Re-use or New??

I was talking to an old friend this past weekend about my current sofa. I purchased my “dream” sofa (IKEA Ektorp) a few years back off a Craigslist ad. I sold the current sofa I had, my previous “dream” sofa before I fell in love with IKEA (blue jean sofa). A couple offered me $50 for mine and the couple selling the IKEA one accepted my offer of $50 down from $60. So, I practically scored it for free.

I want to say the sofa is roughly six or seven years old as the older couple had had it for a few years prior. Over the years, the sofa cushions have seen better days and now they are at the point where they need replacement. I replaced one because my dog removed the stuffing during a thunderstorm. Price wise it seemed reasonable at $65. In my conversation with this friend, I mentioned how I would be getting the other two cushions done as well. My friend made the comment as to why I was paying to have them re-done when I can just buy a new one for close to the cost of replacing seeing as after having all three done it will be around $200 and a new sofa costs $399 plus tax.

My thought behind just replacing is that the bones of the sofa are still in excellent condition. Why buy a new sofa that will use many resources to make when I can just fix the cushions and get many more years out of it. And, yes, even though the price difference is only a little more than $200 versus new, there are many other things that I can use that $200 on.

So tell me, would you replace some worn out cushions on a perfectly good sofa with the structure being in excellent condition or would you just buy new??

©Valerie 

Another year of Low Waste

Sometimes going “Zero Waste” is not as easy as it may seem.

I have been doing my part of living a low waste lifestyle going on four years now. It all started with a promise I had made to my children. I had promised them that if we could cut out as much of the “disposables” from our household that year that I would do my best to use the money saved and take them on a family vacation out of state. That year, we stopped buying paper towels and invested $20 in cloth napkins. That was January 2015 and four years later those napkins are still being used. Shout out to Just Jillian’s Reusables as she makes all my napkins, facial rounds, and made my cloth pads. That year I was able to save a little under $200 and although it didn’t cover the entire monetary amount of the trip it was enough to help with side expenses so off we went on our first out of state trip to California the summer of 2016.

After two years of using cloth napkins, we went into 2017 with the mentality of “what else can we remove from our home that was disposable?” I noticed that I was spending around $5 a month on those white cotton rounds. I used them for everything from applying toner to removing nail polish. So, I reached out to Jillian (see link above) who made me some rounds from recycled terry cloth. They work fabulous! I have about five that I dedicated to strictly removing nail polish since they are now stained but the others were split between my son and I. We even re-used empty cleaned out candle jars to store them in. Even though we didn’t save as much for the year as we did with the cloth napkins adding our savings to that of what we continue to save by not using paper towels was now starting to add up. So mid year I decided to take the leap and replace my night time usage of disposable pads with cloth ones. This is where the savings came. I would spend about $15 on average per month just for disposable pads for night usage (was a cup user during the day) so I bought a few pads from Jillian and started the journey of cloth pads at night. I was in heaven. This helped me save about $200 from mid 2017-mid 2018. Keep in mind that cloth pads will be an investment as some makers charge about $15 for one but with good laundering of it and proper care they will last years. I ended up having a hysterectomy last month so I won’t be needing them anymore but all of my cloth pads looked brand new a year and half later.

As of the end of 2018, we were slowly but surely making progress on our low waste lifestyle. We are still using cloth napkins, dish towels to clean the kitchen, small washcloths to clean the restroom, re-usable cloth facial rounds, crochet coasters and soap pockets (put bar of soap in) my grandmother made us, shampoo bars and conditioner bars, fabric produce bags or at times I just put the individual items in my cart, and I am sure other items I am forgetting.

The issue with being more low waste is the fact that in my city we have minimal sources for grocery bulk shopping. We have two grocery stores that have a decent selection of bulk products and only one of those offers bulk items such as olive oil, castille soap, and dish soap, the negative…they don’t allow you to bring in your own containers. So there you are trying to do your part in accumulating less plastic, but the stores are making you use a plastic bag to “package” it. I have done my part in sending them messages via social media, emailing their corporate locations through information found on their websites but to no avail, the issue still stands. In addition, our main true grocery store just keeps bringing on the plastic. You walk through their produce section and you see individual cucumbers wrapped in plastic, packs of 3 bell peppers wrapped in plastic, and so on. It seems we are moving backwards rather than progressing because even just five or six years ago there wasn’t so much plastic in the produce section. Hell, the supplier for coconuts are wrapping them individually in plastic. Like seriously…what the??

Now, I am not saying I will ever be completely zero waste because there truly is no such thing. However, if I can continue to do my part by keeping plastic out of my household and the landfills then I know I have done what I could to help Mother Earth have a brighter future.

Oh…I forgot one major one we embarked on this past year. We have switched to “family” cloth for restroom usage of #1. It was a bit hard to get my son on board for usage for #2 but at least our usage of toilet paper has minimized and a package of 24 rolls will last us about 6 months. Now, if we can only find individual wrapped toilet paper rolls in something other than plastic bags.

Thoughts….What have you done to live a low waste/low impact lifestyle?? What will you be doing extra for 2019 to help you get to your goal?

©Valerie