Frugality MCS-Style

I've been feeling poor lately. Usually when I feel this way, I take inventory of my bills and question what I can do without. Unfortunately, since I run on bare minimum most of the time, there isn't much I can do to reduce my expenditures. So instead I count the many ways I do save money and that makes me feel a little bit better about my situation...sort of...until my bank account gets so low I start to panic. I know I am not alone as there are many chemically sensitive people out there who work only part-time due to health issues, are disabled and living on limited income, and/or homeless. Here are some strategies I use for saving money:


1.) I cut my own hair. I don't use toxic products on it either which are very expensive. No shampoos, conditioners, hairspray, hair gel. No color or permanents. Eeeww...I can't imagine. It sure saves money to have natural hair.

2.) I shop at the Free Store at my local food co-op for clothes. I have found shorts, pajamas, pants, coats, sweaters, and t-shirts. This takes patience and perseverance, but eventually something of good quality shows and I snatch it up.

3.) I shop yard, garage, and estate sales for basics: sheets, blankets, clothes, garden supplies, office supplies, anything and everything. Sometimes I find a house where the owner has my same taste. Jackpot!

4.) I get all books and DVDs out of the library. I have rarely purchased or rented either in the last twenty years.


5.) Because I get all my DVDs out of the library, I rarely if ever go to the movies. This takes an enormous amount of patience, too, to wait until the movie is released on DVD. I also don't subscribe to Netflix or HBO or other services.

7.) I watch free TV series also from the library, but I can find some series online. Again, this takes patience as one usually has to wait about six months for the DVD to be released and for online viewing, normally one needs to wait until a week after it was on TV to see it free.

8.) I check music CDs out of the library, too. There is often a very long wait on new releases. I listen to the CD until I'm sick of every song and return it. Later if I have a craving to listen again, I check it out again! I don't need to buy anything!

9.) I rarely eat in restaurants. I know this indulgence is nice. So wonderful to have someone cook for you, but it is very costly for all that pampering.

10.) I don't buy presents: Christmas, birthdays, wedding and baby showers, etc. Call me Scrooge. Sometimes I will make something for someone, but I avoid shopping.

11.) I don't wear make-up and, therefore, don't need make-up remover or special cleaning soaps.

12.) I avoid buying packaged or processed foods and instead I buy in bulk. I also avoid buying any kind of plastic storage bags and instead use glass bowls and containers. This cuts down on garbage, too, but in the city limits residents are required to purchase garbage service so there is no choice. If I lived in the country, I would pack my own garbage to the dump....and definitely do more recycling.

13.) I get free water from the free flowing artesian well using refillable glass bottles.

14.) I rarely go on vacation. I do staycations at home.

15.) Wait for sales and then buy in bulk! I have cases of dishwashing liquid and laundry detergent stored in my house. One can usually get a per case discount ON TOP of the discounted sales price.

16.) Use coupons. Every now and then I find a coupon for discounted merchandise, especially office supplies or paper products. I rarely, if ever, find coupons for organic food or healthy products. I've always admired women who keep large, massively organized coupon collections. That takes a whole lot of work!

17.) Memberships at warehouse stores like Costco. There isn't much I buy in terms of groceries at Costco since most of what they sell is junk food garbage AND more importantly the organic produce they do have is usually sold in large quantities. Unless one is willing to can or freeze any excess, it would go bad too quickly. In addition, I don't do canned food and I have limited space in my freezer for frozen. However, this would be a good option for families. Costco does have really cheap gas, eye glass prescriptions, and electronics.

18.) Eat less. I try. I'm a notorious overeater. Food is health, comfort, and entertainment. Heck, food is sanity! However, lately I've been doing a good job of limiting my portions and, WOW! food supplies actually last longer! I'm buying less. For a while every time I'd go to the store I'd think how cheap that was, what did I forget, and what was wrong with me before I remembered I'm not eating as much as I used to! (I can't lie...I'm hungry, but I know even when I'm full I'm hungry. I just like to eat.)

19.) Free garden supplies. When possible I get plants for free. Take cuttings off of plants that will propagate easily and get left-over plants from friends cleaning out their gardens due to overgrowth. I have also dug up wildflowers along the side of the highway. If wild weed-like plants infest my yard, I strategically use them in my gardens and call them "native plants." I get rabbit manure from a friend's barn for fertilizer, ash from a friend's fireplace for soil amendments, and bamboo sticks from someone who ripped all the bamboo out of their yard. Every fall plants in my garden go to seed and I collect the seeds for planting the following year. I also collect seeds from foods, like squash.

20.) I love Freecycle. Lots of freebies of all kinds.

21.) Garbage. Sometimes I just find free stuff. For a while I was going to the dump regularly looking for cast offs that could be recycled. My neighbors sometimes put things out on the road with a "free" sign. I have a set of lawn chairs I got that way. Other neighbors put shelves or basketballs or whatever out for the garbage. I am not proud...I take what I like.

Latest acquisition!

22.) I buy expensive items in a state that doesn't charge sale tax.

23.) I get free cardboard from the local furniture store to use as painting canvases or protest posters.

24.) I do most of my house construction and maintenance myself. Not only is is less toxic and I can control any contamination, but it's just plain cheaper.

In conclusion, the key is patience. Waiting for the garage sale that is selling exactly what you need, waiting on hold for the latest movie DVD or music CD from the library, waiting for sales, waiting for freebies to show. Every little bit helps.

Also, my money saving ideas work for me because of my chemical sensitivity isolation. For social butterflies some of these ideas might be their worst nightmare: going without fancy hair and make-up or not having a social life. If you have MCS sacrifices are sometimes necessary...and also money-saving!!

Well, this makes it sound like I never buy anything and of course that's not true. I'm always looking for new ideas.

How do you save money?

Rathole: A Photographic Essay

Welcome to Rathole. My home. My hell. Rathole has some redeeming qualities, points of vague interest, and a few really pretty sights. Any good photographer can find beauty amongst the wreckage, but it takes someone with insight to feature the hidden reality. Call me a realist. Let's have a look.

This is my favorite view of Rathole. It says it all.

 

 

Most of Rathole is in various degrees of decay. Few new property owners with money and energy bother to see potential. Needed repairs are ignored, the building left abandoned and the structure disintegrates.



 

 

When a building falls down or burns down, the rubble is left where it is. If someone complains loudly enough, the rubble is removed and a vacant lot is born. Rathole has lots of vacant lots.



 

The local junk man is not what he seems. Years ago he won the lottery. Millions. With his new-found wealth, he bought up debilitated buildings and vacant lots and turned them into junk yards and slums.

Rathole is now one big junk yard with the old and used on every corner...

 

...and stored in every empty building. There should be a law against this, but if there were, I doubt if anyone would care enough to enforce it. Rathole suffers from apathy.

 



 

 

Junkman, Lord of the Slums, also wins the award as the number one slumlord. He doesn't care. There is a certain justice to poverty restricting trailer trash from owning land. Unfortunately, anyone is allowed to buy a lottery ticket.

 

 

I had a police officer tell me once you can tell which properties are Junkman's. The ones that look like they should be condemned. Junkman's step-daughter used to live near me. She told me she asked Junkman when he dies to will her the blue apartments so she could burn them to the ground. I didn't even know which ones she was talking about. The "blue" is so faded and dirty I didn't think it was blue:

Junkman used to be the owner of the most popular bar. Here's the bar:

It was condemned. And then it just fell down and disappeared. Now he uses the lot for storage. Open-air storage:

One can always tell how destitute a location is. When times get tough, people head to the local bars to drown their sorrows, find a compassionate ear, and feel as if things aren't so bad. The problem with frequenting bars is unless you have some really generous friends willing to foot the bill, you gotta have money for those drinks. Management usually frowns on a customer nursing a glass of water every night and friends will eventually expect you to reciprocate.

If no one has money, even the bars go out of business.

Unable to reciprocate the generosity and buy a round for everyone?


...the truly poor head to church. It's free.



Where Life and Faith Meet...it's peeling!

A place to drown sorrows, find a compassionate ear and maybe some charity so it doesn't feel so bad. Rathole has a whole lot of churches scattered throughout the town and over the countryside. More churches than bars. That's always a sign.

The exceptionally poor head to one of the break-off churches. These congregations aren't affiliated with the money-worshipping religions who actually have an official meeting place and must guilt parishioners into paying for upkeep and taxes. Rathole has a whole lot of rental congregations so it's good Rathole has a whole lot of businesses that have gone under and are now trying to rent out their store fronts for cheap.

I'm sure they were liberated from the tyrannical, corporate-like religions who congregate in church buildings. They have moved their location many times, from one deserted building to the next abandoned store front.

 

They just pick up their plastic chairs and walk them a block away.

Residents who have lived in Rathole all their lives tell me the place was booming in the 1960s. They boast of a community filled with department stores, car dealerships, restaurants, gas stations, and more than one major grocery chain. I've read some history on the area along with population statistics. At one point this town claimed 40,000 residents. Now it's just 2000 people with wistful memories of days gone by. People who leave take their money with them. Eventually there is not enough consumers to buy anything. Every year businesses have closed their doors leaving buildings empty.

Department store chains have left town.

 

 

Car dealerships have uprooted everything leaving vacant lots.

Diners with empty seats.

Grocery stores have razed their buildings to the concrete.

This used to be Safeway...

Bakeries no longer bake yummy treats and instead harbor old, ugly furniture.

Gas stations are used for storage and parking.

 

Appliance store marquees are blank and windows dark.

Rental signs fill the windows of most empty buildings. (Well, if they aren't filled with Junkman's junk!)

Not to mention the vacant homes left to suffocate in mold and mildew.

Everything is left to rot and disintegrate.

Even in the relatively short time I've been living in Rathole, I've seen many businesses closed. Rathole is heading toward ghost town distinction. Or extinction.

Rathole is, however, well-known by tourists. It's the stop-off location between point A and B on the recreational vehicle tour. Rathole is where road-trip tourists stop to let their dogs out to crap. Not much else to do in Rathole.

My home is a dog toilet.

 

 

I'm looking forward to moving.