The Used and Reused.

A few years ago I decided to eliminate most of the disposible things in our home - not an easy task some days. The first thing I did was stop buying most paper products - towels, plates,coffee filters, cups. No bottled water, reduced bottled beverages (neither of us drink soda so not an issue). We have containers, water bottles and I have a reusable lunch box. I started growing my own produce and yes I can yammer on about that all day every day - I love to garden! We use laundry sheets which take up no room, work well and there's no giant plastic container. Reusable shopping and produce bags, if we get something in a box i'll often use it as a donation box. I buy most of household things - cooking utensils, table cloths, etc at yard and estate sales - I've gotten such beautiful things for a tenth or less of the original price. I bought a pampered chef microwave pot brand new for $2, it's on Amazon for $40. Some of the girls clothes are used from consignment shops, kids grow so fast I occasionally find some really good buys. 95% of our furniture has come from Facebook Marketplace or estates sales - you get the idea. Even the house we live in was bought at 1/4 of what's it's worth today - doing the cleaning and work yourself saves you.

I've said before brand new only lasts as long as it's not in your house, the second you bring it through the door it's used, isn't it? And yes, you do have to be careful - the last thing we want to do is bring home unwanted visitors hiding but we dont' buy anything we're not sure of and certainly nothing dirty. We  have a beautiful leather living room set we purchased for $300 and refurbished ourselves, the iron and wood coffee table - $15. Our replacement chandeliers - new in the box and $5 apiece, scrounged from a hoarder sale. I love hoarder sales - I bought a large  tote for $20 a few months ago full of wrapped packages - they were brand new pelicans of every size and shape you can imagine. I only kept a few but the amusement value was off the charts and a lot people are now the proud owners of pelicans thanks to me. You're welcome! Not everything worked out of course, David refuses to entertain the idea of a bidet gently sprinkling his nether region and really nixed buying one at a yard sale. But other than that he's been onboard.

And the benefits! We of course save money because we don't spend a lot, when we retire we'll have to watch our spending, but we WILL be able to retire. I do plan on working a few more years though, I really like my job and it's pretty low stress - plus you know, money. One of the things I was surprised we save money on is trash collection, because we've drastically reduced our output we only have it picked up twice a month, we put out about 3 bags a month now. We save alot not buying pre-cooked or pre-packaged foods, dishes are washed as are containers. We recycle and reuse the bananas out of everything. This spring I'm planning on starting a compost pile to further reduce the trash with the goal of being able to just cancel it and David can bring what little we produce to the dump. I find I enjoy the challenge of it too, it's much more fun to find the things you wanted at a estate sale then simply take it off a shelf. Onward!