More Secondhand Stuff

Here are some of our more recent secondhand finds to inspire your own bargain hunting.

A pair of Abercrombie & Fitch jeans, bought for my 16-year-old son at Plato's Closet for $22.00. Considering that Abercrombie & Fitch jeans start at $80 in the stores, I consider this a major score.

We borrowed this 20-gallon aquarium from some friends who no longer had their snake. That, and the driftwood log (partially obscured by the plant on the right) are on permanent loan to us until they need it back or until we decide to get a tall aquarium for Morty, our gecko, who is sleeping in the fake foliage on the left.

Morty himself is another story in frugality. While he was the most expensive gecko at the store ($49), he was the only gecko there that does not require live crickets for meals. The small bottle of crested gecko diet mix in the lower left corner of the picture will make enough "gecko mush" to feed the Morstser for about 4 months, and cost us $8, saving both the $2 per batch of crickets and the time running back and forth to Petco every other day.

My 8th grader needed a Texas Instruments graphing calculator for school. They run about $99 in the store, or close to $110 after our lovely 9.5% sales tax. I found this gently used one on eBay (it has the name of a previous owner engraved on the back) for $65, which included free shipping.

What are some of your most recent secondhand finds? Where do you find them?

A Fun Recycling Project

Here's a fun project that my hubby did the other day for a friend of ours.

My hubby has had a pair of these computer-component lamps in his office at work for years (which he made using lamps he picked up at a garage sale), and our friend has coveted them every time she stopped by. She had been looking for a glass lamp to fill like this for quite some time, but all the ones she found were prohibitively expensive (and by prohibitively, I mean upwards of $100). So, when my hubby found this one (sans computer parts) sitting out in front of our neighbor's house for free, he knew exactly what to do with it.

The lamp was filthy (the house was definitely inhabited by smokers). He had to clean the shade, wash the glass, and polish all the brass. He also bought a new wiring kit at Home Depot for about $10.00.

After cleaning it and rewiring it, he filled it with old computer and electronics components--hard drives, chips, an old DVD remote, anything electronic that he could find. This is a great way to reuse components from obsolete computers.

Our friend's husband contributed quite a bit of the computer components, so it includes several things that she recognizes. We gave it to her tonight, and she loved it!

I love things like this, when you can take something old, and something (or things) that are utterly worthless and come up with something new and useful.

Consignment Clothing Stores

I have a friend in the area who swears by Tree House Children's Store in Redmond (15742 Redmond Way, to be exact) for all her little ones' clothes. She has a preschool daughter and an infant son, and gets many of their clothes there. She says that she can get name-brand, barely-worn clothes for a dollar or two, and very often finds designer clothes with their price tags still attached. Ah, the joys of consignment store shopping in the land of Microsoft! And, quite honestly, with consignment deals like that, she'd be crazy to pay retail for kids' clothes, especially considering how fast they grow out of them in the toddler/infant stage.

I've been intending to try out Plato's Closet in Bellevue, which is a consignment store for teens, but my boys need so little in the way of clothes, that we did very little back-to-school shopping.

In general, if you have access to a good one, I think consignment stores are the way to go for kids' clothing. It's better to reuse something that is still in great shape than to pay overinflated prices for new. Ditto for hand-me-downs. If you can hook up with friends who have kids of differing ages, this is a great way to get some wardrobe items. My oldest son has a friend who has passed down some of his things to my youngest son. Because they came from outside the family, my youngest son doesn't even look at them as hand-me-downs (he sometimes balks at having to wear some of his older brothers' castoffs).

I'd love to hear from any of you who shop consignment stores: what store is it, where is it, what kind of deals do you find, when is the best time to shop them (i.e., mornings, weekends, Mondays, etc.).

Hey, It's Free!

I just stumbled on a great website called "Hey, It's Free!" It posts the web's best no-strings-attached free offers. I just ordered Crest Whitening Expressions toothpaste, Gimbal's Jelly Beans, a Kashi cookie, and a Simple Harvest granola bar. Check them out! I'll add their link to my main page, but I've also added it to my Links bar in Internet Explorer.

Things I Reuse: Dryer Sheets & Zip-top Bags

Here's another topic I promised to start writing on: things I reuse.

• Dryer Sheets. I reuse my Bounce dryer sheets until they become extremely limp. Usually after the first use, I will use two per load. Another clue (at least in the wintertime) for when I need to finally toss them is when the clothes come out of the dryer all static-y (is that a word?)


• Zip-top bags. For most uses, I use freezer zip-top bags. They are heavier and stand up to repeated hand washing. I only toss them once they have become so worn as to be unusable or have held raw meat (especially chicken). When using them for raw meat (marinating chicken, freezing meat, etc.), I try to use ones that have already been used at least once. The good folks who make Ziploc will advise you against reuse ("it's just not safe"), but I've never had a problem with them.

I'm sure I will think of more down the line. If there are things you reuse, let me know.

Lessons In Savings from Cathy Guisewite

The comic strip, Cathy, has a very funny series going on right now about "lessons in savings." I can relate to many! I particularly like this one, as it deals with something that I do (you may need to click on the image to be able to read the text):

Using the back of envelopes for lists and notes is one of my favorite ways to get another use out of something destined for the recycle bin. I open my envelopes with a letter opener so the edge is nice and neat, then I use them for my grocery lists when I am going to the store. The envelope is the perfect place to put all my coupons (and those of you who read my blog know how many coupons I can be carrying at any time), plus the envelope is sturdier than a single piece of paper which makes it easier to cross off the items on the list.

While I do embrace many technological advances, I still have a Franklin planner that uses paper (amazing, huh)? I save my daily pages and use the blank side (if I haven't written notes on them already) for making my menu list to post on the fridge, as well as the running grocery list that I keep on the fridge between trips to the store (before I transfer the list and the coupons to the envelope), as well as for general notes that I need to take or leave around the house.

Coming Soon

I've been focusing on saving money in my early posts. That will always be a feature of this site. However, I thought I'd let you know some topics that will be coming up in future posts:

• Consignment stores
• Craigslist and eBay
• Things I never buy at the grocery store
• Things I rarely buy at the grocery store
• Fun and useful things to make with things you already have around the house
• Things I reuse.

Stay tuned!

Printing on Both Sides of Paper

It's been about 30 years since the term "paperless office" was first coined. I remember quite a few years ago Bill Gates declaring that the paperless office was just around the corner. Well, maybe not so much. For a while, if anything, I think computers, printers, copiers, and fax machines caused people to use more paper, not less. This article, though a couple of years old, was very interesting to me as I researched this blog entry. It talks a lot about the advances that have happened lately to make the paperless office more of a reality.

I work in the publications department of an environmental consulting firm, and over the past 14 years I have definitely seen a trend away from generating multiple copies of a 500-volume in favor of sending the same information electronically in PDF form. Still, our office tends to go through an incomprehensible number of reams of paper each year.

For years at work, and more recently at home, I have been saving paper that has been printed on one side, that would normally just be headed to the recycle bin, for use a second time. I keep the paper in a tray on my computer stand, right next to the unused paper. Here's some of the things I print on the backside:

• E-mail messages (though only when absolutely necessary)
• Online banking confirmations that I am just going to shred when the statement arrives
• Online shopping receipts
• Weekly lists from the Grocery Game
• Grocery coupons found online
• A copy of my boys' weekly schedule I give my mother-in-law
• My weekly Young Women's lesson from lds.org
• Directions that I have searched for online
• Grade reports for my kids.

You get the idea. Essentially, if it is anything that I need for personal use that will likely just end up in the recycle bin anyway, I toss it on the backside. Even if I decide to save any of these things, the fact that there is something on the backside is usually not that important.