I almost always remember to bring my fabric bags when I shop, but one day last week, I found myself checking out without them. When the cashier asked if I wanted paper or plastic, I told her that I use the plastic bags for weatherstripping my basement doors. She was somewhat taken aback, but she gave me several extra bags and said she’d pass the idea along to a friend who has drafty doors.
I’m frugal, so this is only one of the many little ways I save money by not buying things that I can get for free. If you think about it, there are a lot of things that we accumulate without even trying, and many of them can be used for other purposes. Like those little foam trays that veggies and meat come to us on. My daughter’s teacher at the home-school co-op tells me that they make nifty block printers for the kids. They also make neat stencils, because the foam is thick enough to hold onto and trace around without breaking.
We have a neighbor who used a car wheel to make a windmill, but I’m not quite that handy. (Neat idea, though.) However, I have used old car tires, piled up, to help my son learn parallel parking, along with some trash barrels with rakes and shovels sticking out of them. If he hit them, they’d just fall over and wouldn’t hurt the car.
We use old sheets to cover the veggies when frost threatens. When they get threadbare and stained, wash cloths become napkins for pizza night. Why use paper ones or dirty our good napkins? Son knows how to make spoon rings out of thrift store spoons. Daughter uses old shoe and cereal boxes for “houses” for her stuffed critters and also makes them clothes out of old socks.
I bet if we all looked around we could come up with a lot of ingenious ways to reuse things. That’s what people did during the 30′s and many people who lived through the Depression kept that frugal habit. It’s not only practical, it’s good for the earth. The more things we reuse, the fewer things we’ll have to make and that’s a good thing.
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