remodeling this life

I just got back from Walmart. I never shop there but hubby does ocassionally for certain things and today he asked me if I would go and get those certain things for him so he could work on the house. I am a loving wife and I obliged.

The place makes my skin crawl. From the layout to the feel of it. It’s chaotic and makes my brain hurt. I wanted to gouge my eyes out the moment I walked in and I swear it had nothing to do with both of my kids in the cart screaming for something or other.

I couldn’t have been happier the moment I walked out the door. And no, not because I saved a bundle of money, which I did, but because it was like stepping back into my own universe.

I’m not sure what it is about MallWart (what Drew has funnily named it) that makes me cringe, but whatever it is, I am going to listen to my brain screaming for me to run far far away next time. No amount of money saved is worth the experience that makes me want to shoot myself in the head.  A girl has her limits.

I went to Barnes and Noble tonight for a little escape from the house and kids. I picked myself up a magazine to bring home and peruse later tonight while having a glass of wine to relax. I went to the checkout line and there were a bunch of tables lining the checkout area. Some books for Mother’s Day coming up and a table of 50% Kids Easter books. I saw the big red 50% off sign so I thought I’d pick up a couple for the kids. Usually the same books back in the kid section are $3-4 so I figured I could get one for each kid for that since they were half off. I flipped one over and I guess because they were specialized for Easter, they were all originally priced $7-8. So I might as well have just gotten non-Easter books for that price. I passed.

Hidden under a couple of the kid books was a book that someone obviously decided against buying at the last minute and stashed there. It was Frugal Living For Dummies. There were claims on the front of the book that it would teach you to live simply and frugally. Ha. How about start by not paying $17 for a book to teach you to be frugal? I was glad to see that it didn’t actually make it to the checkout counter and get purchased. How silly.

I haven’t thought about Freecycle for a while now since we haven’t had the need to use it but we’re gearing up to use it once again in the next few weeks as we start the renovations on the last 350 sf of our home. As we remodeled the other areas of our house throughout last year, we used Freecycle to get rid of what was salvageable from the old house so that it didn’t have to go into the landfill. The added bonus was that everything that someone else took off of our hands, we saved the gas money 20 miles to the dump and back and the $30 dump fee per load and saved big time when we rented dumpsters by being able to keep a lot of the bigger stuff from going in and adding to our cost. We’ll be doing it again this time, so that things like the siding on the house and the old tub/shower (someone will want an avocado green tub/shower, right?) don’t have to go to the dump when someone else can use them.

Freecycle is great for recycling anything you are thinking of getting rid of, from home materials to freebie samples you get in the mail but won’t use. If you go to The Freecycle Homepage you can find one in your area (hopefully!) and sign up for their mailing list. You’ll receive emails when someone is getting rid of something and it may just be something you need so you won’t have to spend the money on it. It’s a lovely nifty little thing.

Try it out and happy Freecycling!!