The last day

I can't believe that the last day of 2010 is here! Happy New Year's Eve to everyone! This of course means that my year long experiment is coming to its formal close. Do I anticipate going on a shopping spree tomorrow, or Sunday when stores are actually open? No. I actually don't anticipate much changing from the shopping patterns I've developed over the past year. I've developed a strong second hand habit. It's still more fun to go pick through second hand stores looking for treasures than it is to pop into Fred Meyer or any big box store. I am going to allow myself the option to go into any store I want on my quest to find pants that fit, though.Of all the things that I wasn't allowed to buy new this year, pants were the most frustrating item! I bet I could have finally found some that fit if I had taken a full day and tried on every pair of pants at all the second hand shops in town. Of course that was never going to happen - there are too many chores and other activities to squeeze into my weekends!

This was one of the two big lessons I got out of the year - second hand shopping is easy if you don't have a strict time line. Nothing was more frustrating than seeing something I really needed (dustpan) at every shop (and even some gas stations) but not being able to buy it until I finally spotted one at Goodwill! My other big lesson, which played very much off of the first, was that the things I thought I really needed often weren't as necessary as I believed! The act of waiting to buy certain items gave me more clarity regarding if I did actually need them.Often I was able to make substitutions with items that were already floating around my house. Or I'd stumble upon a free item somewhere and it would lend itself to use in place of something on my list. My example is when I found a spoon rest shaped like a fish in someones free pile. I decided it would work as a soap dish and despite the fact that it strongly resembles the Jesus fish people plaster on the back of their cars, it's doing a fine job of holding soap.

Some friends asked me the best thing about this project. I'd have to say it's all the neat forwards and articles that people have sent me! I love reading about the creativity people use to avoid buying new, or even just to make gifts that come from the heart as opposed to the store. As I close and get ready to head up to Portland to see some of my BFFs from the Linfield days, here are the latest links I received.

Links from my colleague Mary Martin:

Art made from recylcled audio and video tapes and books . I love this stuff! So creative!





Some of the coolest chocolate treats ever: Chocolate Mice!

Crafty projects that you could do with kids! From the UK! How international!

And from Shannon Hennig (a fellow grover who lives abroad) a great TED lecture all about Collaborative Consumption!!!

Great! Great! Great!

See you in the new year!

Oops I did it again

Late November canning brought me with the need for more jelly jars for the treats I've been making for Christmas gifts. I was lucky to receive a few from colleagues and I bought all the jars of appropriate size from Goodwill, The OSU Folk Thrift Store, Cat's Meow and The Arc (every second hand store in town). Unfortunately, I still needed more jars. I hemmed and hawed about it for a day and then broke down and went to BiMart and bought two flats of the jars I'll need for the rest of my seasonal canning. Carrying those jars to the checkout gave me gut wrenching anxiety. It was so much easier to buy batteries since there is really no way to get around buying batteries if you need them. With the jars I just kept thinking, "What if I could have looked more places?" and "Maybe I should have visited Albany and looked in their thrift shops!" But I realized that I was tired of spending my time searching for used jars in town and had no desire to involve my car and fossil fuels in searching for jars at neighboring communities.

New items I purchased directly for a store in 2010.

When I got home I laid out all that I have purchased new over the past year and took a photo. Three items! What makes me amused is that if I hadn't taken the master food preserver class, I wouldn't have needed to purchase jars. Oh well. I guess it's a good lesson in the fact that you can't always plan for everything.

Second hand items purchased or found in 2010.

As a comparison I decided to pull a sample of the items I've found second hand this year and photograph those. It might seem like a lot, but I made a point to really think whether or not the item I was buying was something I actually needed. It worked in most cases, except when I saw something cool like an antique wooden bowl for $5 which I decided was a must have! Since It's a bit hard to see, here are the contents of the photo: a North Face down jacket (need), dustpan and brush (need- this was on my list for months!), cast iron fryer (need), Christmas lights (need) Irish cook book (want), dish towel (need), hair dryer that actually gets hot (need), clear Christmas ornaments (need - for crafty gift), wooden bowl (want), blue zinc lid canning jar (want), coffee burr grinder (needed by SteadyJ), backgammon game board (need so I can get good and win my friend HotDish), stone mortar and pestle (need), cute high heels (needed for job interview). 

I've just got 21 days left of my project and have got to make it through the final hump of a major holiday that involves finding gifts for nieces and nephews and putting together a cool gift for our family gift exchange. I'll admit it - it is getting difficult. Mostly because I have to be at work every day and second hand shopping takes a lot of time! I've been able to find some cool used stuff online though which has taken care of a lot of the big things on my list. I'll be sure to share how the Beg Barter Borrow holidays went in a few weeks!