Once upon a time, Hubby and I got married. With said marriage came gifts, for which we were very grateful. And one of those gifts was a lovely Brita water pitcher, making it possible for us to drink the water in Utah. Oh, we loved that pitcher. So much, in fact, that we carefully packed it up, sent it in a trailer to Oregon, and picked it up on our way to our new home.
Somewhere in this process, however, the unthinkable happened: the pitcher cracked. Being the frugal (cheap or miserly also works) person that I am, I could not bring myself to purchase a new pitcher and instead took epoxy to the outside of the crack.
Though the epoxy wasn't exactly food safe, the pitcher worked just fine and we tried to be careful to keep the water line below the crack.
Now, after three something years of living with the crack, we have finally moved on. We now have a new pitcher!
But wait, you might say, I thought you were miserly, I mean cheap, I mean frugal! How could you possibly convince yourself to purchase a new pitcher when the old still worked just fine? Well, I have one word for you:
Freecycle
Oh be still my miserly, cheap, frugal heart! And I thought Craig's List was amazing. Here is the description from their website:
Welcome! The Freecycle Network™ is made up of 4,763 groups with 6,854,000 members across the globe. It's a grassroots and entirely nonprofit movement of people who are giving (& getting) stuff for free in their own towns. It's all about reuse and keeping good stuff out of landfills. Each local group is moderated by a local volunteer (them's good people). Membership is free. To sign up, find your community by entering it into the search box above or by clicking on “Browse Groups” above the search box. Have fun!
Have fun, indeed. Once I discovered Freecycle, I was able to start getting rid of perfectly good stuff lying around our house that just couldn't be given to a thrift store and that I just couldn't throw away, like a partially used bottle of perfume. And through Freecycle, I was able to get a relatively new Brita pitcher (complete with three unused, still-in-the-wrapper filters) for free. And yes, keeping usable things out of the landfill is a great bonus.
Now, should I post my cracked pitcher on Freecycle? After all, it does still work...
2 comments:
I know it's more expensive, but where I live, the water some times gets so horrible that we can't stand it. We broke down and purchased a filter for our sink. I really do think it's worth the expense.
We've loved Freecycle for a few years now - it's amazing what people give away. We've also been able to get rid of stuff that would otherwise be tossed. I'm so glad your frugality paid off nicely!
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