Trimming Your Waste Line: 50 ways to use less, waste less

This is excerpted from an excellent article “Put Your Life On A Diet” in Natural Home Magazine. It's lovely the way environmentalism and cheap come together.

PLASTICS, PETROCHEMICALS, AND PACKAGING

• Learn to love your unique looks without cosmetics— others will too.
• Use less laundry detergent. Are your clothes really that dirty?
• Borrow books, CDs, DVDs, and video games from the library, rental store, or friends.
• Use fewer household cleaners. Try soap and water, baking soda, or vinegar instead.

FOOD AND LAND

• Skip prepared and frozen food. Make dinners from scratch; make lunches from leftovers.
• Buy produce from local farms, Community Supported Agriculture (CSA), or co-ops.
• Choose beans over meat.

GASOLINE

• Share a car. Visit Carsharing.net for info.
• Buy an alternative-fuel car as your next vehicle.
• Carpool, walk, bike, or ride a bus to work and on errands when possible.
• Use a push mower and trim bushes by hand.
• Shop online or by phone rather than drive around.

BUILDING MATERIALS

• Fix up an old house rather than build new.
• Clean out your garage, basement, and closets rather than buy a home with more space.

STUFF

• Avoid shopping for fun.
• Share a lawnmower and tools with your neighbors.
• Rent a truck, power tools, and camping equipment when the need arises from a rental company.
• Limit your holiday gift giving and make personal gifts like homemade bread.
• Shop at garage sales and thrift stores.

CREATE LESS TRASH

• Learn to do your own repairs rather than throw things away.
• Swap and recycle anything and everything you can; join Freecycle.org.
• Donate extra paint to graffiti abatement or urban renewal programs.
• Trade extra school supplies from last year; have a swap in your neighborhood.
• Give scrap lumber to scouts.
• Use raked leaves and cut grass as mulch.
• Throw vegetable and fruit scraps into compost.

ALUMINUM

• Use recyclable containers when possible.
• Put a cookie sheet instead of foil on the bottom oven rack to catch drips.

WATER

• Reuse bath water for plants.
• Limit sprinkler time on your lawn.
• Wash clothes after two wearings instead of one (hang them inside-out after one use).
• Flush less often.
• Xeriscape your garden.
• Wash your car less—and do it yourself with a bucket.
• Use a low-flow showerhead with a shut-off button.

PAPER AND WOOD

• Borrow books from the library.
• Use the back side of copy paper.
• Get off junk mail and catalog lists; visit DMAConsumers.org.
• Give gently used books and magazines to a nursing home, hospital library, or literacy group.
• Get the newspaper online rather than at your doorstep.
• Share magazine subscriptions with friends.

ELECTRICITY

• Turn out the lights when you leave a room.
• Use ceiling fans to boost your cooling/heating system effectiveness.
• Use lower wattage bulbs or unscrew one from a too-bright fixture.
• Use compact fluorescent bulbs.
• Choose not to hang holiday lights.

CLOTHING AND MATERIAL

• Give clothing you don’t wear to charity.
• Learn how to mend clothes.
• Save dingy towels, holey T-shirts, and old sheets for cleaning rags and dropcloths.
• Recycle old denims or wool suits to make a woven or braided rag rug.

When It's NOT Okay To Be Cheap

Cheap is one thing, miserly is a whole ’nother. Yes, it’s true that the dictionary does not see this distinction, but I do. While I will proudly reclaim “cheap” from the trash heap, I do not want to encourage the meanness that miserly implies, at least to me. “Miserly” implies the frugality is not from necessity or thoughtfulness, without regard to the suffering it will create.

So here is my list of when it is definitely NOT okay to be “cheap” (or rather, miserly):

1. Tips. Waiters and waitresses make a horrible hourly salary, so they depend on the tips. I've heard people argue that the tips are bonus, and shouldn't be mandatory (as a reason for not leaving one). Some people will be overly demanding or have unattainably high expectation from the wait-staff, simply to get out of paying the tip. These are mean-spirited strategies for getting out of paying a tip that affect the life of another human being, someone with bills and kids and responsibilities. It is a luxury that you get the final say on how much the service was worth, and by all means, if it was exceptionally bad, vote with the tip. But put yourself in your server's shoes, and if you could do no better, think of how you would like to be compensated. Restaurants SHOULD charge more and just pay their waitstaff. I wish they would.

2. Wages. If you find yourself in the position of paying someone for work they've done, do not try to get the work done for less than it's worth. Try to keep in mind that the money you pay helps support a real person. If you run a retail business, of course you must look at the profits, but increasing them on the backs of those who helped make that happen is a cruel way to grow a business.

3. Stuff. When buying something from one store instead of another, consider why it is cheaper. Are they paying people a living wage? Was it manufactured with prison/slave labor? Is there a way to buy a similar product for a higher price that doesn't promote cruelty? Did it take massive resources to produce? Was it shipped from way far away?

4. Disposable Stuff. Choosing poorly-crafted items because they are cheap and can easily replaced is short-sighted, and is an unsustainable (and ultimately more costly) method of saving. By investing in well-made, long-term tools, you save yourself the constant headache of endlessly replacing.

If your frugality does harm, rather than good, it is not acceptable frugality. Consider the environmental impact, the health impact, and mostly, the human impact, then make the choices that will leave you feeling good about being cheap.

10 ways to reduce want

Longing for something that you cannot attain is painful, so alleviating the want should lead to a more pleasant existence. Two strategies to help are: getting the things you want and reducing the number of things you want. With unlimited means (money, time) you could hypothetically get everything you want, but this strategy seems a sure way to feed a bad habit, rather than recognizing it and kicking it.

The following are ideas to help reduce want in your life, either by changing the way you see things, so your list of want can shrink, or by providing low-cost (cheap) solutions to attaining the things that cannot be removed from the list of want:


1. Find Gratitude. Someone once told me that there could be no heaven because we become acclimated to whatever state we are in. The perfect condition would become commonplace, and therefore lack the joy and euphoria required of heaven. In order to appreciate it, we would have to be able to remember vividly the pain of not having it. The logic seems reasonable, yet I can't help but think if we could remain mindful of what life is without the things we have, if we could focus on the good things and be glad for it, it would keep this boredom from settling in and we would remain content. Want, after all, grows from discontent.

2. Embrace Environmentalism. Sometimes, in the battle of want, it helps to have more than just willpower, so use the good feeling you gain from doing something positive for the environment as your guide. The energy and resources it takes to create any given (from the harvesting of the raw materials, to the processing of these materials, to the shipping of the goods, and the display space that must be heated and cooled) all create pollution and waste. Add to this additional waste in the form of trash (packaging, item at the end of its usefulness) and you have a huge environmental impact. See this entertaining and informative video, you know, to get tough about wanting stuff.

3. Make Things. People used to do it all the time. They made stuff. Made clothes. Made food. Made tools. Made all kinds of things. When you make something, and take care with the craftsmanship, you treasure it a little more, and are less likely to see it as disposable. Besides, how cool is it to make something wonderful. Make a garden or a card.

4. Satisfy the Need to Shop. I realize it is a very unusual tip to add to the list, but hear me out. There is something about shopping that is, for some, therapeutic. Some evidence exists that shopping links back to our early instincts for hunting & gathering, which may explain why some find comfort in this activity. Without discipline, however, shopping can quickly spiral out of control. Until you beat the need for shopping as an activity, change the rules a bit. Instead of going shopping unarmed, shop with purpose. Make a list of things that you will have to get anyway (gift for some one's birthday, anniversary, wedding, etc.) and “hunt” for these items. You can even make your holiday list early and leisurely “gather” these perfect gifts.

5. Block out the ads. Television shows have sponsors with really compelling commercials. Both the shows and the commercials trigger want, by showing you what happens without the product, or how wonderful it is to have it. Commercials are seductive and sly. If commercials didn't work, companies wouldn’t be willing to spend as much as they do promoting their products by paying for television. Consider it the next time you are watching t.v.

6. Visit the Library. Library cards are free to county residents, and entitle the holder to check out all kinds of resources... books, CDs, DVDs, even children’s toys! They even take recommendations from patrons for new material. Classics movies and how-to videos are always on the shelves, while new releases tend to have a waiting list. If you aren't in a big hurry to see something, sign up for several with long waiting lists, then forget about it. You will get a notice as soon as it’s your turn to view it. The library also has regular movie nights, music nights and other big fun. Click to visit my library (maybe yours too, if you live in Greene County)

7. Get Feng Shui’ed. Clutter is a big harmony disruptor. Just by getting rid of things, you lighten your world, make life more pleasant and easy. By bringing in more stuff, you raise the potential clutter that you bring to your life as well. Having less stuff, and the peace that brings, is a want you can attain.

8. Appreciate Vintage. By looking for used things, you extend the life of an item, while cutting down on what it took to make it. Freecycle, Craigslist, local flea markets and thrift stores are all good places to find good, used stuff. Besides being an inexpensive and environmentally friendlier way to go, often the older stuff was made of better materials and is not so run-of-the-mill.

9. Play The “Waste” Game. Notice how much waste you generate in a week, and consider where all of that waste must go. Try to reduce the amount of waste you create. This will automatically cut down on your consumption because every bit of packaging must either go into the trash.

10. Create False Want. Similar to #1, but more of an exercise. Start by taking stock of what you have, then choosing one of these and imagining what it would be like to not have it (your health, a place to sleep, food) you can refocus on what you have, rather than on what you lack (or want). Intentionally skip a meal, or bundle up and go outside to “nap” and imagine what it would be like to be without your shelter. Go back inside and enjoy the feeling of having, instead of wanting.

$600 (make that $300) of Happiness: What They Didn't Tell You About that Rebate

Free money. What could be more exciting. It's like finding a twenty dollar bill in your pocket that you'd forgot about, only MUCH bigger. I was counting on 600 dollars (because that was all the talk) but apparently my bonus gift was only 300. Still, woo hoo! Free money, right?

The idea of free money makes people reckless, buy something crazy, something "not in the budget". Doesn't matter, because it's free money!

Well, I started thinking about this "free money". Where did it come from? Right now, as a country, we are in debt up to our eyeballs for this war in Iraq. War is expensive, and in the past, war was financed by increased taxes. Pay-as-you-go. To-war. And this system made everyone aware of just how much it cost to fight. But this war is different. We are paying for it with a credit card, one with an amazingly high limit, apparently. We owe foreign countries a lot of money, which means we are gonna have to do some major kissing up (and paying back) to keep our economy going once the bills come rolling in.

Once I saw an ad for assistance to people who'd gotten themselves into economic hot water by charging a whole bunch of stuff and racking up a huge debt. It starts with a guy bragging about his possessions and lifestyle, all the items that make up a suburban dream life. But there's something not right about his tone, and he reveals that he is in debt ”up to his eyeballs”. “Sombody help me.” he says, in the same superficially calm tone, barely masking the underlying desperation.

I pictured what comes next in the guy's life. Although the ad is for refinancing your home or borrowing against the equity, without huge changes this is only a temporary solution at best. He'll have to: Sell the house (if he can) before it is foreclosed upon. If possible, return any unused items for a refund. Learn to do without, without much more than he did without before getting himself into debt, because not only will he have to pay for the (previously inadequate) lifestyle, but for the debt and interest accumulated during his attempt to live beyond his means.

But I digress. What this is about is that "free money" most of us got. Where did it come from? Well, actually, it came from you! Or rather, it will. It is borrowed against next year's income tax refund, or so I hear. If this seems vaguely familiar, it should be... we got this same kind of deal a few years ago, leaving many people in dire straits when the refund they were expecting was non-existent, or worse, they owed money because the amount they got exceeded the amount they were supposed to get.

Since we, as a nation, have no money and are therefore forced to borrow money from other nations (not like a loan from a friend, mind you, but a loan with interest) then are we also borrowing the money to send out the "free money"? If so, who's paying the interest? Is it just going to this huge loan we are all going to have to pay? We have become the guy on the riding lawn mower, looking at all our stuff "See this imported stuff? See this war? See my huge military complex, my contractor buddies, my health care industry? Somebody help me, please?"

Some people, angered by the continued call for consumerism in the face of crises, have voiced the need for alternatives to this “keep shopping” solution, a protest of sorts against the short-sightedness of this kind of thinking. Everything from “using the money to pay of debt”, “put it into savings”, “help an underfunded, deserving charity”, or “send it back” has been proposed.