It’s Better Than Cheap… It’s Free!

The Wonderful World of Freecycling

Way, way back in 2004 Grist Magazine published an article entitled Give It Away, Give It Away, Give It Away Now about a cool new environmentally friendly idea called “Freecycling.” Begun in 2003 by Deron Beal, a recycling program worker in Tucson, Arizona, freecycling is a network of people with ‘stuff’ they don’t want to throw away to take up landfill space, but don’t want to keep either. It’s a way of getting rid of stuff by giving it to someone who wants it, and you’d be surprised at some of the great stuff there is to be had for free!

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Tips for Avoiding Pressure to Shop

I don’t know about you, but I’ve never been much of a good consumer as that designation has come to signify in and out of recessions in this capitalist-based economy. I don’t “shop ’til I drop,” I don’t buy much of anything new, and whenever friends or sisters try to talk me into tagging along for a bout of binge buying at the mall I come up with every excuse in the book to beg out of it.

And now that I live on a mountain rather far from town (and any sort of mall), I’ve managed to keep from making friends who believe that frivolous spending of vast amounts of money is a competitive sport. I like that about the people here in the southern Appalachians – they’re not nearly so concerned conspicuous consumption as they are concerned about the quality of their natural habitats. Perhaps that’s true of rural areas all over the country, where people are simply not accustomed to spending money as an ingrained habit or mere way to pass the time of one’s life. When we lived in a city of a million-plus people in Florida, there seemed to be at least one strip mall for every household, and they were all making a living!

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The Payoff: Thrifting and Re-Selling

I’ve written a bit about The Art of Thrifting, purchasing clothes, appliances, knick-knacks and gift items at secondhand outlets, garage sales and through auction outlets. I’ve also written about Alternative Economies and how systems like barter and straight trade can keep your family going without the exchange of cash or credit.

This post combines both of these approaches to make a talent at thrifting into an actual income. Over at Apron Thrift Girl blog there is a wonderful post describing one adventure in estate sale thrifting entitled Seeing What Has Always Been There that I recommend to readers so as to get a feel for how to make money by picking out bargains and re-selling them at a hefty profit.

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Putting Old Clothes To New Use

As the holiday gifting season approaches it’s time to think about some creative ideas for making gifts your friends and family will treasure but won’t cost you much of anything.

At our house we’ve been getting the winter flannels, sweaters, long johns, excess blue jeans and coats out of the boxes and closets they’ve been hiding in since last spring, and I am once again amazed at how much of this stuff we’ve got. I gave up long ago trying to figure out where it all comes from, since it just seems to show up in my laundry, in 55-gallon trash bags in the shed, piled into storage nooks and crannies, etc. A lot of it doesn’t really fit anybody in my family, and I’ve suspected more than once that old clothes stashed away like that reproduce in the dark just like wire coat hangers do…

I’m usually amazed as well at how much of this excess fabric is frayed, holey or otherwise compromised enough not to be wearable without major repair (and they’ll still look pretty ragged). These are the kind of old clothes the Goodwill doesn’t want, you can’t really use, and would most likely end up taking space in a landfill somewhere if you don’t do something else with it.

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A Car, A Car… My Kingdom for a Car!

Owning a car is an expensive proposition these days, even if you aren’t making monthly car payments. Insurance is expensive enough to equal an average person’s car payment, and gas certainly isn’t getting cheaper. Yet for people who choose not to live in a city where there is ready access to public transportation, a way to get to and from work, stores and chores is a necessity rather than a luxury.

Now, if you live in a town – even if it doesn’t have public transportation – or near enough to town, you might decide that having a nice bicycle or motor scooter will serve your needs. And it might, so long as it’s not raining or snowing and you don’t have to transport a month’s worth of groceries, any bulky items for sale or trade, or any of your children, your spouse, or your Mother-in-Law. They just don’t make any cool farings or sidecars for bicycles or mopeds.

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Credit Crunch: How to Survive the Recession

The news is bad. The “housing bubble” has burst, job growth has become job loss, and the cost of credit is going nowhere but through the roof. It looks like the ‘shoestring’ some of us have been living on for awhile now just got a little more frayed.

While there is lots of moaning and groaning about how bad things are getting out in the real world of trying to make do, there’s not a whole lot of good advice about how the middle class can hope to survive the crunch. I’ve surfed around a bit and found a few pages offering real help and analysis, and have linked those at the bottom of this entry.

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