Monday, July 20, 2009

No New Shoes for Mama


Once again Small Footprints has given us a very daunting challenge! Do not buy anything for a week! Now she limited this to unnecessary items. The exception being food,health, and safety products.

Since we only have one regular income in my house at the moment, this is not a hard challenge for me except in the area of shoes. I have a real problem with shoes. I just cannot turn down a cute pair of heels especially if they are on sale. I do need some new work shoes but I can put that off for a week.

This idea came form her friend at Sober White Women. Since I reuse a lot of stuff and I am starting to repurpose more, I thought I would share some of my ideas with all of you.

I have a basket by my back door filled with old towels from my own linen closet and from yard sales. I use them to dry off my dogs when they come inside. When these towels get too thin for this purpose or tear in awkward places, I cut them up and use them as rags for washing car, dusting, etc. You can also use old cotton socks for dusting. They fit on your hand and work really well.

Since hubs does home repair, we try to repurpose any thing that is still usable that he replaces. This has included cabinets, vanities, and the like. What he cannot reuse, we recycle if possible.

I have a small garden and my mom's friend is an avid hunter. So I have a freezer full of deer, and fresh veggies that I put up myself. So I only have to buy staples at the market. My goal is to only shop once a month.

My daughter and I are the same size and when she tires of her clothes, I get first dibs so I have not bought jeans in over a year. But her taste in shoes is sorely lacking.

****UPDATE****
Last weeks challenge was to go one day without driving. It was hot as Hades here Wednesday, which was my token day. My grandson and I did not go anywhere. It was still in the 90's at 6pm so I opted to refrain from walking my dogs with him in this heat.

I threw papers Fri-Sun. Since I needed to pick up the route list for the route I was to throw, and she wanted to meet on Wed., I asked her if she could just leave it at the office on Thur. morning so I would not have to drive. I did have to pick up my grandson but all in all, I did pretty well without driving. I thought I would have a ton of things come up that would prevent me from participating in this challenge, but it worked out and we stayed home and finger painted and made scrapbook pages for Granny. It was a very fun day for the both of us:)

2 Comments:

  1. betty said...
    those are all great ways to save the environment and also to cut back on expenses. when I worked outside of the house, I tended to buy more shoes to go with this outfit or that outfit, now I'm very comfortable in tennies and the occasional flip-flops

    we are having hot temps here too; I walk Koda around 6 a.m. and then we walk him again in the evening after the sun goes down

    betty
    sober white women said...
    I just checked as of yet reduce footprints has not posted anything new. I can't wait to see what she comes up with this week.
    I like what you do with the old towels. I will have to remember that when or if we ever get any rain.
    Giving up on buying shoes was hard for me, but I have not bought a new pair of shoes in a long time.
    This no spending has really opened my eyes to what we do have.

    Kelli

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