The day after Thanksgiving, I nearly bought a new pair of boots. The ones I had weren't very comfortable ... they were made for riding horses, a friend of mine told me. They were also too nice to work in the yard with. My friend suggested getting a pair of Ariats, so I looked online and this pair looked really good. The price tag was $150 ... less if I was willing to be a part of the mob a the Western store.
A day or so later, I noticed a pair of work boots on a top shelf in my closet, almost never used. They had been left in NY for snowy weather, and my mother mailed it down here when she cleared out her home. So this year of buying nothing has saved us around $350 in about a week's time. That could add up to some real money after a while.
Monday, December 9, 2013
Tuesday, December 3, 2013
Books
They say there are 5 stages of grief, and there may also be 5 stages of buying nothing.
We have books all over our house ... in the garage (in boxes and on shelves), in closets, in baskets, lying on top of each other, lying next to each other, you get the idea. We will never get our house in order until we do something about these books, most of which we'd like to keep. As I discussed this problem with my wife, our first solution (of course) was to buy some bookshelves. Of course, I said. I never said we would buy nothing, just that we would think over every purchase with extreme prejudice.
From buying shelves we then moved on to making some really nice ones (the second step of buying nothing). Of course, we would have to buy some nice wood, etc., but that is just what we have to do.
The third step of buying nothing was making some adequate shelves with wood I have lying on the floor of the garage. We'd only need to buy $20 worth of hardware. Here is the design I picked out.
The 4th step was my wife saying that we need to build tall bookshelves rather than horizontal ones (see the 6x6 design in the comments section at the above link), because that will store more books. OK, that will require more hardware, but it will still be worth it.
Now for the 5th step of buying nothing, in which we (drum roll) actually buy nothing. As I was getting dressed this morning, I noticed that we have about 32 feet of unused or underutilized sturdy shelf space in our walk in closet. Maybe not the long-term solution we need for our books, but for the year of buying nothing, I think it will do just fine.
We have books all over our house ... in the garage (in boxes and on shelves), in closets, in baskets, lying on top of each other, lying next to each other, you get the idea. We will never get our house in order until we do something about these books, most of which we'd like to keep. As I discussed this problem with my wife, our first solution (of course) was to buy some bookshelves. Of course, I said. I never said we would buy nothing, just that we would think over every purchase with extreme prejudice.
From buying shelves we then moved on to making some really nice ones (the second step of buying nothing). Of course, we would have to buy some nice wood, etc., but that is just what we have to do.
The third step of buying nothing was making some adequate shelves with wood I have lying on the floor of the garage. We'd only need to buy $20 worth of hardware. Here is the design I picked out.
The 4th step was my wife saying that we need to build tall bookshelves rather than horizontal ones (see the 6x6 design in the comments section at the above link), because that will store more books. OK, that will require more hardware, but it will still be worth it.
Now for the 5th step of buying nothing, in which we (drum roll) actually buy nothing. As I was getting dressed this morning, I noticed that we have about 32 feet of unused or underutilized sturdy shelf space in our walk in closet. Maybe not the long-term solution we need for our books, but for the year of buying nothing, I think it will do just fine.
Sunday, December 1, 2013
Seeds
We decided yesterday ... for lots of reasons ... that we would only buy necessities for the next year. For me, that means I won't be buying any new seeds for my garden. So last night I went on the Internet to find any listings for free seeds. I did find one ... wintersown.org. They'll send you six packets of seeds for an SASE with two stamps. But my wife walked up behind me as I was looking at it, and asked me if that fit into our plan. Actually, it doesn't, because what we want to do is to use up some the stuff we have piled up in various parts of the house. I have plenty of seeds in the garage refrigerator, and the plan requires that I use that up. There are seeds for all kinds of lettuces that I can throw down all over the place, while I get other seeds started in boxes before planting them. So instead of spending $100 on new seeds and plants, I'll use what I have, and I expect the garden will turn out fine. I was planning on buying some broccoli plants and tomato plants ... because the broccoli needs cool weather and tomatoes need to bear fruit before the Texas summer heat. But I can just pass on the broccoli and plant tomatoes from seed in June/July for a fall harvest.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)