The Non-Consumer Advocate

My husband installed a hood vent over our stove after a mere 25 years of home ownership. He’d been stumped on how it would vent as it wasn’t an exterior wall. However, the discovery of a $99 clearance priced hood at Home Depot prompted him to watch some YouTube videos, and I am proud to say we are now proud owners of a fully functioning stove hood!

I found a soggy and rather filthy knit cap in the middle of a busy street and brought it home. I promptly gave it a thorough wash in a basin and then a quick once over with my sweater shaver. It turned out to be a Filson brand wool hat that sells new for $45. However . . . it was out of stock due to “supply chain issues” at the time, so I popped it on eBay for $44 and it sold within a couple of days.

Very satisfying.

My next door neighbor Nancy and I recently both read The Beneficiary, a biography about author’s Janny Scott’s wealthy and accomplished extended family. Scott’s socialite grandmother was rumored to have been the inspiration for Katherine Hepburn’s iconic character in the The Philadelphia Story, which prompted me to put the DVD on hold at the library.

Nancy and I then indulged in an afternoon movie date at her house, complete with popcorn and terrible impersonations of Hepburn’s mid-Atlantic accent.

I thrifted a midcentury end table for $12.99 and proceeded to clean it, repair some chipped veneer, refresh the finish and then sold it for $200, I had enough thrifted candles to get through the eight nights of Hanukkah, I picked up some free used bubble wrap from a local business who gives it away, we hosted Thanksgiving dinner and then ate from the leftovers for over a week, I’m finishing up an audiobook of The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue through the library’s free Libby app, I gave away some notebooks, an unused planner, socks, bowties and a jacket through my Buy Nothing group and I got my free Covid-19 booster shot at a community clinic.

I didn’t go on an ego driven space jaunt with my fellow billionaires.

My daughter turned 26, so I planned an afternoon of adventures for the two of us. We normally celebrate family birthdays that include the four of us, but our schedules were all over the place, so it ended up being just the two of us. Her schedule was tight, so we ended up going to just two places.

• Our first stop was Purrington’s Cat Lounge, which doubles as both a “cat café” and a feline adoption center. Together we enjoyed coffee, treats and the disinterested company of cats. My daughter’s cat passed away recently, so this ended up being pet therapy, but very much enjoyed by both of us.

• Our second stop was a local restaurant that serves gluten-free fish and chips. This is one of my duaghter’s favorite dishes, but a rare treat due to dietary restrictions. I would rate the food as decidedly “so so,” but my daughter liked it, so who am I to complain?

My mother turned 79, so I hosted her and my step father for dinner, but also cobbled together a later “day of adventures.”

• Our first stop was ¿Porque No? where we dined on “Bryan’s Bowls” in the outdoor seating area. I had a filled punch card, which cut the bill in half.

• Our second stop was to Goodwill, where I picked up an end table to refurbish and my mom bought up a pair of drinking glasses.

• We then circled back to my house where I served tea and scones that I’d baked earlier. I’d also checked out a stack of library DVDs for my mother to choose from. We settled on The Bookshop, which ended up being the perfect rainy day movie for the two of us to watch while snuggled under blankets.

We as consumer are heading into the holiday gift giving season and are already being inundated with “black Friday deals,” and cargo ship mayhem news designed to separate us from their money and fill our homes with crap clutter. I invite you to reconsider how you gift with your loved ones. It doesn’t have to be a Day of Adventures, but there are so many better choices that don’t fill up Jeff Bezos’ Crammed Cavern of Cash™.

Shop local
Handmade
Buy used
Consumable goods
Experiential gifts
Gifts of service
No gifts <– seriously . . . do we need to give so many gifts to so many people?

Click HERE to read about previous Birthday Days of Adventure.

My son and I both got free haircuts from the Supercuts training center, which is a rare money saving tip that should work nation wide. (I know that my friend Joel who lives in Atlanta is also a fan of this frugal hack!) These cuts are performed by licensed hair dressers who happen to be new employees and are supervised by a manager.

We do tip, but it’s still a huge savings.

I brought home a dozen or so green tomatoes from a neighbor’s “free box,” I shelved my Little Free Library with children’s books from my mother and Shakespeare anthologies from my father, I stocked my freezer with pureé from a neighbor’s gifted Halloween pumpkin, I finished listening to an audiobook of The Rose Code and then started listening to Radium Girls using the library’s free Libby app, My son and I stopped at Ikea to buy a plant and also dropped off batteries to recycle and filled our travel mugs with their free coffee, I gave away some macaroni noodles, a fleece blanket, a pair of clip-on lamps, a pair of bow ties and some extra winter gear through my Buy Nothing Group, and my son and I drove through McDonald’s for free McNuggets after Portland’s basketball team scored over 100 points.

I didn’t go on an ego driven space jaunt with my fellow billionaires.

I sold a number of things, including:

• A pair of one of a kind Nike sample shoes for $85.

• Two Guitar Hero guitars for $60 apiece — HERE and HERE.

• A Chevron toy oil tanker for $45.

• A McCoy vase, which I sold locally for $30 through Facebook Marketplace.

• A Prince dance costume for $60.

My daughter started working at a high end grocery store and has been bringing home random leftover food, which is amazing, but also kind of a challenge.

So far I’ve been the lucky recipient of:

• Three (maybe four?) pounds of pastrami and sliced deli turkey. We ate “French dip” sandwiches swapping out the roast beef for turkey, as well as turkey wrapped around cream cheese and pickles. The pastrami went into my husband’s work sandwiches.
• A large container of pickle spears. See above.
• Two beat up looking grapefruit, which ended up being really sweet and juicy.
• Multiple boxes of gluten-free donuts. No need to work these into a recipe. Urp . . .

I salvaged the sturdy plastic sheeting from my son’s new mattress to create two drop cloths for future projects. I also cut another piece into strips and drew bats on them as reusable Halloween decoration. The last random bits got cut into pieces for use as packaging material.

Such a enormous amount of plastic, and I’m happy that it’s not going straight to a landfill.

My neighbor let me put out an extra bin of leaves with his yard debris pickup, (he rarely puts one out) I was able to give away the under-bed trundle and mattress from my son’s old twin bed through the Buy Nothing Group, and I went to Trader Joe’s and bought nothing but the 19¢ bananas, truly a feat of self control if there ever was one!)

I didn’t purchase a seat on a rocket ship with my fellow billionaires.

I stopped at Goodwill after a dental appointment and picked up a $6.99 blue Westclox Moonbeam clock, which I decided to keep. I then went onto eBay and sold the green one I already owned for $35, as the blue one looked prettier in my soft grey bedroom. Literally — one thing in, one thing out!

My husband and I schlepped 1,200 pounds of garbage to our waste transfer station. (Sorry, minivan shocks.) This may sound like an excessive amount of stuff, (and frankly it was) but the weight was greatly influenced by a huuuge pile of dirt that had been sitting in our driveway for so long that it’s actually visible in our house’s Google Earth photo.

Everything else was broken and un-fixible stuff from the our basement, backyard and attic that we’d held onto for some unfathomable reason. I believe that we do-gooders have a tendency to hold onto our stuff long after it’s become unusable, as we feel guilt from having transformed something useful into straight-up garbage.

However, it’s not a healthy mindset to allow useless crap to crowd our lives. My husband and I repair and mend our possessions, but some things simply can’t be fixed and reach the point of no return. (I’m looking at you, cheap plastic!)

It’s best to admit defeat and get rid of the stuff and then set a goal to do better moving forward. To buy used whenever possible, fix what you can, forgo low quality un-fixible stuff and most importantly think twice before buying impulse items that serve no purpose beyond that momentary dopamine release.

Curious about what we took to the dump/hazardous waste site?

• A 32-gallon garbage can that had split down the side.
• A rock hard bag of cement that had somehow gotten wet.
• A broken floor lamp.
• Concrete chunks from who knows what?
• Empty paint and stain cans.
• A broken plastic milk crate.
• A twin mattress that was too gross to give away.
• So. Much. Dirt!

It goes without saying that you should do what you can to find new homes for still useful items. Buy Nothing Groups are an amazing resource for this goal, as is the lowly “free” sign taped onto a curbside item.

I sold a ton of stuff through eBay, Facebook Marketplace and Craigslist, including:

• A pair of ass-less leather chaps, which I bought for $14.99 and sold for $52.

• A Herman Miller Aeron chair, which I bought for $25 and sold for $350.

• My beloved, (but extraneous) library card catalog coffee table, which went for $260.

• A distressed vintage STOP sign, which I bought for $5 and sold for $25.

• An antique mirror, which I bought for $2.99 and sold for $34.50.

• Two vintage lighting globes, which cost me $1.50 and $4.99 and then sold to a local store for $45.

• A 1965 Barbie case, which I bought filled with dolls and clothes for $15. The case alone sold for $45. The rest is listed separately.

• A Guitar Hero controller, which I bought for $4.99 and sold for $40.

• A marble, which was part of a $2.99 jar and sold by itself for $28.80.

• Three yards of wool fabric, which I bought for $2.49 and sold for $25.00.

I washed my car in the driveway, (it was impressively filthy after driving through that wildlife sanctuary) I was gifted a bag of fresh figs from my father’s tree, I returned some supplies to a hardware store after realizing I’d bought the wrong stuff, I threw a neighborhood potluck using non-disposable dishes and silverware, my son and I picked free blackberries from my secret spot, my husband and I drove to the beach for the day to celebrate our 28th anniversary, (day trips are so much cheaper than renting a motel room!) and I listened to both Crying in H Mart and The Chicken Sisters through the library’s free Libby app.

I didn’t buy a Lear Jet.

I finally got my free wood chip delivery through Get Chip Drop, which pairs arborists with cheap-ass local gardeners. I’d signed up a few weeks earlier and even prepped the backyard for the project as I knew I’d have to start shoveling the mulch as soon as it was delivered. Luckily I had two day’s notice, which allowed me to move the car out of the driveway and ensure that all garden implements were at the ready.

Wheelbarrow with a properly inflated tire? Check!

As you can see in the above photos, the supposed “grass” portion of my backyard had devolved into hardened clay soil that served no purpose other than to ensure that dirt and mud was efficiently tracked into the kitchen.

In the end I’d estimate that I lugged fifty wheelbarrow loads of mulch from our driveway to the backyard. Hard physical work, but worth every sore muscle.

And the cherry on top of this project is a $28 string of outdoor Edison lights purchased used from an eBay seller. Because Jeff Bezos doesn’t need any more money and over-manufacture of consumer goods is killing our planet.

My husband and I took a day trip up to Washington to visit the Ridgefield National Wildlife Sanctuary which was a 45-ish minute drive from the house. (It would have been quicker, but traffic was an issue.) We’d never been before, and were quite pleased with the experience even though the hiking trails were closed due to Covid.

The sanctuary takes you on a driving loop, which we hadn’t anticipated, but since it wasn’t an issue to stop the car and peer through our binoculars at the various wildlife that populate the area. (Nutria! Fawns! Coyotes! Turtles! Otters! Birds! Birds! Birds!) We ended up driving the loop twice, and even downloaded their podcast for the second go round.

They also have an offsite Native American reproduction “plankhouse” as part of the nature preserve, and although it too was closed, it was still worth the extra step to find.

Not too shabby for a $3 car fee.

I recently watched a mind blowing HGTV YouTube video about the actor, chalk artist, historical reinactor and calligrapher Rajiv Surendra. And then I watched it again. Twice. And then I called my sister and ordered her to watch it as I needed to debrief with someone who’d also seen it.

For those who may not know him, Rajiv Surendra is a Canadian actor with Sri Lankin Tamil roots who’s best known for playing the rapping mathlete “Kevin G” from the movie “Mean Girls.” But he’s also a gifted artist, musician, knitter, potter and enthusiastic researcher into artisan made goods from the past.

Then I ordered a $12.99 used copy of Surendra’s memoir titled The Elephants in My Backyard from Powell’s bookstore. (His story of how he immersed himself in the book “Life of Pi” in a vain attempt to win the movie role.) I’d tried to order the book from eBay, but there weren’t any copies available, so of course I listed my one when I was done reading it . . . and it sold for $50 as you can pretty much name your price if you’re the only seller.

It’s hard to describe the magic of this video. Go watch it. Twice!

I spent an afternoon prepping multiple meals for the fridge and freezer, (this included cooking up a leftover Costco roasted chicken for both soup and two pans of enchiladas, marinating chicken for an Asian stir fry, prepping broccoli, cutting up cantaloupe and baking some extra chicken thighs) we ran out of toothpaste, but survived on dentist samples until I could get to The Dollar Tree as toothpaste was suspiciously expensive at the grocery store, I finished listening to The Paris Library and immediately began The Last Bookshop in London through the free Libby app, I found 44¢ in change over the course of two days, I mended my son’s pants, I cobbled together a hanging jar for propagating plants and I’ve been having my son save his morning coffee grounds so I can later brew myself a cup of weak iced coffee.

I didn’t buy a Lear Jet.

The Pacific Northwest experienced an unprecedented heat wave that knocked us Portlanders off our feet. For reference, Portland had never before recorded a temperature higher than 106F (41.1C) yet we rose up to 116F, (46.67C) after setting record highs three loooong days in a row! Keep in mind that the Pacific Northwest is normally known for cool summers, and June here is jokingly referred to as “Junuary” as the weather is normally drizzly and cold.

For reference, when my kids were little, we’d always wait until July 1st to buy a summer swim pass as it was too cold to swim before then anyway.

Because of this, most Pacific Northwesterners forgo air conditioning and just sweat out the one or two hot days per year. My natural inclination is to just run fans, but my husband sleeps hot and had slowly accumulated window AC unit for our kids’ bedrooms, as well as a portable unit for our bedroom. These were lifesavers in our uninsulated 1914 home!

I went ahead and invited our family over to my mother’s air conditioned house two evenings in a row, (I picked up Popeye’s chicken the first night.) We rarely eat at my mom’s, as my house is better set up for entertaining, but there was nothing “normal” about these conditions.

Intellectually I know that global warming is changing the world we all live in, but this was still a rude awakening for me as we Oregonians rarely experience dramatic weather. I fear my next electric bill, and frankly, for the future of our planet!

I curb picked a wonky handmade wooden shelf that was the perfect catalyst for decluttering and rearranging my narrow back porch. Measuring at a mere 43 inches wide, some might call my porch a hallway rather than an actual porch.

The weathered shelf was unusually shallow, which makes it a perfect storage solution for the random bits and bobs that accumulate on the porch. I finally have a logical spot to neatly store items such as gardening supplies, plastic clogs, batteries for recycling, etc, etc.

No one is ever going to send a photo of my back porch to HGTV, but it’s no longer an eye sore — and for the price of zero-point-zero dollars, I call that a win!

Click HERE for more photos of the back porch.

I sold just a few items, including:

• A $7.20 pair of Planet Box Rover lunch boxes that sold for $46.

• A $8 American Girl doll that sold for $80.

• A $3.99 video game that sold for $24.

• A 99¢ mug that sold for $25.

• A $3.99 Ikea fabric remnant that sold for $22.

• A $4.99 Florence Knoll chair that sold for $40.

My neighbor borrowed a stick of butter and in return they gifted us a dozen local eggs, I read and returned All-Of-A-Kind Family from someone’s Little Free Library and then borrowed a copy of The Kew Garden Girls from my own library, I soaked three unused stamps off old envelopes to mail thank you notes, I transformed accidentally spicy marinara sauce into black bean chili, I’ve been really good about bringing ice water in my thrifted Hydroflask whenever I leave the house, I transplanted a fern from my front yard into a curb-picked planter for my shady back yard and my son got a job that’s walkable from our house.

I didn’t buy a Lear Jet.

I sold a McCarty Pottery Studio vase through an auction on eBay for $86 and change. This should have been an impressive sale as I’d picked it up at Goodwill for a mere $3.99, however the winning bidder never paid. I went ahead and waited the four days that an eBay buyer is allowed to jerk me around delay payment and then relisted it, this time for $125 as a “buy it now.”

It sold in two days for $125 and they paid immediately!

Puts me in the mood to do some thrifting!

I brought home a nice assemblage of items from random neighborhood free piles:

• A large still shrink wrapped faux-stone resin planter which I immediately filled with a fern from my scrappy parking strip. I’d been wanting some potted plants for my deeply shady backyard, so this was a perfect zero-dollar solution.
• A pair of outdoor cushions for the Adirondack chairs that my husband made a dozen or so years ago. My neighbor had invited me over for tea last week and I’d noticed how her padded chairs were infinitely more comfortable than my hard wood ones, so this was true kismet.
• A bizarrely nice antique end table that needed nothing more than a good cleaning and wipe down with some Restor-A-Finish. I am flush with fussy end tables, so this one went up for sale on Facebook Marketplace and Craigslist.
• A paper bag full of random CDs that I let my son and his friend rummage through. The couple dozen that were left will stock my Little Free Library.

I spent a good chunk of time last Sunday meal prepping a variety of different dishes for the week using what I happened to have in the fridge, freezer and pantry. I know that other people employ this practice as part of their normal routine, but boy-oh-boy was it a huge undertaking! (So many pots and pans to wash!)

However, it was fan-freaking-tastic to spend an entire week knowing that delicious dinners were at the ready and that I didn’t have to burn even a single brain cell wondering what to make for dinner! I do see that it would get progressively simpler over time were I to repeat and streamline the process, so I think I’m going to continue with this experiment.

Here’s what I made/prepped:

• Two and half pans of enchiladas. (1-1/2 went into the freezer)
• A big pot of black bean chili.
• Washed and chopped a ton of broccoli.
• Asian-style marinaded chicken thighs, which then became a chicken and veggie rice-noodle stir fry.
• A lasagna-style pasta bake, as I didn’t have any gluten-free lasagna noodles, but did have gluten-free penne.

This may not seem like a huge amount of work, but since I took almost no short cuts (cooking black beans in the Instant Pot, making my own marinara sauce, etc) it was labor intensive. Luckily I had enough backlogged podcasts to keep my brain engaged.

I call this kind of endeavor “doing a favor for my future self.” Thank you, Katy!

I’m rooting more stems from my father’s prayer plant, I used a fully stamped “frequent buyer card” to get five free loaves of bread from the Franz bakery outlet, (this card only need five stamps to fill up, which is easy since they double stamp on Tuesdays) I’ve been moving plants around my yard to freshen it up rather than buying anything new and I chose a new bundle of novels from my county library to read.

I didn’t buy a Lear Jet.