Friday, March 26, 2010

"Up"Cycling


I like to follow a few frugal blogs and forums, and have been seeing the word "Upcycling" more and more. I am not a hoarder, but I do have problems parting with things and I tend to hold onto things because I know I'll want them later, for something.

For example, I buy baby wipes, quite a few of them in fact. What can I say? I have 2 boys, they make a huge mess of themselves, and I have a tomboy in diapers that gets disgusting from head to toe. In my quest to find the best deal, I know my "buy" point on wipes, which is about $1/per tub or refill. I used to just buy them by the case at Sam's Club, but a quick price comparison shows that they are actually not the best deal out there.

One of the downsides to getting the best deal is that you might end up with a bunch of smaller sized things than you might normally buy. Of course it's easier and more convenient to buy the case of wipes at Sam's, or to buy a big refill bag, but if I can get a plastic tub of wipes for pennies, or FREE, I'm going for the plastic tub.

I had it in my mind that I was going to use all these tubs for something, so I kept piling them up on a shelf in the closet. The other day I had one of those AHHH HAAAA! moments and decided that I was going to condense the random bags and boxes of school supplies into them. I had a few sheets of Avery labels around and just did a quick handwritten label on each one and stacked them in a cupboard. Now when we want to color with the kids, we can find everything easily and pack it up quickly when we are done.

It's not fancy, but check it out

1 comments:

Stacy said...

I love it! We're all about repurposing, too! My favorite is the organic cotton bags our organic cotton sheets came in - perfectly plain, nicely sized and with a drawstring top. I use them as lunch sacks for the kids and no one has any idea!

And, by the way, your handwriting is wonderful!

If you still have wipes containers, they might make good toy organizers, too. We have some pencil boxes (those flip-top boxes that hold all of your school supllies in your desk) that were gifted to us because the person got them for free and had no use for them - we keep smaller Lego sets in them, with the instruction box folded in the lid :)

Stacy