September Digest

With all my online thrifting during COVID, I've finally hit my limit for clothes shopping. The closet is full and I'll need to be extra purposeful with my shopping list. Whoops! For the next couple months at least, I'm redirecting my focus to other activities, like packaging reduction, food waste reduction, and DIY reuse projects. Here are a few of the things I've been up to this month: 

1) Reuse/upcyle: I did make an exception about thrifting to finish my Halloween costume prep. I got this pile of red, green, and yellow fabric for $8 at Goodwill. No more hints, though. Toby is guarding the surprise until Halloween. :)

2) Sell for reuse: I was happy to get an appointment to sell my book at Half Price Books. Like many businesses, they are moving to appointment-only to reduce exposure. I got a pile of ancient books and DVDs out of my house, into circulation for the next user, and made $3.25.

3) Refill/reduce packaging: Last January, I wrote about a new service called Loop, which is similar to a milkman service but for health and household products like dish soap and shampoo. They were still in limited cities, but you could sign up for their waiting list. This month, I got notified that they are finally in the Seattle area and I could sign up for early access! So I created my account and browsed around through the site. Things seem a little sparse with some products, especially the national brands, not yet available in the area, but I'm hopeful they will get more selection by the time they are available for general sign-up. On the plus side, they seem to have a house brand Puretto with decent selection on staples, ranging from bath bombs to dry pasta to spices.

4) Share: For a while, I've been amused by videos on YouTube of people creating incredible ball pits for their dogs to play in. I went so far at to look at kiddie pools and balls on Amazon, and then stopped myself. Do I want to spend $40 for what may or may not be fun? Do I want to buy a bunch of new plastic? No and no. Well, Buy Nothing saved the day, when I saw a neighbor post a ball pit!

Here, I'm setting it up for Meeko: 

She is confused and tripping over it. Clearly not used to getting into a pit. Are we trying to give her a bath?? 

Finally gets one ball out and leaves.

After this experience, I can say I had my 15 minutes of fun, and now I will pass the ball pit onto its 3rd owner. I've gotta say, borrowing or sharing is the absolute best for novelty items. You can have your fun and pass it on. 

What have you done this month to reduce your waste?