So I've had to make some concessions with my challenge, but I some of them HAD to be done in order for me to reach my other goals this year of changing my lifestyle to have a lower carbon footprint.
1. I HAD to buy some new pants and shirts. I've lost almost 20 pounds since January and my clothes were starting to look terrible and WAY TOO BIG on me. I weighed the options of buying gently used clothing, but I settled on picking out 2 pair of new jeans that are nicer so I won't feel like a slob at work and then digging out my old clothes that I was saving for when I lost weight (high school pants!). I kept a ton of clothes from when I was smaller so I've had some items to work with so I didn't have to buy new everything. I bought a handful of new shirts, but I'm looking for organic cottons and recycle fabrics when I do. I've donated bags upon bags of my old clothing since I'd taken really good care of them and most of them look new for others to benefit from. I'm decluttering my closets and drawers and it feels great.
2. I've had to buy the puppy stuff- grooming items (brush, deshedding tool, toothbrush), food, training treats and toys but BF and I have made a concerted effort to buy top quality, all natural ingredients with as little packaging as possible. Oh yeah, and I bought some dog clothing, but you know... Rudy didn't want to get wet and they were ON SALE for super cheap since it was the end of the season. Also, no packaging and the tags were recyclable.
3. I bought a new car because mine was on it's last leg and I had already planned for that. The plus side is that this car rates pretty well on the emissions scale (much better than the old car) and gets much better gas mileage than the Subaru.
4. I bought reusable shopping bags, sandwich bags and cleaning cloths. I hated getting plastic bags when I was shopping to put my produce in, so one day while at Fred Meyer I spotted these reusable mesh bags that come in threes. I bought 2 packs of them so now I use those instead of plastic bags and if they get dirty I just rinse them off in the sink and hang to dry so I can reuse again. They are also nice because your produce doesn't get all slimy in the drawers with condensation since the bags are mesh and let air through.
I also bought some Snack Taxi bags for our lunches. I'm refusing to use plastic sandwich bags anymore so we are using the last of ours now (which I also rinse out and reuse when I can) and are starting to use these awesome little reusable, washable pouches for our snacks and sandwiches. We try to use glass and ceramics as much as possible, but they aren't always practical when you tote your lunch to and from work every day.
The cleaning cloths are to replace paper towel use. I found some awesome micro fiber cloths (they come in 3 packs and 6 packs) at Bed, Bath and Beyond and they come in different shades of green so you can assign a cloth to each room in the house where they will be used. Our dark one is in the bathroom for cleaning, the medium green shade is my dust rag for the living/dining room areas, and the light green one is the kitchen cleaning rag. We just throw them in the wash every few days with our regular laundry to clean them. We still use paper towels for cleaning up specific things (like the ever so rare dog mess), but we have switched to using the recycled paper towels for that.
5. And I almost forgot I bought a mini Kitchenaid food processor with my slot machine winnings because the blender does NOT work for everything and I don't have 2 hours each night to chop stuff up for dinner. WORTH IT.
So that is pretty much it. I think those few things (one of which was planned before I decided to do the challenge) were worth buying and will help us save in the future. Plus, I don't know how to sew snazzy outfits from my drapes like Maria (Sound of Music reference) so new clothes were in order.
Going forward I think it will be easier to not buy new stuff. We don't really need anything new and most of the shopping we do now is for groceries and dog food anyway. I think the only other thing we are looking to replace are our plastic cups, but I have been keeping an eye out for glass and stainless steel ones at thrift stores so we'll see what I find.
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