First, I unpacked about half of one of the clothes totes I brought with me from Michigan. (No, I still haven't unpacked. Yes, I have been here for over a month.) I found several good candidates for t-shirt recycling. Then I gave them a nice hot, hot wash with a little bit of bleach and a couple of rinses, too.
I went to Mass, came home, procrastinated a whooollleee lot, and then I cut apart my first t-shirt. I'm a teeny tiny thing, so my clothes are very typically referred to as baby doll sized, but even my tiny shirt made an even dozen 8" by 4" single-ply rags.
These got folded in half and placed neatly into an empty tissue box. I stored this under the bathroom sink along with a plastic shopping bag to be used as a wet bag. Look at all the recycling going on here! It's like I'm some sort of tree-hugger now or something. I wish I could just put the tissue box on the back of the toilet and the wet bag in a bin next to the toilet but this is, yet again, a new habit I'll have to hide from my very ungreen, very unfrugal, and very easily grossed out housemates. Plus I made my tissue box totally snazzy by writing my name on it. In blue sharpie. WITH A HEART NEXT TO IT.
All the snaz in the world doesn't excuse what I did next though.
For my final act today. I peed. And then I wiped myself. With my cut up t-shirt. It felt so wrong. I felt bad. It was practically like peeing my pants.
I did save like five sheets of toilet paper though.
This one is going to definitely take a whole lot of getting used to. I thought this would be one of last things I tried. As in, put it off until I could literally think of not a single thing more I could do to save money. However, it was one of the more simple things on my list and I already had everything I needed to try it on hand.
Not to mention, there are two things that I HATE to buy. Spending money on these things makes me want to kick and scream and throw things. What are they? Toilet paper and garbage bags.
They are two things you literally spend money on... so that you can throw them away. I'm getting twitchy just thinking about it. While I can't think of any solution yet to the evil that is garbage bags, I have found a very simple solution to toilet paper. Gross. But simple.
I'm not sure how much money this will actually save me. I don't pee much, TMI I know, but pre-pregnancy I think I peed 3-4 times a day. And not much more even at 4 months pregnant. I'm one of those awesome chronically dehydrated people that refuses to drink water. Plus side? I don't use as much TP as you, sucker. Okay, but seriously, so I don't pee much and buying TP bothers me so when I do I only use 4-5 sheets -- a quick google search tells me the average consumer uses almost 9 sheets per potty break! Heathens! So I use less and I use it less. Maybe some day, when I have 19 daughters and they all are using cloth toilet paper (or 'family cloth' -- why the hell is it called this..? Does not help reduce the ewww aura of the concept at all), then it will save me lots and lots of cash. For now, though, it saves me a few bucks a year, it's greener, and it's healthier for me, too.
That'll do, pig.
No comments:
Post a Comment