clothing
-washed grass seed bags and marked hemline to sew into bread bags
-piled all the clothes to be mended and repurposed next to sewing machine
food
-harvesting salads from the lawn and garden: chickweed, kale, dandelion, violet, day lily shoots, lettuce, spinach, radishes, asparagus, dill, lamb's quarters, cilantro, mint, lemon balm
~packed food and water to take to the festival and avoided buying food there
household
-reusing plastic bags for trash bags
-converted 3 grass seed bags into bread bags for storing baked bread
utilities
-diligently shutting off power strips each night for computer/dsl and tv/dvd player (this is especially important right now while we are incubating eggs and raising chicks with grow lights which sucks the electricity)
-making sure lights are off when we are not in the room
gifts
-contemplating a mother's day gift for my mom
exercise/self improvement
-hooping
homestead
-feeding animals grass clippings from the lawn
education
-greg was given some children'sbooks for free this week
-been posting books and cd's on paperbackswap.com and am earning credits. unfortunately, none of the books i want are available!
weaknesses
-traveled 4 days this week (as opposed to 1-2)
-bought contacts. i hate wearing glasses in the summer...too much sun in my eyes. i'll probably make them last 2 years though instead of 1 since i don't wear them in the winter
purging
-setting aside more things to list on ebay and freecycle
2 comments:
I meant to mention this last week when you said you signed up for paperbackswap.com. It takes a while but eventually you will receive all the books you request. I opened my account in 2006 and there are only a handful of the original list that I have not yet received. I have so many credit now (150) that I started selling some books on amazon.
Paperbackswap.com is awesome, and even if none of the books you want are available right now, they do come up. I had Home Remedies From Amish Country on my wish list for a really long time, and it just came in the mail the other day. I also found a bunch of books for my children and my husband for Christmas, which was cool, because my husband and I had agreed to "no spending" for each other, and I didn't buy him any of the gifts I gave him :).
You should check out SwapaDVD.com, too ;).
About the "Not Buying It" project in general: we've been "not buying it" on a smaller scale for a while. I joined a couple of month-long challenges a couple of different times over the past couple of years, and even though it was just a month each time, the challenge changed my life, because it made me more aware of my spending habits in general. Now, the rule is "Do I really need it?" and the answer, more often than not, is no.
I think the absolute best part was how empowering the project was for me, because the fact that I couldn't just buy a new one meant that I had to learn to be more creative, and wow! What an incredible lesson!
And learning how to darn my socks was a lot of fun ;).
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