Friday, May 7, 2010

The Gold Standard of Thriftiness

In general I'm a fan of the frugal. The good old use it up, wear it out, make it last or do without. It's one of those pesky side effects of growing up and buying your own things.

When I was kid I hated that I had to bring home my ziplock bags from lunch so they could be washed and reused. Oh how i emvied those kids who just throw their bags away, instead of shamefully hiding them in their backpacks and trying to ignore the faint, lingering scent of bologna. I swore that when I was all grown up I would buy my own bags, and throw them away.

Well, I broke that promise when I started buying my own, and the idea of just throwing away a perfectly good ziplock just seemed too much to bear. So, I started washing and reusing them. I thought that this was the absolute gold standard of thriftiness.

I was wrong. You see, Zach dries and reuses paper towels. It's a common sight to walk into our kitchen and see little rows of sad, white paper towels fluttering about as they air dry. I don't know whether to be impressed or disturbed.

4 comments:

  1. Yeah I swapped to tubberware for that reason, those baggies are expensive!! I have never heard of someone re-using a paper towel, frugal mcfrugalson.

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  2. My dad would always pack a lunch for work, and he'd bring back the baggies all week for my mom to re-use. Apparently this is more common than I knew!

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  3. My good friend's grandmother used to reuse her paper towels. We're just switching to cloth. Although I don't know that washing it all the time is very eco friendly either, but I'm trying!

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  4. We totally reused our baggies growing up....glad to know I'm not the only one. One of my favorite frugal stories...my grandpa will take what most people would consider an empty bottle of bbq sauce, ketchup, etc. and instead of throwing it away he puts a timy bit of water in it, shakes it up good, then puts it on whatever he's eating. I just can't bring myself to do that.

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