What does being a conscious consumer mean, anyway? According to the New American Dream it means making informed choices about what we buy and how we consume. But what does it REALLY mean to you? Being "poor," i.e. lacking very much (if any) discretionary income, Andrew and I are always looking for ways to save. There are some amazing crunchy people, and non-crunchy people, I know that have found ingenious ways to save money, spend wisely, and reduce their waste.
Take Lindsay for example: even living in New York City, one of the most expensive places to live in the USA, she managed to set a goal of spending only $150 dollars a month on groceries to feed two adults, and well, I might add. How did you do it, Lindsay and are you still doing it?
One of the things I like to do is to use reusable grocery bags. They aren't very expensive and I get .05 off per bag at Smith's grocery store. It isn't a huge thing, but if you use 10 bags, which I easily do on my bi-weekly shopping trips, I get .50 back. That is $1 a month and since these bags usually cost $1 each you will recoup your cost in just 10 months and have these bags for a lot longer than that.
Or you could be like TopHat: Take the challenge to ditch the disposables. I cloth diaper and I try to limit how many disposables I use but, gosh darn it, it is tough! One of my crunchy friends, Brighton Woman, doesn't use ANY disposables! Her family is an all-cloth bunch. It helps that she is amazing at sewing, although, I doubt that even if I do learn to sew that I will ever stop using TP or Kleenex.
Reduce, reuse, recycle! One of the best ways I have found to be Green and save lots of money is the 3R's, especially when it comes to buying things like children's clothes, books, etc. Buying used is often just as good and SO much cheaper. I learned this lesson in college when just the thought of buying costly textbooks at the beginning of the semester made me feel sick. I saw a great post this week on someones blog (can't remember whose it was!) about fixing up garage sale finds for her son's b-day and it ended up saving the mom $200 over buying all the stuff new! Anyone who has kids knows how quickly they grow out of clothes, which is why garage sales, craigslist, freecycle, consignment stores and thrift stores are such great things. Most of the kids clothes are in great shape and they will cost you a lot less. Things I will not buy used: underwear, bedding, or shoes (unless I know the source).
That is all for now, but if you have great ideas on things you do to be a conscious/savy consumer, post a message and share! Plus for fun you can check out Living Green Below Your Means.
4 comments:
I love getting books from the city library. Free, assuming you can get the books back on time. ;-)
I make my own baby food. Hailey is 6 months old so she's just barely starting food. You can get a baby food grinder and just grind up your own fruits and veggies. Saves money and is easy.
oh this family does use TP. *I* don't anymore usually, but the rest of the family does.
And we do use paper towels for putting under greasy foods--bacon or fried fish--that's it though.
Seriously, no sewing skill needed for the kleenex: cut up old teeshirts! (I make my TP the same way actually...whites for TP and coloreds for kleenex...I should have done it the other way around but I didn't and I'm not gonna switch now!). Anyway, tee-shirts don't fray, and they're always nice and soft. Also it's great upcycling. :)
I would say, just make a goal to change one thing at a time. Right now I'm working on toys that will last (rather than cheap stuff) and also purchasing things with less packaging.
Here's my update on the $150 food budget. We're still running a tight ship, but because of rising food costs and the fact that Garrett is now drinking regular milk and eating what we eat (before we kept his formula and rice cereal and stuff that I bought him in a separate budget category), we've had to up it just a little. I think, though, that we're feeding all of us now at just under $200/month. (I tell ya...when you have to buy 2 gallons a milk every 5-6 days, each one at $4/gal, it adds up quickly.) Here's the post I wrote about how we did this. That's all pretty much the same now. Really, it's just about being conscious and creative.
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