is for it to last, the most direct way is not to burn through it at every moment of the day.
Plenty of people save the good stuff for the evening or the weekend, and for the rest of the day they go for CBD flowers. They roll the same, they taste similar and they keep the ritual going, but they are not psychoactive: you stay in the plan without ending up out of the game.
If you prefer something more concentrated, CBD hash goes a lot further per gram. And if you would rather not smoke during office hours, there are the oils, the most discreet thing in the catalogue and they do not smell of anything.
Of all the tricks on the list, this is the one that stretches what you have in the jar the most.
To sum up
- Keep spare papers and tips, because that is the first thing to run out
- Weigh what you roll and stop eyeballing it
- Store it airtight, out of the light and cool, or you are throwing it away
- Alternate with CBD so you are not burning through it all day
What do you make of these tips? Would you put any of them into practice? Let us know what you think.
Head over to The Smoker's Guide to check out the rest of the articles.
