October 9th, 2008 · 1 Comment

Field trips, real and virtual

• Find your local Goodwill or Salvation Army thrift stores. While you’re familiar with them as far as donating or finding clothing, you might not be aware of the other things you’ll find there. Picture frames are often in huge supply for $1 to $2, if you’re willing to take the old art out. It’s easy to find glassware that just needs a good washing or extra silverware for around the holidays. Old t-shirts to use for rags or used towels to use as dog towels are plentiful. Used golf clubs, secondhand luggage and old computer monitors are common. And if you just need a nice piece of fabric for a project, go browse the linens and clothing. Depending on who just cleaned out their closets, you’ll find everything from Walmart to Pottery Barn.

• Find electronics recyclers. It’s difficult to know what to do with old cell phones, television sets, computer monitors, printers and other small electronics. There are local centers and national programs and everything in between. Go online to the EPA’s web site where you can search for everything from municipal programs to retail stores where you can take used items. To make money while recycling these things, help your local school, church or community group organize a fundraiser around collecting old phones and printer cartridges. Staples, Motorola and a group called Think Recycle can help.

• Go bargain-hunting. In a similar vein, there’s an endless supply of recycled goods – nearly anything you can imagine – on sale every weekend. It’s the great American tradition called the garage sale. Kids’ clothes are prime items here, because they cost so much to buy and the kids grow out of them so fast. Don’t fret and think that you have to be one of the people who are up at the crack of dawn, newspaper and coffee in hand, waiting for the sale to open. There are lots of sales with tons of good deals. Every time you buy something and put it to a second use, you’re recycling. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a sweater, an end table or a Monopoly game with a couple of missing tokens; if you’re keeping it out of the landfill, you’re making a difference. And if you found it at a garage sale, you’re saving money too.

• Find the seed display at your local nursery. Do you buy annuals each year to plant in your flowerbeds? Save the containers they come in, and grow your own next time around. If you’re not sure what to plant for your area, there are online guides to the different gardening zones. All you need is a some good garden soil (or regular dirt mixed with a little of that compost pile), some protected sunlight and a little bit of time. The annuals you buy at the home stores or nurseries are generally 6 to 12 weeks old, so start your plants with that in mind. You don’t have to have a greenhouse (or even a green thumb, really). Since it’s for a short period of time, just move a table or plant stand by a sunny window, protect the surface with paper or plastic, plant and water the seeds according to the instructions on the packets, and enjoy your savings! (A packet of seeds will cost $2 to $3, and you can get them at nearly any nursery or home store, or go online for even more selection. Compare this to what you spend on annuals — $4 to $15 for a dozen, depending on size – and imagine your pleasure when your flowerbed is full. If you’d like to go online, the Natural Gardening Company offers organic seeds for herbs, flowers and vegetables, as well as seedlings if you’d rather go that route. It’s the oldest certified organic nursery in the nation.

• Find your local used bookstore. There are so many ways to save here, it’s dizzying. First of all, you can take books to the store that you no longer want, and they’ll assess the books and give you cash for them. (Half-Price Books is a national chain, but check your local listings as well.) Second, if you shop there, most books are half-off the original cover price; buying one book a month for $5 less than it costs at a regular bookstore will save you $60 over the course of a year. And third, when you’re done with the books you bought there, you can sell them back again. It’s truly a recycler’s dream cycle.

Weekend projects

• The compost pile. Yep, here it is, that compost pile we keep talking about. If you already have one, then you’re a convert. If you don’t already have one, chances are it’s because you’re not sure how. There are several sites online that help you choose where and how to make a compost pile, and give you tips on getting it started. And once it’s going, you have a constant source of organic material to use as mulch in flowerbeds or around trees and to work into the soil in your landscape. Not only are you keeping your yard waste, leaves, and kitchen garbage out of the landfill, you could save an easy $50 or more a year if you regularly buy mulch, peat moss, garden soil and/or fertilizer for the same tasks.

• Harvesting rainwater: Here’s the deal: It’s free! It falls from the sky! And while “harvesting rainwater” sounds really cool, all it means is that you’re catching rain and using the water later. It can be a small effort – rain barrels positioned at the bottom of your rain gutters, for instance – or a large effort complete with sophisticated storage tanks. (See our recent story for tips.) If you use your collected rainwater to water those seeds you’ve planted, you’ve got a double savings going.

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