Minimalism can be defined many different ways… it’s about different principles for different people… and everyone uses minimalism in their own unique way in order to most effectively apply it to their life. For me, minimalism is about reducing stress in my life by reducing the number of things I own and therefore have to clean, maintain, move, store, etc. It’s also about paring my possessions down to those things I need and use. This means my household runs more efficiently, economically, and produces less waste. I think minimalism and economics go hand in hand. So I wanted to write a bit about how I apply the philosophy of minimalism when purchasing consumable goods for my family.
Minimalists may tend to own fewer items, but we are still consumers. For the most part, we all use toilet paper, paper towels, toothpaste, shampoo, soap, food, etc. every day. I believe we can view this consumption through a minimalist lens and save ourselves time, money, and maybe even help out the environment in the process.
I start by asking myself a few questions about the consumable items I buy regularly. Question one: Is there any way I could use this item less? Question two: What’s the lowest quality of this item I can live with? Question three: What is the least amount I can pay for this item?
Is there any way I could use this item less? Depending on the item, the answer may be yes, no, or maybe. Can I use deodorant less? If you’re like me and don’t sweat much to begin with, don’t exercise like I should, and have a desk job in an air-conditioned office, maybe you could use deodorant only once per day and be comfortable. In fact, I do! On the other hand, if you are a person who naturally sweats more, exercises a lot, and/or has a job outside or where you’re quite active, you may not be able to use deodorant less… at least not without offending others with your odor! So your answer would be no. Be brutally honest when answering this question!
Can I use paper towels less? When I really took stock of all the little things I was using paper towels for, I was astonished. Spills, wiping windows, cleaning the stove top, cleaning the microwave… the list went on and on. Like the typical household, I went through a roll of paper towels in less than a week. I decided to spend a couple bucks on some cheap microfiber rags to see if that would help me stretch my paper towel usage out longer. They were about $0.36 each on Amazon so I took the plunge! I loved the rags and found new uses for them every day. From dusting to cleaning windows to cleaning the kitchen, the rags have allowed me to use a roll of paper towels a month rather than a week! And I feel good about producing less waste as I just throw the dirty rags in the washing machine with my other towels and use them all over again.
Can I use toilet paper less? The answer is yes. There is a concept, similar to replacing paper towels with rags, called family cloth. It’s basically using pieces of cloth for toilet paper and then soaking, washing, and reusing it. But here’s where question two comes in… I’m just not there. I am not to the point where I want to be handling and washing and folding cloth that was just used to clean my bum. I should be dedicated enough to the environment, to the cash savings over the years, but I just am not yet willing to take this step. I would not be happy living with this choice… so I choose to stick with 2-ply, off-brand toilet paper because that’s the least costly level I’m willing to live with. And that’s okay!
What’s the lowest quality of this item I can live with? I occasionally use bleach when cleaning or in the laundry. Name-brand bleach costs upwards of $4.00 a bottle… I was paying over $2.50 for off-brand bleach. To me, bleach is bleach is bleach. With just a little searching of the ads that come in my mailbox every week, I found the same amount of bleach at K-Mart for $0.97 a bottle. That was the regular price! Sometimes it even went on sale! From then on, I always got my bleach there. All the K-Marts in my area went out of business recently so I stocked up. I have six bottles of bleach in my basement that will take me years to go through.
I have a similar feeling about laundry detergent. You’ll get no argument from me that Tide is the best detergent. It definitely is. But my family is just adults and we typically don’t have crazy stains that necessitate Tide’s superior cleaning power (or exorbitant price!) I decided to start back at square one and did research on any and all detergents I could find. I made a list of the cheapest ones so I would know what to buy when I ran out of what I had. In the meantime, Menards, of all places, ran a killer sale that made one of the brands I had researched cheaper than I had ever seen it. I bought a test bottle and ran a few loads to make sure no one in my family was allergic (which they weren’t) and then bought enough detergent to last us a year. I really like it so far… my clothes are clean and smell great… at a fraction of the cost! Seriously, a fraction… I was using Persil which cost $0.24 per load and the new detergent, Sun, costs $0.04 per load.
That brings us to question three: What’s the least amount I can pay for this item? Once I determine I need the item and make any changes I can to use less of it, decide what I can live with and what I can’t, then I look for ways I can pay the least amount possible for that item. This can include stocking up when great sales come along as I did with the laundry detergent and bleach. It can include going to a different store than I normally do to get an item or buying it online. It can mean using coupons or price matching or even just apps like Flipp to see which store has it cheapest when I need to buy it.
Once you start asking yourself these questions about the items you use every day, you’ll be amazed at the changes you’ll make and the money you’ll save!
Comments