I don't know about anyone else but I hate being wasteful! I hate spending money. I hate wasting gas by making unnecessary trips into town after things I forgot to buy while I was there anyway. I hate wasting food by letting it go bad in the refrigerator; in fact, one of the reasons I bought chickens is because I can feed them food that would normally go to the trash and they lay eggs, therefore reducing wasted food. I hate throwing away things that I spent hard earned money on and I always wonder if I might need it again someday. In short I'm a bit of a pack rat.
So I've done research on the subject a few times and here is what I have come up with.
Giving away or throwing away items I can no longer use is not wasteful. Buying something that I didn't need in the first place was wasteful. The buying of the item is in the past and there is nothing I can do about it, but I can learn from it. So I have to learn to shop smarter and ask myself if I really need the item before buying it. Having my husband injured and out of work has been a huge help in reining in my spending and learning to be more frugal. The basics were always there, but I had gotten a bit free with my spending. It's been tough but I feel a lot better about my budget now. Now I'm impatient for my husband to get better and go back to work so we can actually start saving money instead of spending it.
For those of you who have these same tendencies I have an easy way for solving that second problem I mentioned. What if I throw away something I might actually need? An easy way to answer that question is to ask myself, have I used this item in the last six months or a year? If no, then I can safely get rid of it. If I'm still unsure I can put it in a box in the attic with the date on it and if I don't open the box in six months I don't need it. :) It really works. If you have pack rat tendencies give it a try.
*Note: Sorry this is sort of off topic and not related to the farm, but I was drawing a blank about what to write so I wrote what was on my mind. :D
Yeah, we do the big purge on a regular basis and use the same rules. Also, if I find something that I didn't know I had, I can't keep it unless there is a logical place to put it. No point having something useful you can't find. With limited storage that means we have to run pretty lean.
ReplyDeleteMango Momma
I know what you mean. I used to hang on to clothing that didn't fit me or was uncomfortable, but when you get to be my age, you care more about having some space. So, I started giving the good clothes away to charities that I didn't use, and keeping just one pair of bad clothes for paint clothes. The rest was either used as material in quilting projects or thrown out. My neighbors are incredibly wasteful of gas and oil because they drive back and forth every few minutes instead of consolidating their trips. They also come home from these trips with tons of plastic bags, which don't degrade so well in the landfills. They live like our resources are going to last forever. I appreciate it when I see people making an effort to save the environment and same some resources for my grandchildren.
ReplyDeleteI hate waste, too. I used to save everything, and then something started to change in me, and by the time I turned 30, I was throwing everything away! I haven't missed a thing, either.
ReplyDelete