Reverse Shopping

One of my resolutions this year was to de-clutter my house to the extreme while avoiding bringing new items in. By de-cluttering, I mean I want things OUT of my house for good - not just packed up into storage. When we pack things away, we aren't getting rid of the problem; we're only shuffling it to a new location and hiding it in a container.

A lot of people suffer buyer's remorse when it comes time to part with items. We have those pangs of guilt -
"But I spent my hard-earned money on it!"
"I needed it at the time."
"I might need it again!"
All of those may be true, but so what? I suffered from all of those claims, and I finally came to several realizations. That money is already gone, you don't need it anymore, and if you do need it again, you can probably scrounge up another one.

Right now my family is very blessed by the fact that my husband has a secure job with a predictable paycheck, but we've been through enough times when that wasn't the case, so I hate the idea of wasting money, especially when I've already spent it. Rather than donate half the contents of my house, I decided to sell what I could to try to earn back some of what I'd spent. I call it "reverse shopping," and it's become rather addictive.

I used to do the standard yard sales - load it all up on tables, mark it cheap, and watch it get hauled away. But in the past couple of years, I've discovered Facebook garage sales. I just have to photograph everything, list it with a price, and meet the buyer who claims it. So far my transactions have been very smooth, and over 2 years, I've had about 300 transactions. I usually meet people at the grocery store, or if I know them, they stop by my house. I get more publicity since there are 11,000+ people in the garage sale group, and I can get a better price, especially for new items or groups of similar items.

I'm not money-hungry though, so I don't sell everything. In fact, I give a lot away to family and friends. I have also donated a lot to help local organizations. I'd rather see things really help someone than for me to get a few bucks from it. Selling so much has also helped me really learn the difference between "need" and "want," so items I think people may "need" often get donated first.

So how is this affecting my house? I've been clearing out every room and making space. I've even tackled the storage rooms I used at my parents' house, and I've cleared out almost everything from there except some Christmas decorations and baby clothes. And I haven't missed a thing. I had so much stuff that wasn't used on a daily basis, that I never fully realized I had it anyway. Now I'm down to a select number of clothes and kitchen utensils, and I use what I have every day. If it's in our house, it has a value. This reverse shopping has also helped decrease my desire to go out for conventional shopping. I don't want to bring things into my home if there's a possibility I'll have to get rid of it later.

How do you get rid of your things? Do you sell or donate?

The Dead Dishwasher

Of all the things I've ever discussed on Facebook, I never would have imagined that my dishwasher would be one of the more controversial topics. About 2 weeks ago, my dishwasher died. We've had it about four years, and the poor thing has never sounded quite right. It's always chewed, coughed, sputtered, and groaned its way through every load, and it got worse every time. Since I am always on a mission to de-clutter and simplify my life, I contemplated not replacing but just removing it and finishing out the area for extra storage. And therein lies the controversy. How can a person live without a dishwasher?

The answer is: very easily.

Before giving my husband my official answer on whether we'd buy a new one or not (because that would be more cost effective than repairing the current one which was our first choice), I decided to take a trial period on handwashing. Upon announcing this to my personal Facebook feed, I was met with an outcry of diverse feedback. The dishes won't be clean, it will take too much time, I can use it as bonding time time with family who helps, it will be more efficient. I never realized dishwashers could create such love 'em or leave 'em attitudes. I decided to do my own research and tests, and this is what I found:

Research results
1. There is no universal consensus on which is more effective for cleaning dishes. There are too many variables on water temperature, soap, water usage, cleaning time, etc. It also depends on the electric dishwasher and person being compared.
2. There is also no consensus on which method is more green. Again, there are too many variables.

An evening's dishes on the drying mat

Home test results
1. My dishes look cleaner. There aren't bits of food dried on to the plates or rust spots on my utensils. I don't have to re-wash anything.
2. I find handwashing to be rather relaxing. A little Pandora radio and I am all set to listen and enjoy. It remind me of my childhood when my job was to clean up our kitchen. It was a mental break that I loved, and I find I still do.
3. My kitchen is cleaner. Even when I used to run the dishwasher, I still had things I had to handwash like my daughter's special character plates, bakeware, stoneware, and cookware. Many times I'd just leave them setting around for a day or two, especially if I was running the dishwasher because I couldn't get enough water pressure for the sink if I tried to do both at once. Now I just wash up everything at once.
4. It made me de-clutter my kitchen - again. When you wash everything right after you use it, you find you don't need as much. Before, we'd go through 6 or 7 coffee cups in two days because they kept winding up in the dishwasher waiting to be cleaned. Now we have 2 or 3 at most in the sink, and usually it's just one. So I went through all of my dishes and utensils and narrowed it down.
5. My electric bill has gone down. We track our weekly electricity usage online, and while I'm not sure just how much the dishwasher contributed, I do know our bill has dropped by several dollars and all other usage factors are pretty stable.
6. I haven't seen a bug in a week. The thing I really hated about using a dishwasher is that it usually had dirty dishes in it instead of clean ones. There are only 3 of us in the house, so we never used a lot of dishes to begin with, and it would take 2 or 3 days to make a full load. This attracted bugs who saw the dishwasher as a buffet. Since I stopped saving up dirty dishes, my kitchen has been bug free.

Overall, I feel like eliminating the dishwasher has simplified my life. Honestly, I only missed it once, and that was during a family holiday dinner. But we only have those dinners about 6 times a year, so I think I can handle the extra dishes those six times. I know going without a dishwasher isn't for everyone, and I would never suggest someone voluntarily give theirs up. But I would like for everyone to ponder something: how many of our modern appliances are really needed? Could our lives possibly be better without them?