Why buy when you can rent, borrow, and share?

The sharing economy appears to be having a bit of a moment. Within the past few weeks, my inbox has presented me with two articles on ways to get things without buying them. The first was part of the NEw York Times' 50 States, 50 Fixes series, which highlights small-scale projects to benefit the environment from all across the U.S. The August 20 story focused on the town of Brunswick, Maine, where the second floor of the local library hosts a 1,500-plus-item "library of things" for residents to borrow. The collection includes kitchen and garden tools, toys, musical instruments, sporting goods, electronics, and an actual loom. In the past year, residents borrowed from it more than 3,700 times.

Although Brunswick's library of things is only seven years old, it's been such a hit that the idea has already spread to other towns in Maine: South Portland, Cumberland, Windham. It's easy to see the appeal, because there are loads of things that are really handy to have just once in a while. The most popular items in Brunswick's library of things include a grain mill, a blueberry rake, and a tool for gathering nuts—all things you're only likely to need a couple of times a year. Even more frequently needed tools, like an electric lawn mower, only see an hour or so of use each week, so it makes all kinds of sense to share just one with your neighbors instead of shelling out cash and devoting space in your shed to one of your own. Other items, like the musical instruments, are things you might want to own, but you can't be sure until you've tried them. By checking out a mandolin or a ukulele (both available from the collection) and playing with it for a couple of weeks, you can figure out if it's the instrument for you before investing a minimum of $50 in a new one. 

Ever since I read this article to Brian, we've been speculating about whether it would be feasible to start a library of things here in Highland Park. We personally have several seldom-used tools we'd be happy to contribute to such a collection. The tamping tool we bought for our patio project, the tile cutter we used for our downstairs bathroom renovation, the frozen dessert maker I took a flier on at our neighbor's yard sale: we wouldn't really need to own any of these if we could borrow them whenever we happened to have a use for them. There are all kinds of tools and resources available online for starting a library of things from scratch; the problem is where to put it. Our local library is far to small to host it, and we couldn't think of any other public building that would have the space. And while there are plenty of unused storefronts in town, they'd cost far too much to rent.

Fortunately, this isn't the only way to get stuff without buying it. A second article, from One5C (currently available only to folks who shell out at least $54 a year for membership), lists several other alternatives:

• Social sharing apps. The article recommends two of these, though neither one is for sharing per se. Olio, which started out as a tool for curbing food waste, is similar to Freecycle: you list your unwanted stuff for others to request. Yoodlize is more like Airbnb, but for renting out all the stuff in your house rather than the house itself. (The app supports itself by taking a small cut of all rental fees.)
• Freebie marketplaces. The article names Freecycle, Buy Nothing, Facebook Markeplace, and Nextdoor as places to give away or get secondhand items for free. One site it doesn't mention is Craigslist groups, which often have a "free" section.
• Rental services. The bulk of the article is devoted to these. It recommends FunFlicks and Guitar Center for AV gear; Rent a Bike Now for bicycles; Boatsetter and GetMyBoat for watercraft; Lens Rentals for camera gear and electronics; Rent the Runway, Armoire, Nuuly, Tulerie, and Nova Octo for clothing; CORT and AFR Furniture Rental for furniture; Lindrs, Lowe's, and Home Depot for tools; and REI, Kit Lender, XScape Pod, Lower Gear Outdoors, and Outdoors Geek for camping and outdoor sports equipment.

All this is potentially useful, but not what we were really hoping for: a platform to actually share stuff with our neighbors, not just rent it. Something kind of like the magical Share Spray in this old video from Center for a New American Dream. Is there an app for that?

As far as I can tell, there isn't—but there's about to be. An app called LendLo, supposedly launching "soon," promises to help you borrow and lend stuff within your community. The website says the app will let you list items, browse and request things you need, arrange for pickup, and keep track of who has what. If we can get enough people in town signed up on this app, we could create something like a library of things, only the collection would be distributed across all our homes instead of in one central location. So we wouldn't just be sharing the items, we'd also be sharing the storage space for the items.

I've put my name on the mailing list, so I guess that means I'll be one of the first to hear whenever the app becomes available. Then we can download it, check it out, and if it looks useful, start touting it to everyone we know in Highland Park. Who knows—we might just end up building our own library of things the easy way.

Three new articles

Three new articles of mine have popped up in the past week — two on Money Crashers and one at Perch Energy. Two of them fall squarely in the realm of ecofrugality, and the third is only loosely related, but still interesting.

Let's start with the Perch Energy piece: Pros & Cons of Renewable Energy: Advantages Over Fossil Fuels. Anyone who reads this blog knows that renewable energy sources such as wind, solar, and hydropower have many advantages over fossil fuels. They’re cheaper, they’re greener, and they’ll never run out. Transitioning from dirty fossil fuels to clean renewable energy is essential to stopping climate change and building a sustainable future. 

But to meet this goal, there are certain challenges we need to overcome. In this article, I outline the most common renewable energy sources in use today, as well as others that show promise for the future, and explore their pros and cons. I conclude with some practical tips (again, probably already familiar to regular readers) on how to be a part of the clean energy future.

Moving on to the Money Crashers articles, the one more directly related to ecofrugality is Buy Nothing Project – What It Is, Rules, How to Start and Participate in One. The Buy Nothing Project is a lot like Freecycle, but with a different platform and different rules about who can share what with whom. And the nice thing is, there's no reason you can't be a member of both. Check out the article to learn how the Buy Nothing Project was founded, how it works, and how to try it for yourself. 

The other Money Crashers piece is Market Economy – What It Is & Characteristics of Free Enterprise Systems. It's not related to ecofrugality as such, but it does provide context for the system within which we make our ecofrugal choices, and how it can work for and against us. It's a basic primer on how markets work, what they do well, what they do poorly, and how they compare to the alternatives.

Thrift Week 2022, Day Seven: Share Stuff

And so we come at last to the final tenet of the Ecofrugal Manifesto...

Ecofrugal Principle #7: Share Stuff

When I say "stuff" here, I mean material things. It's nice, of course, to share feelings, or to share household responsibilities, or to share your wealth with others through charity, but none of that has much to do with ecofrugality. But sharing goods — that is, having one car, or one office, or one copy of a book for multiple people, rather than separate ones for each person — has everything to do with ecofrugality. Many people sharing one object means less cost for each person, and less cost for the earth than producing many copies of the same object.

Some examples of this include:

• Public libraries, which allow everyone in town to share the same books and videos 
• Other types of community "libraries" for sharing tools, toys, or seeds and seedlings
• Community gardens, which allow multiple people to garden on the same plot of land
• Ride sharing (other people giving you rides in their cars, so you don't need to own one), car sharing (many people sharing a fleet of cars, so they don't all need their own), and bike sharing (the same thing for bicycles)
• Coworking spaces, which allow people with different schedules to make use of the same office space
  

Of all the ecofrugal principles on my list, this is the one Brian and I personally make the least use of. We share with each other, of course, by having just one car, one TV, one tablet, and so on for the two of us. But we don't have as many opportunities as we'd like to share stuff with people outside our household. We do make extensive use of our local library, but we don't have access to any of the other cool "libraries" some towns have to offer, nor to a car sharing or bike sharing system that might allow us to do without a car or bike of our own. We have our own garden, so we don't have any need to join our local community garden. And even our local community cafe has now, sadly, converted to a normal payment model.

If I could change just one thing about our lifestyle, I think I'd like to have more opportunities to share stuff with our neighbors. It's not mainly about money (though we do, as I've calculated, save quite a lot by using the library, the one shared public resource available to us). And even the environmental benefits, though those could be significant, are secondary. What I really feel like we're missing out on is the opportunity to meet and interact with our neighbors, most of whom we don't really feel like we know. (We made a point of giving each of our next-door neighbors a bag of plums out of the crazy harvest we got last summer, but that was just a one-time exchange.)

Of course, even if we did have access to more shareable resources here in town, we probably wouldn't be allowed to use them right now. At the very least, they'd have safety protocols in place to prevent us from meeting and interacting with our neighbors there. So they wouldn't do much to lighten the social isolation of the pandemic.

But I feel like as 2022 progresses, as the omicron surge starts to ease off, as winter eases into spring and we can once again meet and mingle more outdoors, we should make more of a point of taking advantage of the community resources we do have. We should take more walks in the park, dine out at the outdoor community tables set up in the summer of 2020, go to events like the outdoor film series. In short, we should do all we can to be more involved in the life of our community. Getting to know our neighbors would be an added perk of living ecofrugally — and one that would make it easier to share knowledge about all the other aspects of ecofrugal living, too.

Our Little Free Plant Library

As I mentioned two weeks ago on planting day, Brian generally starts twice as many seedlings of each variety as he expects to need for our garden. This ensures that he'll have at least one healthy seedling to plant (a strategy that proved crucial with our new Apple pepper) and leaves him with backup plants to put in the ground in case any of the starting lineup don't make it. He typically waits about two weeks to make sure all the plants are okay, then takes the extras to work and gives them away to his coworkers.

Well, obviously that wasn't an option this year. Brian's workplace is still entirely remote, with no indication of when they might be able to start going back into the office. He even has one coworker hired last year whom he'd never actually met in person until this week. (They were scheduled to have a meeting on Zoom, and Brian suggested that, since they live in the same town and are fully vaccinated, perhaps they could meet in person instead. Because that is the kind of reckless wild man he has turned into after 15 months of being cooped up at home with me.)

We were able to give away all our extra flower seedlings to my parents, who have plenty of room in their yard, but they didn't have enough garden space to accept any tomatoes or peppers. We gave one pepper plant away to one of our fellow RPG players earlier this month, when we had our first live, in-person game session in over a year. But that still left us with eight tomato plants and two peppers that needed a good home.

Now, as it happens, there are quite a few Little Free Libraries around our town. These are simply boxes full of books that you can install somewhere on your property where your neighbors can get to them. You put all your unwanted books in there, and passersby can help themselves — and, if there's room, drop off some of their extra reading material as well. We know of at least five of these within walking distance, and we've browsed all of them in turn, sometimes picking up books and sometimes dropping them off. And more recently, we've seen at least one neighbor adapt the same idea to plants, setting up a little table in the front yard and stocking it with extra seedlings. So Brian wondered, could he unload our extra seedlings in the same way?

Yesterday after knocking off work, he put the idea to the test. He ducked into the workshop and started rummaging through his piles of scrap wood, eventually digging up a rectangular wooden frame that had originally been the base for one of his squirrel excluder cages and a piece of particle board that was exactly the right size to attach to the bottom. No cutting required; he simply nailed the two pieces together to make a flat tray, then used screws to affix it to the wooden stake we initially used to secure our plum tree after it keeled over in a storm last summer. He pounded the stake into the ground in a corner next to the driveway, then affixed a little sign reading "Free!" that he'd drawn on a little scrap of wood with a Sharpie.

By the next morning, it was clear that his plan was yielding fruit — or, more accurately, getting rid of it. As we sat at breakfast, we spied through the window two passing pedestrians who stopped, examined the collection of plants, and selected one each to take with them. After the first 24 hours, we're down to just four tomato plants and one pepper.

This whole scheme is one of the most ecofrugal projects we've ever undertaken. It's preventing waste, putting our extra seedlings to good use. It's helping our neighbors to grow their own food and eat more sustainably. And it was all done with reused materials, so it didn't cost a penny.

In fact, it's working out so well, Brian is already wondering what else he can use the table to give away after all the seedlings are gone. Having gone to the trouble of setting it up, it seems like a shame to just take it down straightaway. We're wondering if maybe we could interest any of our neighbors in the two board games we culled from our collection and haven't had a chance to take to the thrift shop. If that works, we might just keep the Little Free Plant Library on permanently as our own personal free store.

Actual savings: The public library

A while ago, I read an article online—I forget exactly where—about the many benefits of visiting your local public library and all the things it has to offer besides books. (It wasn't this Money Crashers article, but it was along the same lines.) I was entirely in agreement with this, since next to our Twitch subscription (through which we watch our beloved Critical Role), our local library is our primary source of entertainment. We check out books, borrow movies and TV shows on DVD, and attend the occasional free event there. It's probably the nearest thing either of us has to a "third place."

But some readers, it turns out, don't share this view. In the comments at the bottom of the article, one sourpuss groused that the library isn't really "free" entertainment; you have to pay for it with your tax dollars, whether you want to use it or not. Apparently, he did not consider this a good value.

Now, it seems to me that if you have to support your public library whether you use it or not, it makes sense to use it as much as possible and get your money's worth. But perhaps this fellow's beef was that he doesn't think the services the library provides will ever be worth what he spends on it in taxes. Is he right? Just how much does a public library really cost, and how much value does it provide?

For our local library, the first question is easy to answer. A copy of Highland Park's municipal budget, available on the town's website, reveals that 0.97% of our property taxes go to support the library. The budget says this works out to $114 per year for the average resident, but our house must be a little smaller than average; we paid about $7,110 in property taxes over the last fiscal year, which means we only spent about $70 to fund the library.

Here's what we get for that:

• Borrowed books. First, and most obviously, we take out books—actual printed books—from the library. My account on the library's website doesn't include a record of what I've borrowed recently, so I'm just going to assume conservatively that Brian and I take out an average of one book per month. If we bought these same books new, in paperback form, they'd probably cost an average of $12 each. So, for borrowed books alone, that's a $144 value.
• Discounted books. In addition to borrowing books, we regularly buy them at the library's annual sale, at which donated books are sold at rock-bottom prices to raise money. Here's our haul from this year's sale: six small paperbacks (which would cost about $10 apiece retail), four larger ones (about $14 retail), and four hardcovers (maybe $20 retail). So this whole stack would have cost us $196 at a bookstore, and we paid only $22 for it—a savings of $174.
• E-books. In addition to physical books, we regularly use our library card to take out e-books from the eLibrary. Here, again, I don't know the exact number we've borrowed between us in the past year, but I'll guess it was at least half a dozen. Kindle books typically cost between from $3 and $10, so figure an average of $6.50. On top of that, our library temporarily gave us a subscription this year to Hoopla Digital, with an allotment of four borrows per month. We didn't get too much use out of it before the library canceled the program, but Brian took out eight graphic novels that would probably have cost him $12 each to buy in a store. So that's another $135 worth of reads.
• DVDs. Our town no longer boasts a video rental place, but we've hardly missed it thanks to the large and eclectic collection at the library. Matter of fact, its selections are probably of more interest to us than what we could have found at Blockbuster back when it was still operating in our area. It has everything from superhero movies to indie and foreign films, plus complete runs of all sorts of interesting TV series—some current, some canceled, and some BBC productions you can't easily get in the USA. We take out at least a couple of selections a month, usually TV series, thereby eliminating the need for a Netflix or Hulu subscription that would cost us $8 a month. So there's another $96 a year saved.
• Live events. Lastly, we attend live events at the library from time to time, such as film screenings and poetry readings. For the most part, these aren't events we'd pay to attend if they weren't available for free, but they make a nice change of pace from staying in and watching TV or playing board games. Most recently, I took an afternoon class that taught how to use a sewing machine, complete with the materials needed to construct a small zippered pouch. Mine didn't quite come out beautifully (I forgot to put the foot down at one point after re-threading), but it's still sturdy enough to hold pens or dice. I checked online to see what a comparable class would cost, and I found a two-hour session at a place in Brooklyn called Make Workshop for $80. So that's another $80 to add to the year's tally.

All told, in the past year our library card has saved us approximately $629 for a mere $70 in taxes. That's such a good deal that we actually feel a bit guilty about it, so we voluntarily pony up an extra $100 each year as a donation and consider it money well spent. If it enables the library to continue providing the kind of value we get from it now, it's an excellent investment.

In fact, if you look at it in terms of cost per hour of entertainment, the library is just about the best deal around. Since I not only read books but also read them aloud to Brian, a single novel can provide anywhere from 2 to 20 hours of entertainment; if you figure 6 hours on average, the 40 books we got from the library this year (borrowed, bought, and downloaded) provided us with about 240 hours' worth. Our DVD borrows, since they're mostly TV series with multiple episodes, add at least another 150 hours or so, and the events we attend add maybe 10 more hours per year. So that's a good 400 hours of entertainment, and even with our additional donation, it costs us only $170—less than 43 cents per hour. That's cheaper than a Redbox rental ($1 for 2 hours), cheaper than a Netflix subscription ($8 a month for about 10 hours), cheaper than most secondhand books (about $4 for maybe 6 hours)—cheaper, in fact, than almost anything you can do for fun.

Now, I realize our public library is probably better than most, especially for a town this small. But then, others that are cheaper probably cost even less in taxes, so the locals are getting what they pay for. In short, I'd say anyone who thinks a public library isn't a worthwhile investment either hasn't done the math or just doesn't know how to have fun.

Money Crashers: Cohousing – Types & Benefits

A lot of the articles I've been doing for Money Crashers deal with various aspects of the sharing economy. I've covered tool libraries, toy libraries, community gardens, seed exchanges, and community cafes. Sharing is an inherently ecofrugal concept, because it saves both money and resources to have two people share one thing - whether it's a lawn mower or a plot of land - rather than each buying their own.

Now, in my latest Money Crashers article, I'm getting into a way to share something even bigger: housing.

I don't mean sharing a home the way a family does (though I covered that to an extent in my article on the costs and benefits of marriage). What I'm talking about here is cohousing: a type of intentional community in which people have both private homes and shared spaces that they care for as a group. So, for example, you can have your own bedroom, bathroom, living room, and kitchen—but your laundry room, which you don't need to use that often, can be shared with others so you don't each have to shell out for a separate washer and dryer. You can also share a workshop stocked with shared tools, a big communal kitchen that can hold all the seldom-used gadgets you don't need cluttering up your own kitchen, and other spaces like a garden or a playroom for all the kids in the community.

Of course, living in cohousing does take a bit of work. The whole group is responsible for taking care of these shared spaces, so you have to divvy up the chores and hold regular meetings to deal with maintenance and other issues. But for many people, it's well worth the effort to be part of a real community where neighbors don't just wave at each other over the fence—they also share meals together, watch each other's kids, put on plays or concerts together, and help each other out in difficult times.

If this sounds appealing to you, you can learn more about how it works here: Communal Living & Cohousing – Types & Benefits of Intentional Communities. I cover the structure of a cohousing community, the different types that exist, and the financial, environmental, and social benefits of living this way. And, at the end, I provide information on how to find a cohousing community in your area, or possibly even start your own.

Visiting the eLibrary

Lately, Brian and I have become fans, or at least casual admirers, of the Southern Vampire series by Charlaine Harris. (This is the series that HBO's "True Blood" is rather loosely based on. Think Twilight for grownups...with a sense of humor, which I've been given to understand is conspicuously absent from Stephanie Meyer's work.) We came across the first one on some freebie table somewhere, and then picked up the second from our local library...but at that point we got stuck, because while the library had several other volumes in the series, it didn't have the third one, and we like to read a series in order whenever possible. And while we enjoy these books, we don't really love them enough to shell out $10 per book for them.

Fortunately, we found a way around this problem. As it turns out, our local library participates in a program called eLibraryNJ, which is like interlibrary loan for e-books. It works like this:

1. You sign up for an account, using your library card number and a PIN you can get from the library reference desk.
2. You search the catalogue for the book you want and check it out. If someone else currently has it checked out, you can put a hold on it, and you'll be notified by e-mail when the book becomes available.
3. You can read the book online or download a copy onto your e-reader or other device. The books are available in various formats; we've been reading them with the Kindle app on our tablet, but we've also seen books in PDF form, a format called OverDrive that you can read in your browser, and an open-source format called ePub that works with most e-readers.
4. When you're done with the book, you can check it back in to make room for a new one. However, if you forget to do this, the book checks itself back in automatically when it expires at the end of three weeks. If you're not done with the book after three weeks, you can renew it, as long as no one else has it on hold.

This program is an elegant way to make e-books lendable without getting snarled up in copyright issues. With its help, we've been able to make our way through the first five Southern Vampire books, and we've just started on the sixth (though we had to wait a few weeks for that one). And since eLibraryNJ appears to have every book in the series in "stock," we should have no trouble making it all the way through.

And when that runs out, there are heaps of other series we can try, all just a click away. The site even offers suggestions for us based on our previous choices, just like Amazon does. Plus, it has a collection of classic works in the public domain that you can check out for as long as you like; they never expire, and they don't count toward your checkout limit. So if we ever want to read something by Wilkie Collins besides The Moonstone and The Woman in White, the only two novels available at our local library, we're in luck.

All in all, this site is a great resource for all book lovers who live in New Jersey and own any kind of electronic device. Most public libraries seem to belong to the site, and even a few non-public ones, like the Carl C. Brigham Library at Educational Testing Service. And if you don't happen to live in New Jersey, try Googling "e-library" plus the name of your state, and there's a good chance you'll find one you can use.

Money Crashers: Community Cafes – What They Do and Where to Find One

When I first discovered our local community cafe, A Better World Cafe, back in January 2010, I'd never seen anything like it before. Indeed, back at the time, community cafes were still a pretty new idea, and A Better World was only the fifth of its kind in the country. Yet the idea seemed so appealing in so many ways—healthy, sustainably produced food, in whatever portion you prefer, at whatever price you can afford—that I couldn't understand why it wasn't more popular. Shouldn't there be places like this all over the country?

Well, now there are—at least 40 of them, with more in the works. And as the community cafe movement goes mainstream, some big names are starting to hop on the bandwagon. Jon Bon Jovi has opened his own community restaurant, JBJ Soul Kitchen, in Red Bank, with plans for a second one in Toms River. And Panera Bread, the popular restaurant chain, is now running four Panera Cares cafes, in Clayton, Missouri; Dearborn, Michigan; Portland, Oregon; and Boston, Mass. These look and feel just like a regular Panera, right down to the free wi-fi, but operate on the community cafe model.

My latest post for Money Crashers explores the community cafe movement: how it started, how it works, and its various benefits, from fighting hunger to supporting local farmers. Read more about this uniquely ecofrugal type of eatery in the full article: Community Cafes – What They Do and Where to Find One.

Money Crashers: Toy Lending Libraries & Exchanges

This particular post for Money Crashers deals with a topic that I don't personally have a lot of experience with: kids' toys. Of course, Brian and I do have some experience with toys, having a total of nine (count 'em, nine) nieces and nephews between us: we have given them quite a few toys over the years at Christmas/Hanukkah time, and we have also seen quite a lot of their toys whenever we go to visit. But that's not quite the same thing as living among them, surrounded on all sides, day in and day out—not to mention dealing with the kids' pleas for new ones. I can only guess at how frustrating this situation is for moms and dads, but based on the little taste I've had of it, I'd have to guess it gets old pretty quickly.

So for all you moms and dads out there, even if I can't personally empathize with your
3 situation, I can offer an idea that might help at least a bit: sharing toys. I don't mean just persuading your own kids to share with each other and with their friends, but paring down the size of your toy collection at home by drawing toys from a pool that's shared with a whole bunch of other kids.

One way to do this is a toy library, if your town happens to have one. It's just like a regular library, except you can borrow toys instead of books. Doing this lets your kids rotate their selection of toys at home, so they get to try new ones every few weeks without completely flooding the house with them—or sinking your wallet.

If you don't have a toy library available, another alternative—though it's a bit more work—is to organize a toy exchange. Basically, you just gather up all the toys your kids are tired of, get together with a bunch of other families who have done the same, and swap your old toys for theirs. Everyone gets to go home with toys that are new to them, and everything left over goes to a worthwhile charity.

If either of these sounds like it might make at least a small dent in your home's toy budget and toy clutter, check out the full article here: Toy Lending Libraries & Exchanges – Benefits and How They Work

Money Crashers: How to Start a Seed Savers Exchange

So, as you all know, Brian and I are gardeners. Not large-scale gardeners, maybe not particularly skilled gardeners, but reasonably avid gardeners. We do a lot of the semi-hardcore stuff that other hobby gardeners don't waste time with, like starting plants from seed and making our own compost. We've even tried saving seeds from our crops, though considering the hassle involved, it didn't really seem to be worth the trouble.

One thing we've never really done, though, is seed swapping. We've sort of flirted with the idea from time to time, exchanging some extra seeds with my dad or accepting Freecycle offers for half-empty seed packets, but we've never gone to a full-scale seed exchange with dozens of other gardeners. Mainly, that's because we don't know enough other gardeners to swap seeds with, and our town—though it's very sustainable in many ways, with a good curbside recycling program, a great public library, and a community café—doesn't have such a thing as a permanent seed library.

Such things do exist, however, and in some places, they're apparently very successful. In my latest Money Crashers article, I discuss seed exchanges: how they work, where they're found, and how to start one. I don't think I'm quite up to starting one myself—based on the research I did for this article, it sounds like rather a lot of work—but if I ever hear of one in my area, I'll certainly be happy to contribute.

Here's the full article: How to Start a Seed Savers Exchange for Gardeners in Your Community

Money Crashers: What Is a Community Garden

Of all the topics I cover on this blog, none comes up more often than gardening. That's partly because there's just so much to learn about it—Thomas Jefferson remarked near the end of his life that he was "but a young gardener"—and partly because it's such a perfect fit for the ecofrugal lifestyle. Growing your own local, organic produce for a fraction of what you'd pay at the supermarket? That's definitely something that green people like.

But what about all those apartment dwellers who don't have a yard to garden in? Well, for them, there are community gardens—shared spaces, usually in a city, where each member can have a plot to tend. And this is, if anything, even more ecofrugal than gardening in general, because it not only yields fresh, local produce, it also turns vacant lots—land that was otherwise going to waste—into thriving urban green space.

My latest article for Money Crashers is all about community gardens: their benefits, an in-depth look at one such garden in New York City, and how to go about starting your own if you don't already have one in your area. Read the full article here: What Is a Community Garden – Benefits & How to Start Your Own.

Money Crashers: What Is a Tool-Lending Library

While working on my article for Money Crashers about when to DIY as opposed to hiring a contractor, I stumbled across an interesting idea for saving money on home-repair tools: a tool library. This is basically what it sounds like: a library that lends out tools instead of books. I dug a little deeper and found that Money Crashers had never covered this topic before, so I decided it was time to remedy that oversight.

Tool lending libraries are a great example of ecofrugality. They save money, because you don't have to shell out for new tools for every home repair. They save resources, because a single circular saw or extension ladder can serve the needs of a dozen families, instead of every household having its own. And they provide a place to get together with other like-minded individuals and share knowledge, possibly forming the core of a new ecofrugal community. Read all about them here:

What Is a Tool-Lending Library - Benefits & How to Start Your Own

Ecofrugal Living podcast #12: Stuff Green People Like

Here's the latest Ecofrugal Living podcast, based on the blog entry for November 14, 2010.


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Thrift Week Day Seven: Use Community Resources Day

Well, it looks like Thrift Week is ending not with a bang, but with a whimper. I was going to call this final day Visit Your Library Day, but I decided to expand it to Use Community Resources Day to cover more of the bases. Unfortunately, that didn't actually increase my options all that much. Since it was a rainy day in January, visiting the park wasn't particularly appealing, and local festivals usually take place on weekends (or occasionally on Thursday nights, when we can't usually make it). I did stop by the library, but there wasn't anything going on there except story hour for the kiddies. Since we're still in the middle of our Netflix trial, I didn't want to pick up a movie, and I'd already checked out the one book I particularly wanted to read last Friday. (I would have waited until today to get it, just to make Use Community Resources Day more useful, but it had just been checked in and I wanted to snatch it up before someone else got it.) So I just hung out for a little while, paging through magazines, so I could at least say I'd done something. Not very impressive, I must admit.

Sadly, the follow-up to my Shop Secondhand Day purchase isn't very inspiring either. I took the jacket to the local tailor shop this afternoon to get the sleeves shortened. At first she said she could do it, but once she turned up the sleeves and took a look at the lining, she claimed that in order to do the sleeves, she'd have to replace the lining as well—for $85—and she didn't think it was worth it. (This is the same tailor who told me last fall that it would be impossible to reset the sleeves in my lightweight coat. Honestly, you'd think this woman was going out of her way to avoid paying jobs.) So I'm going to have to see if I can manage to piece the lining together myself somehow, using my extremely rudimentary sewing skills. And after that, I'll see if I can find someone who's willing to shorten the sleeves for me—I suspect that job is beyond my abilities. Sigh. This $2 secondhand jacket is turning out to be a costly purchase. And I'm growing disenchanted with my local businesses....

All who are hungry, let them come and eat

As an ecofrugalista (if that isn't really a word, well, it is now), I don't eat out very often. Eating at home isn't just cheaper; it also gives me a lot more control. If I want to choose local produce, or Fair-Trade coffee, or free-range eggs, eating at home is generally the easiest way to do it.

But not, it appears, the only way. As it turns out, my little town of Highland Park is now home to the Better World Café, described as a "community café"--the fifth of its kind in the country. It serves up local, seasonal foods at reasonable prices. It lets customers choose their own portion sizes--and also the size of the bill. While the cafe will give you a "suggested price," you can pay less if that's what you can afford, or pay more if you'd like to make a donation. If you don't have any money at all, you can instead volunteer an hour of your time to pay for your meal. So no one goes away hungry. Cheap eats, living-wage jobs, no disposable dishes—how could I not love a place like that?

I'd been meaning to give this place a try since it first opened back in October, but I kept forgetting about it--or at least, forgetting about it during the lunchtime hours (11 to 3) when it's open. Today, as lunchtime rolled around and I realized that there were no leftovers in the house, I decided this was the perfect time to check it out. I wandered in and found a cheerful crowd eating and a server chatting away with one of the customers. She explained how it all worked and pointed out that day's menu on a white board, with suggested prices. I got a bowl of mushroom broth with tofu and veggies, a chunk of bread to go with it, a carrot cupcake with cream-cheese frosting, and a cup of Fair-Trade, organic coffee--all for a suggested total of $5.28, which I rounded up to $6. The soup was hot and savory (though a bit on the sour side), and the carrot cake moist and tasty. It didn't look like a big meal when I sat down, but by the time I finished my coffee and bused my tray, I was stuffed. Yet I didn't have to feel guilty, because it was all nutritious (hey, carrot cake is a vegetable, right?) and locally grown. A hearty, healthful meal for six bucks--from a place that helps feed the hungry, supports local farmers, and strengthens the community. How cool is that?