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It's a Waste


 

Frugality.    It used to be a necessity.  Today it is not.  People have to write books to remind us to use a milk jug for bird seed.....and a broom handle to hold up a tomato plant.

Quotes from THE SPIRITS OF 76, by Eric Sloane:

Throwing things away has become an American habit.

It must have made life powerfully meaningful and extraordinarily exciting to create necessities like soap......

The spirit of frugality began its decline slowly until the last few decades of acceleration, when we have overcome the fine art of saving and finally established a unique economy of waste. 

Frugality is frowned upon as being associated with stinginess or poverty, yet it is actually a source of the richer life because frugality is founded on the principle that all wealth has limits.  Frugality is also a mark of intelligence and sensitivity..........

"Savings" nowadays refers only to money; if you say a person "saves" a lot, you usually infer that he has a lot of cash to show for it.  Today a rich man's will involves mostly cash holdings, but the old-timer's savings were in his woodpile, stock, carriages, buildings and land. 

We live in a world that wants us to recycle.  Re-use.  Two generations ago people did that very thing every day without being told.  We have brought the landfills upon ourselves because we want hundreds of plastic containers, bottled water and disposable diapers.  We became too busy to use cloth diapers and to pour water into a glass and drink it.  If everybody would become frugal and have a heart to not waste things in general, it would be good for the country and good for our homes.  We wouldn't have crazed GREEN people in charge of energy and regulation of it.

I am not for all this hoop-la about getting energy from wind.....but I sure don't mind using it to dry clothes on a line.  Get a clothesline and literally save your dryer for a rainy day.  Women say they don't like the way clothes feel when they are dried on a line....what they are really saying is:  It is HOT out there and I'm not going out back.  I'm putting my stuff in this dryer.  With a dryer sheet.

There is a difference between being frugal and being *GREEN*.  Figure out the difference and your home will be the better for it.







These things are now *crafts*
These things are no longer a necessity.
Now we buy fabric to make quilts.
(well....some of us)
You can actually buy strips of fabric to make rag rugs.
I remember my granny ripping men's shirts apart to make her rag rugs.  She undid old sweaters for the yarn to make her afghans. Now, if a footstool gets old, most will
throw it away instead of recovering it.



Awwww, lovely styrofoam and plastic.  We save cups and bottles.
The makers of bottled water say it is dangerous to re-use a bottle.
Then it must be dangerous to *use* a bottle.
How can putting water in a bottle be dangerous the second time but not the first?
Keep a few of these styro cups around and you'll never have anybody walking out to their truck with your favorite glass coffee mug.  The one with Snoopy on it. 




Paper towels are a luxury.  We do not need them.  I buy them though.  I get the cheapest ones they make.  We clean bathrooms and puppy potty with them.
They don't have to be Bounty the quicker picker upper to clean up a mess.  When my mom used a paper towel, she always used it twice.  She would wipe something off the fridge, then she would wipe up some water with it. 
When you go through a drive through window, you always get napkins in the sack.  Save them and use them.  There is always something to wipe off.





Guess what these are?  They are *cloth* tablecloths. 
They're reusable and pretty.  Yep...they take more time than a plastic one you wipe off and throw away.  You have to shake cloth tablecloths and wash them.  You have to hang them on the line, go out and get them if you want to go all natural.   They're neat.  Try them.





OK, this might be silly........but it's something I do. We buy drinking water.  Every drop we drink is purchased for a quarter at a machine.  It is not the funnest thing to do...to buy water and lug it around.  I drop quarters, lids, get my feet wet, there's no close parking spaces, and sometimes it is rainy.
So, the water I buy, I protect.  When *people* I know and love leave water in cups, I use the water for the birds, Bunny and sometimes my coffee pot.  The animals don't know it and by the time I make a pot of coffee with left over cup water, I have forgotten all about it.
IF we have company, I use water right out of the jug.  FYI





I also save bread sacks.  How many times have you taken all the hot dog buns out of the bag, used 4 of them, and the bag is in the trash under some chili.....then that causes you to have to use a new baggie for the buns.  I also freeze 1/2 a loaf of bread.  When you don't have six kids eating sandwiches, bread can go bad.
I take it out of the freezer as needed....and if bread does go bad....
the birds get it.  They also get rice and noodles and cookies.
I'm not gonna act like I never waste food.
That is something I need some work on.  I have a really
hard time with leftovers.





What's a picture of toys doing on this post about frugality? 
We have a 2,000 square foot house.
It has been a blessing to live in a house this size.
I have always had room to store things I wanted to keep.
These are the things I wanted to keep. 
They are the *good* toys.  The real toys.  More are in the chest.
Lincoln Logs, little cars, Tinker Toys, dishes, books, Kermit the Frog,
Leggo's, Micro-Machines and Little Ponies.
I plan to never have to buy any toys for any kid that ever steps foot in this house.  I kept all the good ones.  Somewhere along the line when we had little kids, some REAL toys were purchased and they are still very useful.





I'm not always so frugal. 





We always bring our leftovers home when we eat out.  Don't think you will never be hungry again, or that there isn't somebody at home that didn't get to eat out that won't appreciate the food.  Don't leave it there.  Don't be too cool to bring it home with you.





Whatever I wear and wash, if it isn't dress clothes, it goes on this rack to dry.  I use the dryer for dress clothes and I always dry handkerchiefs.  Don't ask me why.  I'm thinking a dryer uses lots of electricity.  I'm thinking our bill is high enough already.  Why should I add to it?  And yes, I did the same thing when we had six kids.  I used the rack and the line....for diapers and rubber pants....and little socks.  There is nothing more beautiful than a line full of diapers.

Leave a comment and tell me how you save money.  I love frugal ideas.



Comments

Kristi said…
Hmmm...this post leaves me feeling somewhat guilty for being less than as frugal as I should be.

~Kristi
Mo said…
And don't forget to make ice cubes out of leftover coffee for iced coffee.
Rebecca said…
I like your point that being green is not the same as being frugal! For over a month, we used water from the rain barrels to flush toilets. I confess I was hoping for a bigger savings on our water bill than what resulted. We DID use over 100 gallons less than the month before, but apparently we are only paying the base amount anyway...
Cordwood Cabin said…
Amen to good old-fashioned frugality! Far too many things can be reused that are often disposed of instead.

For instance, not saving stale bread for crumbling, freezing, and later thawing to coat chicken or pork chops; or sifting and saving flour leftover from bread kneading for making paper-mache pastes.
Anonymous said…
Those are some good ideas!

I reuse my water bottles too.

One frugal thing I do is I don't buy trash liners for the bathroom trashcans, I use grocery store bags or the plastic that the toilet paper is wrapped in to line them. I also use the grocery store bags for the kitty droppings after cleaning the cat box.
Mo said…
My granny used to crochet bread sacks into rugs. I never could do it.......
Waste not want not they say. Even when I lost half of the pair of lace curtains I kept the lone survivor, added a valance I had made for another house, some ribbon and had myself a perfect curtain for my laundry room! I get lovingly teased for my "recycling" but we have not a lot of extra money and it is to me, being frugal and smart with that money! I am saving now left over scraps from my dress making and it will be cut into strips and made into rugs. And I have used bread and grocery plastic bags to make rugs!
Sara said…
I hung up alot of those clothes on your line when I was at home. It helped me to not mind so much to use my own these days. Especially since my dryer is broke and EVERYTHING is getting line dried!
kt said…
I LOVE my clothesline! I LOVE cloth diapers on my babies...I LOVE repurposing a piece of clothing into a new piece of clothing...I am practically addicted to yarn & fabric--so I avoid *those* aisles. haha. ;-)

O! a new frugal discovery is infant potty training! I already use cloth diapers but this saves me time & energy by saving a diaper change! ;-)

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