| Eco(n)-quandary: De-clutter or be frugal? Sometimes I look around my house, which Im trying to streamline, and I wonder why we cant just be tidy. You know, minimalist.We used to be pack rats, but thats not so much the case. Weve gotten rid of the trifle bowls and extraneous candlesticks that we received as wedding gifts in 1995 and never used. Instead, our challenge now is that we are trying to save money and be friendlier on the environment. Instead of using disposable wipes or paper towels to clean, we use washable rags, so we usually have some rags drying, draped over the shower rod or the utility sink in the laundry room.
A few times a week, the laundry itself is hanging on the outside umbrella line or on the wooden rack in the laundry room.
We buy many things in bulk and stock up on sales, and these stores are on shelves in the laundry room and stacked around on the floor: 20-lb bags of rice, 40-lb bag of dog food, two big bags of bird seed, a bag of thistle for the finches, a gallon bottle of Dr. Bronners soap.
Instead of dechlorinating tablets for the water that goes in our front porch water garden (where our goldfish, Sunshine, lives), we often have a big pot of water dechlorinating overnight on the stove.
Because we cook a lot and try to use the least energy-sucking appliances instead of more wasteful/polluting appliances (like the gas oven), we have extra appliances a bread machine, a hot air popcorn popper, a CrockPot, a toaster oven.
We keep a supply of empty bottles, bags and tubs for re-use. I have several boxes of canning jars (not to mention the huge canning kettle) stacked up for food preservation. Another milk crate holds various bottles, jars and tubs. I have a stash of materials to re-use from foil under the sink, to wads of washed plastic bags, to plastic bags to pick up dog poo (I havent yet made the dog poo composting system I hope to implement in an unloved corner of our back yard), a small stack of paperboard berry containers to re-use or return to Berry Patch Farms, plastic cereal bags to re-use as gift bags or in lieu of waxed paper when Im rolling out or refrigerating pie crust ? you get my drift (or is that drifts of what some might label trash?).
We use various cloth items in the bathroom instead of disposable, so we have various storage buckets sitting around, plus a bucket in the tub to catch shower water to recycle, plus a bucket or two of leftover washing machine water in the other bathroom to recycle for flushing.
I bought Ziploc bags in bulk last November. I wash and re-use the bags, and avoid them when I can, so I expect my stash will last me something like two or three more years.
I even have extra dog toys on hand because the three-pack was cheaper per unit than a single and a box from Freecycle contained these fleece scrubbies that Cheap Dog loves to shake like a fleecy rodent. |
