Waste Not, Want Not

In my efforts to reduce clutter and save money, I have discovered that I have a lot of unused products around my home, especially personal care and cleaning products. It has become my mission in life to use these products up!

You know how you buy a brand of toothpaste because it is on sale and then you decide you don't like the way it tastes so you buy another tube the next time you go to the store? Then the first tube just sits in your cabinet unused, sometimes for quite a while. Well, I have been trying not to be so wasteful for the last year or so and have found a bounty of that sort of thing. The other thing I have done, with our drastically reduced budget, is to just plain not buy anything at all unless absolutely necessary. If I have anything at all in the cabinet/closet that can get used up, we use that first and then I shop around for a sale/coupons for the needed item.

I was particularly proud of myself for using up quite a few of my free samples/trial sized beauty and personal care products. I have a whole tub of things that I am working through: shampoo, lotions, body wash, toothpaste, shoe shine kits, dental floss, lots of makeup. I used to buy department store cosmetics and get the "free gift" but I rarely use the products. When I had a garage sale last year I had a whole box of these items (brand names, unopened) that I marked 25 cents--they went fast! I decided that we will probably not be taking any trips anytime soon, so why not use all these up? While I still insist on purchasing my preferred shampoo/conditioner and I have had to buy soap (everything on sale with coupons, of course) I am getting a lot of mileage out of facial cleansers, lotions, trial sized deodorants and cosmetics.

In my kitchen I have been cleaning out the backs of the cabinets, looking for forgotten cake mixes and canned goods. How many times have I had to throw food away because it expired? One of my favorite websites for dinner ideas is www.allrecipes.com because I can type in ingredients to find recipes, then I look through them to find one that has ingredients I already have on hand. I have found quite a few good recipes this way!

I have saved so much money using up all these old products and free samples and I have found several websites where I can get more! I almost always get a product that I like and they are all free! I like Start Sampling (www.startsampling.com) and www.walmart.com and my favorite is one that sends me a daily email with deals, www.shop4freebies.com. This last one has some of the same samples that you see on the other sites but also mentions deals that may be available in your area, like when chain restaurants have events (like a free meal on Mother's Day).

On Facebook, you can "like" a product and they will either send it to you via mail or let you print a coupon. I have gotten a lot of things this way, including Sunchips, Kraft mac 'n cheese, Einstein Bros bagels, etc.

Next post will be how to get more free stuff...