The Non-Consumer Advocate

I took my son to see the Han Solo Star Wars movie at our local second run theater. (Although I prefer to go on 2-for-1 Tuesdays, it was still a bargain to pay a mere $4 apiece for our tickets.) We didn’t buy any snacks, but we did stop on the way home to pick up a 50%-off pint of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream as an evening treat. $10.50 well spent.

I continue to declutter and downsize our excess stuff. We’re neither hoarders nor minimalists, and I’ve got a bee in my bonnet to rid our home once and for all from the burden of containing too many things. Of course, there are other people who live here, so there’s only so much under my control.

My motivation is that an item of mass replaces the space where fresh air could have circulated. More things = less air to breathe.

I went to a couple different Goodwills in search of treasures to photograph, (and to bribe other shoppers into sharing their stories with me for my Instagram.) I didn’t end up buying anything for myself, although my son bought a new-in-package set of underwear and a best of Deep Purple album.

My favorite recent Goodwill find was a new-in-package toilet seat, as ours had split in an unfixable manner. It’s been 11-1/2 years since I made a decision to stop buying new consumer goods, and I’m constantly amazed with what I’m able to find used!

I finished one library book and started another, I walked most of my errands yesterday, I arranged to participate in a consumer opinion panel that will pay $125 for a two-hour commitment, I renewed my Facebook Marketplace listings, I made a phone appointment for my son and I to talk to someone at his university about reversing the charges for the summer class he accidentally signed up for, (he thought it was a fall class) and I put a book on hold through the interlibrary loan program.

I didn’t buy a Lear Jet or a вульгарная позолоченная квартира в небе.

My son and I found enough excess stuff in the house to warrant a donation trip to Goodwill. (Is there such thing as a finish line when it comes to decluttering?!) I didn’t find anything worth recluttering my home buying, but my son brought home a $12.99 turntable. He’d been keeping an eye out for a decent record player for awhile, so he knew to jump at this purchase.

Luckily Goodwill has a great return policy, so there was zero worry about wasting our money on a non-functional item.

I did not buy a set of hilarious vintage savings banks. However, I did photograph them for your viewing pleasure. You’re welcome!

I walked to the library last night as I had two overdue books. I ran this errand even though they were closed, as I simply wanted to cross this off from my to-do list.

I came home from Seattle with a fresh eye aimed towards our grubby and mildly cluttery home. (Surely I’m not the only one who comes home from vacation and views their house differently.) However, I welcome fresh inspiration, and have spent a few hours cleaning, decluttering and reordering our front porch seating area, as well as the kitchen and bathroom.

Our house isn’t perfect, but it’s slightly better and zero dollars were spent in the process.

I brought a hostess gift of fresh hydrangea blooms to my friend Lisa in Seattle instead of something from a store. My backyard is rich with hydrangeas this time of year, and there’s an added benefit that my friend can compost her gift when they lose their freshness.

I didn’t buy a Lear Jet or a вульгарная позолоченная квартира в небе.

My son and I spent one night at my father and step mother’s Mt. Hood cabin over the weekend. We don’t have the cashola for official vacations this summer, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t enjoy the free resources that are available to us. (Even though we finally have just one in college at this point, I do need to make sure that we have enough money in the bank for Fall’s tuition payment, as well as our regular expenses which currently include rent on two apartments and my husband’s medical bills.)

We’ll also be driving up to Seattle this weekend to visit with an old college buddy and enjoy a nice mini vacation. She lives in a lovely home in the Capitol Hill neighborhood, and I look forward to hanging out with her and scoping out the area.

These short trips dovetail into my work schedule, although my husband is too sadly too busy with his full-time schedule and volunteer commitments to accompany us. However, he’s taking vacation time in late August, so we’ll figure out some low/no cost vacation-y activities then.

I’ll be helping my mother clean her guest cottage this afternoon as her tenants just left and new people arrive tomorrow. I’m not doing this as often as I have in years past, as this house rents for a minimum of 30 days, and she sold the one that was commercially zoned and thus could be rented for a few days at a time.

I’m arranging to sell a small stack of Fiestaware plates that my mother had brought by for last week’s garage sale. A few sold on the day, but I didn’t want to donate them as I knew I could get decent money through a private sale. The buyer seems super enthused to come by, but I’ll count these chickens after they hatch.

I work tomorrow and Wednesday and will prepare food to bring, I took my son to see the movie Isle of Dogs at a cheap second run theater, I’m using my backyard clothesline to air dry my laundry, I nabbed a perfectly small box from the neighbor’s recycling for my eBay sales, I planted new lettuce seeds as we’d eaten through the last crop, I’m reading a library copy of This is Where You Belong: Finding Home Wherever You Are and my son and I washed our car by hand rather than take it through a car wash.

I didn’t buy a Lear Jet or a vulgar gold plated apartment in the sky.

My son went through his room and did a major purge of his clothing. (It filled one of those blue Ikea bags!) Ideally everything should have gone into last week’s garage sale, but somehow that didn’t happen. Instead we’re going to to take it to the Buffalo Exchange consignment shop in the neighborhood, and then donate whatever’s left to Goodwill.

This bag-o-stuff has been sitting in our living room all week and was starting to annoy me, so I put it into the back of our car to simplify the selling/donating process.

Remember, people:

“Crap out of the house, money in!”

We’ve been spending too much money on food over the past month, so I took a proactive step and threw two cups of kidney beans into the crock pot for tonight’s dinner. (Hello, Dollar Tree beans!) We’ll add in tasty tidbits like chicken, salsa, avocado, sour cream, lettuce, scallions and cheese to create a Mexi-bowl buffet. Yummy, healthy and cheap!

I have zero plans for today, even though it’s 4th of July. No potluck to attend, no fireworks to light, no goofy red, white and blue desserts to create and no decorations to create/buy/discard. Ahh . . . .

I worked the last two days and drank the free so-so coffee as well as the free delicious tea, I packed my own meals using zero waste supplies and enjoyed a couple of delicious See’s chocolates from an appreciative patient, I used a random “Patient Belongings Bag” from my husband’s surgery to line the kitchen garbage can, I’ve been wearing a couple “new” pieces of clothing that I picked up from an after-garage sale free pile, (a Ralph Lauren striped hoodie and an embroidered floral long-sleeve T-shirt) I put up a couple of listings on Facebook Marketplace and I lent my rug shampooer to a friend so her daughter could freshen up a second hand couch. Making belongings available to others is an important big picture tool in minimizing unnecessary purchases.

I didn’t buy a Lear Jet or a vulgar gold plated apartment in the sky.

Our single day garage sale was a huge success, in terms of sales as well as crap that left my house never to return. (My secret tagline for this blog is “crap out of the house, money in.”) And although I did sell two bikes for $40 and $45 apiece, most sales were between 50¢ and $2. In total I brought in $300 from stuff that had been serving no purpose other than to take up space in my house. And with the exception of five items, all unsold item got immediately loaded into my minivan and driven straight to Goodwill for donation.

Hopefully this round of decluttering will keep my home easy to manage and completely and effortlessly tidy. At all times. Because that’s a realistic goal.

I work the next two days and have already prepped the food for my work lunches. Since I work 12-1/2 hour shifts, it can get expensive pretty quickly when buying food at the hospital. You know . . . because of breakfast, lunch and dinner.

I went to a friend’s party last night and brought homemade scones with a fancy 99¢ jar of lemon curd that I’d picked up from The Grocery Outlet. Super yummy yet frugal as can be, as scones are nothing more than sweetened biscuits.

I brought in a DVD and X Box controller that I’d pulled from a university dumpster to the CD Game Exchange store in my neighborhood. They gave me $12.50 in store credit which my son used to buy himself a game that he’d been wanting.

I didn’t buy a Lear Jet or a vulgar gold plated apartment in the sky.

My son and I drove down to Eugene to complete the move out from his apartment, sign new lease paperwork and then indulge in a deep cleaning session. To say it was cathartic to clean a carpeted space that hadn’t seen the likes of a vacuum cleaner since September would be a massive understatement. (Remember the episode of Friends where Monica showed up to clean the apartment of Ross’ ex girlfriend? I definitely channeled my inner Monica for this task.)

To leave a rental apartment as clean as possible is an important frugal act, as many landlords will charge you for any actual or perceived damage to the property. Needless to say, I took photos of the rooms after we’d completed our cleaning session.

I renegotiated my son’s lease and was able to get a $300 kickback, even though we’d passed the official deadline for this bonus. I also successfully bargained against a rent increase and was able to arrange a ten month lease for the same monthly price as a twelve month lease. (Don’t want to pay for a summer apartment that we’re not occupying!)

This may sound like some kind of sorcery, but all it took was to ask for the bonus and to say the sentence, “I’d rather not have the rent go up, is there any wiggle room on that?”

Like any negotiation, the key was to kind and patient. Nobody does a favor for a jerk.

We’re back on budget lockdown due to my daughter’s summer college expenses being significantly higher than I anticipated. (She’s taking two final classes to complete the requirements for her bachelor’s degree.) However, I enjoy a financial challenge. My son and I stopped into the Albany Costco for snacks after gassing up the minivan. I filled up on random free samples and he enjoyed a $1.50 hot dog. We didn’t get a chance for dinner until around 9:30 P.M., which ended up being a $5 Little Caesar’s pizza to share. Not the healthiest day, but our home diet is usually nicely balanced. Sometimes cheap wins the day to support big picture goals.

– I sold a Eckhorn Stressless ottoman for $100 that I’d picked up at a Goodwill outlet for $5, (It took awhile to find a buyer, but it was too good a deal to pass up.)
– I filled our reusable water bottles at home and was able to decline the offer of bottled water from my son’s leasing agent.
– I picked up some $1 produce from the scratch-and-dent section at Fred Meyer. This included two heads of cauliflower, a bag of zucchini and a container of strawberries. Might actually make up for all the pizza.

I didn’t buy a Lear Jet or a vulgar gold plated apartment in the sky.

My husband, son and I drove down to Ashland, Oregon for our daughter’s college graduation. (Update: our oldest has transitioned to female and uses she/her pronouns.) We’re extremely proud of her accomplishments and so excited to cheer her on in person. There’s nothing frugal about putting someone through college, but our frugal choices made it possible to see her through college without student loans.

She’s taking two last classes this summer to complete her requirements, but they still let her walk in the graduation ceremony.

I took a stroll past the dorm room dumpsters, (as well as my daughter’s apartment dumpster) to peruse the merchandise.

I found:

– A boxed pre-lit artificial Christmas tree.
– A fancy thermal coffee maker.
– A crock pot.
– A pair of Nike sneakers.
– Notebooks, pens, files.
– Three snap-top glass containers.
– A Pokemon hoodie.
– A sealed pack of gum.
– Two skirts, two T-shirts, a dress shirt and a pair of jeans (Mostly in my size.)
– Sealed plastic plastic food containers.
– One shower shelf and one over-the-door hook thingamabob.

Ashland is home to the world famous Oregon Shakespeare Festival, but their amazing theater productions don’t fit in our current budget. (Tickets run $44 – $110 apiece.) Instead we enjoyed one of the free Green Show performances that run daily from June through October.  Am I sad that we’re currently unable to afford such an luxury? No, I’m just happy to have the circumstance to sit outdoors and listen to a free musical concert.

We indulged in a few wonderful restaurant meals while in Ashland, but ate $1.50 Costco hot dogs while stopped for cheap gasoline in Roseburg, Oregon. I cannot stress strongly enough how extreme frugality allows for money to be available for the things that actually matter.

For those who may be visiting Ashland, I highly recommend the Morning Glory Café, which serves the most delicious brunches in southern Oregon. (Just writing about them makes my mouth water.) Needless to say, I consider them to be a worthwhile indulgence.

My son found $13.53 of coins outside a dorm on his campus, (click HERE to see the proof!) we were so stuffed from our Morning Glory brunch that we didn’t stop for food while driving back to Portland, I sold a thrifted lawn mower, a pair of gardening boots and a guitar case, I read a book I already owned (Ursula LeGuin’s The Left Hand of Darkness) and then renewed my library books, our neighbor took care of our cats for free, (a reciprocal agreement) I used my AARP discount at the motel and I remembered to turn our hot water heater down while we were away.

I didn’t buy a Lear Jet or a vulgar gold plated apartment in the sky.