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.

Darn, not so tough

See this picture? What you are looking at is something that, in theory, you should never see: a darned Darn Tough sock. To understand how this came about, I'll have to start at the beginning and explain how Brian and I became aficionados of Darn Tough in the first place, and why we aren't any longer. 

For several years, Brian and I were big fans of Smartwool socks. We both relied on them throughout the winter because they were warm, non-itchy, and machine washable. True, after a couple of winters they would start to grow threadbare and eventually develop holes that required darning, but we assumed the same would be true of any brand.

Then, a few years ago, we learned about Darn Tough. This brand also offers washable, itch-free wool socks, and folks in the Reddit Buy It for Life forum consistently claimed theirs were far superior. Some Redditors said they'd been wearing the same pair of Darn Tough socks for five, six, even ten years with no sign of the thinning and holes that had plagued our Smartwool ones. The company even backs up all its socks with a lifetime guarantee: if they don't live up to your expectations, it will replace them, no questions asked.

So, rather than buying Brian more Smartwool socks for Christmas in 2022, I decided to spend a few extra dollars per pair on Darn Tough socks. And for the first couple of years, they seemed to live up entirely to the hype. They were warm, comfortable, and as far as we could tell, super sturdy. We were both so impressed with them that I invested another $30 in a third pair for him last year and was planning to spring for a couple of pairs for myself as soon as my old socks wore out.

And then, last week, while hanging up a load of laundry, I discovered a tiny hole in the foot of one of Brian's two-and-a-half-year-old Darn Tough socks. If it had been any other sock, I'd just have whipped out the old sewing kit and darned it in a minute or two. But in a sock that I'd paid $13.50 for (half of a $27 pair) less than three years ago, and that I'd been assured would last at least five, it seemed like an insult.

Small as the hole was, it shook my confidence in the brand. I began to wonder if it was worth buying any more of them in future, or even keeping them on my list of holiday gift ideas for Brian. Going back to Reddit to look into the matter, I discovered numerous posts suggesting that Darn Tough's quality had been slipping in recent years. One thread from six months ago argued that, while they're good socks, they're not really $30 socks, and the lifetime warranty is simply a "marketing strategy" to get away with selling them at that price. The author linked to a YouTube video testing Darn Tough's wool hiking socks against several less expensive brands, and the reviewer found that their overall performance was "pretty average." Darn Tough was in the top half of the pack, but four less expensive brands did better—and one of the absolute top performers was Costco's Kirkland Signature, which costs only one-eighth as much. Many Redditors responded by defending the brand, but others agreed that it's overrated, and a few piped up to say they prefer the Costco socks.

This answered one question. If we could get socks of equal or better quality for $3.75 a pair, clearly there was no point in spending $30 on Darn Tough anymore. But it left the question of what to do with the old pair. Should we attempt to take advantage of the unconditional warranty and see how good the brand really was about honoring it? Or should we just darn them and be done with it?

After some consideration, Brian suggested we should give the warranty a go. It would be more work and it would mean being without the socks for a few weeks, but he felt like the company ought to be held to account for its lapse in quality. So I went online and filled out the paperwork to do an exchange. The process was quite easy, but the last step pulled me up short: The site informed me that to get a new pair, we'd have to return the old ones at our own expense. So the "free" replacement wouldn't truly be free; it would cost at least $3 for shipping, almost as much as a whole new pair from Costco. Given that we could simply darn them and carry on using them for the cost of only a few cents' worth of thread, it didn't seem worth it.

So our plan now is to treat these Darn Tough socks the same way as all our other socks. We'll keep them in service until they wear out, darning up the holes as long as it's reasonably possible to do so, and when that stops working, send them off to textile recycling. But we see no reason ever to invest $30 in another pair. Instead, we've shelled out $15 for four pairs of the Kirkland socks. We hope they'll prove at least as durable as their predecessors, but even if they start to develop holes after just one year instead of two and a half, they'll still be a better value.

Ecofrugal episodes, July 2025

Time for another exciting installment of ecofrugal episodes, in which I fill you in on all the little things that have been going well and not so well in our ecofrugal life. This past week or two has had a mix of both, so I'm doing the post in "hits and misses" style.

Hit: Our first trip to Savers

Last weekend, Brian and I went to visit my sister and her family in Boston. One of the things we did there was visit Savers, a for-profit thrift store chain we don't have in our area. (There's a store in the same family, called Thrift Superstore, in Union, but that's a good 40 minutes away.) The store has a good selection and decent prices, but no dressing rooms, so we had to either try things on as best we could in the aisles or take our best guess about the size. Brian got one pair of jeans and a new pair of Ren Faire shoes, since his current set (also thrifted) has proven insufficiently supportive for a long day of walking. I got one fairly cute top and a pair of warm tights for winter. (It's not clear how big a hit that purchase is, since I still don't know if they fit. I couldn't try them on in the store, and after we got them home it was too hot. But for only a couple of bucks, they seemed worth the risk.) 

Since my sister's family also brought along four bags' worth of used clothes to donate, they got four coupons good for 40% off on up to $100 worth of purchases and gave one to us. With that discount, our total cost was $26.87 for the four items. That's not breathtakingly cheap, but it's clearly cheaper than buying new, which isn't always the case at thrift shops nowadays.

Miss: A sustainable-living guide that doesn't

On our way back from Savers, we stopped by a farmers' market. One of the booths there was a used-book stall run by the local public library. I can't pass by a table full of books (especially cheap ones) without at least taking a look, and I always like to support libraries when I can, so I spent $2 on a paperback copy of The Self-Sufficiency Bible, by a Brit named Simon Dawson. The cover promised "100s of Ways to Live More Sustainably - Wherever You Are," so I was hoping there might be at least a handful I didn't already know about.

Unfortunately, like many books on this topic, this one proved to be a mix of things I already do and things that aren't relevant to me. The three chapters on "The Home Dairy," "Livestock," and "Meat Preparation and Basic Butchery" were of no use to us at all. The chapter "Curing and Preserving" wasn't completely irrelevant, because the instructions for preserving meat were interspersed with pointers on pickles, chutneys, sauces, jam, and dried mushrooms and herbs. But most of this was already familiar to us, as was everything in the chapter "The Home Baker." And parts of the chapter "The Kitchen Garden" were clearly aimed at a British audience and didn't apply to us, like the advice that tomatoes and peppers are "likely to disappoint you" if you try to grow them outdoors. 

There were also a few tips that didn't seem to fit the "self-sufficiency" brief. The chapter on "Natural Solutions: Health, Beauty, and the Home" contained numerous recipes for natural cleaners and beauty products made from ingredients that you clearly can't produce yourself and aren't cheap to buy, such as cocoa butter, sandalwood oil, and avocado. His homemade hair conditioner recipe ("beat an egg either with an avocado or a banana") would cost a minimum of $1.16 per application, while my Suave conditioner costs around 9 cents. 

Also, the few chapters that looked like they'd be most useful, like "Arty Crafty Bits," largely glossed over the details of the things I was keenest to learn about. The section on knitting lists all kinds of things you can make this way, but never actually talks about how to do it; the section on making your own clothes advises you to "buy a good, lightweight machine...and get sewing," as if setting the machine up and threading it and using it required no explanation. And on top of this, the book is peppered with errors, both mechanical ("it's" for "its," "forraging") and factual (saying that rhubarb leaves are unsafe to compost, describing wood as a green energy source).

Despite these drawbacks, I did manage to glean a few useful tidbits from this book. I learned (and confirmed from reliable sources) that it's best to water seedlings before transplanting them so you lose less soil; that you can make an alcoholic "turbo cider" from store-bought juice in a couple of weeks; that you can knit with strips of fabric rather than yarn; that the comfrey plant growing next to our recycling bin can be eaten (in moderation); and that you can preserve mushrooms at home by air-drying or freezing. But having filed away those facts, I don't see any need to keep the book on my shelf for future reference. I'll either donate it to our library book sale or drop it into one of our town's many Little Free Libraries so it can go to someone who may get more use out of it.

Hit: DIY shower indicator buttons

When Brian and I bought new shower control knobs nine years back, they came with little plastic "indicator buttons" to identify the hot, cold, and direction knobs. These weren't truly necessary, since most people know which is which, but they served to cover up the mounting screws. Unfortunately, within a year, these buttons started to fall apart. They wouldn't stay in place because the little teeth that held them in the knobs had come loose and begun to fall out. This looked like an easy fix; we just bought a new set of indicator buttons for about $5 and swapped them out. But within another year or so, these buttons also began to fall apart in exactly the same way. I looked for metal indicator buttons that I thought might be more sturdy than the plastic ones, but I couldn't find any to fit our faucets.

So, with two of our faucet knobs now sitting there naked and the third button hanging on by a thread, I started brainstorming ways to rig up a DIY version of these buttons. I considered metal bottle caps, but we don't tend to buy drinks in glass bottles, and I wasn't sure how I'd get them to fit into the faucets. I also thought about gluing some decorative beads in place, but that would make it impossible to get at the screws. Finally, I concluded that the best fix would be a couple of large metal washers tucked under the screws. This would leave the heads exposed, but it would hide the dingy, mineral-stained surface underneath. And if the washers themselves got dirty, I could easily remove, clean, and replace them.

I found two washers in our collection that were just the right size and painted them with nail polish: red, which I already had, for the hot-water tap and blue, which cost me $4 at the local discount store, for the cold. It was the work of a couple of minutes to remove the screws, thread the washers on, and screw them back in. With these in place, the damaged knobs look much more presentable. And whenever that last button gives up the ghost, I can give the middle knob the same treatment.

Miss: Shaky sunglasses repair 

On sunny days, I wear special sunglasses designed to fit over my regular glasses. They're much cheaper than a pair of prescription shades, and they're easier to put on and take off because I don't need to stash my other glasses. Their weak point, it turns out, is durability. This month, the frames cracked right across the top. Brian thought maybe he could mend them with epoxy, but the difficulty would be figuring out how to clamp them while the glue dried. I decided instead to shell out $2 for some fast-drying superglue from the discount store and try to fix them that way. I laid them out on a sheet of newspaper, put on gloves so I wouldn't glue my fingers together, dabbed on a little glue, and held the joined area in place for about a minute to let it set.

At first, this simple repair seemed to be holding. Then the crack opened back up, but only partway. I glued it again, but after a week, it popped open completely. I got out my tools and glued it one more time, but this time there was a slight mishap; I got a bit of glue on my glove, which then got stuck to the inside of the nose piece. I was able to pull most of the nitrile off, but there's still a little scrap of blue there that will have to be scraped off with a utility knife. And it remains unclear whether this second repair will hold any better than the first. If it doesn't, I'll have to move on to more complicated methods: either adding a splint along with the glue, as suggested at Eyeglass Repair USA, or plastic welding.

Miss: High quotes for heat pumps 

Last month, in the wake of a brutal heat wave and the passage of a bill that will kill home electrification credits at the end of this year, Brian and I took another stab at getting quotes for a home heat pump. Three weeks ago, after talking to two contractors and getting one quote back, I was feeling doubtful. Now, after five consultations and four quotes (the fifth one never got back to me, even after a follow-up call), I'm even more pessimistic. 

The bottom line seems to be that a system that can completely replace our gas boiler will cost well over 30 grand. That doesn't include the $10,000 decarbonization credit that the first contractor mentioned, but that's because none of the other contractors I spoke to believed that this credit actually exists. More than one of them said that PSE&G has been talking about such a program for years, but nothing has ever happened, and there's no evidence that this year will be any different.

Now, if we were willing to settle for a hybrid system—one that would supplement rather than replace the boiler, reducing our gas usage—we could probably do that for between 20 and 25 grand, including the upgrades to our electrical panel. But that's still a lot of money, and the new system would probably cost as much to run as our current one, if not more. So the costs would continue to pile up every year.

What I'm starting to wonder is, if we're only going to reduce, not eliminate, our use of fossil fuel for heating, do we even need to install a whole-house system? Maybe we could just replace our old through-the-wall air conditioning unit with a heat pump that could provide supplemental heating as well as cooling. It looks like we could buy one for around $1,000, and since it would be replacing an existing unit, the installation cost shouldn't be more than another grand; we might even be able to install it ourselves. We'd still need to use the gas boiler, but the heat pump could probably cut our gas use by half, and for less than one-tenth the price of a complete system. It would be like the heating equivalent of our little induction burner: not a full replacement for a gas appliance, but one that can take over most of its duties for a fraction of the price. Am I crazy, or is this the ecofrugal way?

Small successes

We were away all last weekend visiting friends, so you're only getting a short, belated blog post this week. It's going to be a quick roundup of a few recent successes we've had in our frugal life over the past week or so—kind of like my ecofrugal episodes posts, only this time, it's all hits and no misses.

Small success #1: Pawpaw potential

Back in February, I mentioned that Brian was trying to start some more pawpaw seeds and give our two tiny pawpaw trees a few friends. Well, when the trees started leafing out this spring, he discovered that they already had one. In between the two little saplings, there's one tiny pawpaw seedling that must have survived from a previous planting, just putting out its first little leaves. I tried to get a photo of it, but it's so small you can't see it very well.

I did, however, get a picture of the other surprise the pawpaws gave us this year. One of the older trees, which he put in about six years ago, has just produced two blossoms. Unfortunately, since they're both on the same tree, there's no way they can pollinate each other. So Brian is planning to go back to the pawpaw patch near his workplace—the same spot where he originally gleaned this tree's parent fruit—and gather a little pollen on a Q-tip from one of those trees so he can attempt to pollinate the blossoms himself. After six years of tending these little trees, if there's any chance of getting just one or two pieces of fruit off them, he doesn't want to miss out.

Small success #2: Pea plants

Most years, we don't have a lot of luck growing peas in our garden. It always seems like half the seeds either fail to germinate or get mowed down in their infancy. (To add insult to injury, it's not even deer or woodchucks eating the plants; it's usually idiotic birds that mistake them for worms and pull them up by the roots.) So, this year, we planted twice as many peas and, as an extra layer of precaution, covered them up with Brian's Hudson SQ-X Squirrel Excluder to protect them while they sprouted.

This strategy seems to have worked. For the first time we can remember, we have an entire row of healthy pea plants all along the back trellis. (In fact, so many of the peas sprouted successfully that we got more seedlings than the trellis could hold and Brian had to thin them. But we ate the extra pea shoots in a salad, so they didn't go to waste.) Brian finally removed the SQ-X from the plants today because they'd grown too tall for it. The plants aren't quite able to reach out and grab the bottom row of the trellis yet, but we're hoping they're tall enough that even the dimmest wildlife can't mistake them for anything but plants.

Small success #3: Thrift shop haul

As I mentioned, we spent the weekend visiting some friends down in the D.C. area. On Sunday, their teenage daughter decided she was going to go visit a nearby Goodwill store. Needless to say, my ears pricked up at this. In my experience, the best thrift stores tend to be in or near big cities, and if they're in upscale areas, so much the better. A Goodwill in a tony D.C. suburb sounded like prime hunting ground. So I tagged along on the trip, thinking I might score a nice sweater or maybe a dressy skirt to wear to an upcoming event.

Well, I didn't get either of those things, but I picked up something that's an even rarer find for me: a nice pair of ankle boots that actually meets my specifications. They're not a perfect fit, as a women's size 6 1/2 wide would be rare indeed, but they're a size 7 that I can get my feet into comfortably with only a tiny bit of extra space in the toes. They're leather-free, which isn't an absolute requirement for me if the shoes are secondhand but isn't a downside. They're reasonably sturdy and decent-looking. And their price tag was a mere $11.99. (Actually, the label inside the shoe said $17.99, but they must have been marked down.) They're the first footwear I've owned in quite some time that has a heel, so that will take a bit of getting used to, but they're not so high that I feel wobbly in them. And at my height, being an inch or so taller certainly isn't a downside. I was so pleased with my bargain that I dropped an extra $2.99 on a pair of cute socks to go with them.

Mind you, my haul wasn't the most interesting one from our trip. There was another family visiting our D.C. friends at the same time Brian and I were, and their younger kid also joined in the Goodwill excursion and came back with four matching sombreros—one for each member of the family. The hats were only $2 each, but even spending $8 on something that was just a joke would have seemed a bit extravagant to me at that age (or, to be honest, even at my age). But their parents seemed to appreciate it, so I guess it was worth the cost.

Thrift Week 2025, Day 6: Fragrance

Back on Day 3, I named Dom Perignon as a classic example of a luxury good, costing about $330 for a 750-mL bottle. But on a milliliter-for-milliliter basis, that stuff doesn't hold a candle to high-end fragrance. A 2023 article in (once again) Town & Country magazine lists a dozen perfumes that cost hundreds or even thousands of dollars per ounce. The most expensive scent on the list, Haute Luxe by Roja Dove, costs $3,500 for a 3.4-ounce (97-mL) bottle. That's $36 per milliliter—82 times as much as France's most iconic bubbly.

According to T&C, these pricey perfumes are "worth every cent." While the editors concede that "your signature scent doesn't need to cost an arm and a leg," they also claim that an "ultra-luxury fragrance" offers benefits a more "attainable" one can't, such as:

• The "finest ingredients in the world" that went into it.
• The skills of the "master perfumer" who created it.
• The design and "natural materials" of the the bottle.
• A "one-of-a-kind scent" that most people won't have.

All that sounds impressive, but really, a fragrance only has to do one thing: make you smell good. If it doesn't do that, then the luxurious ingredients, the fancy bottle, and the efforts of the master perfumer are simply wasted. And, conversely, if you can get a much cheaper scent that smells just as good to you, then the lack of fancy ingredients and "craftsmanship" matters not one whit. The proof of the perfume is in the sniffing.

So, if you want to "find your signature scent" without spending a bundle on it, where do you look? Well, you could disregard T&C's guide in favor of this one from Cosmopolitan, which recommends the best "affordable fragrances that smell luxe." But its definition of "affordable" is up to $70, which is still a bit much to risk on a scent you don't actually know you'll like. So if you want a chance to try before you buy, you could pick up a few test vials from Microperfumes, which sells tiny samples (just 0.75 mL) of different fragrances for as little as $3 apiece. Or, if you already know what fragrance you like but you don't like the price tag, you can search for a knockoff version at a site like Perfume Parlor. With a quick search there, I found a duplicate of that $36-per-milliliter Haute Luxe that costs only 56 cents per milliliter (with a 2-mL test vial available for just $4). 

Or, if you want a truly "one of a kind scent" that no one else is wearing, you can do what I do and make your own. My signature scent is a blend of three essential oils—sandalwood, vanilla, and cinnamon—mixed with a carrier oil in a little roller bottle. Last summer, the tiny bottles of essential oil that I bought back in 2020 finally started to run low, so I restocked with some bigger bottles from an online supplier: 2 ounces of sandalwood for $4, 1 ounce of vanilla for $6, and half an ounce of cinnamon that looked like an unbeatable value at just $1. Unfortunately, when I cracked it open, I realized why it was so cheap: it had a weird, acrid smell that was nothing at all like cinnamon. Thus, for the past few months, I've been making my perfume with just sandalwood and vanilla—all about those base notes, with no middle or top.

So, as my Treat for Today, I ventured out in the brisk January air to go to the local Rite Aid and drop $9 plus tax on a new bottle of cinnamon essential oil. (As Rite Aid is going through a bankruptcy right now, its shelves are looking a little picked over, but fortunately this particular essential oil is still well stocked.) It's a 1-ounce bottle, so at the rate I use it, I'll still have half of it left when my new bottles of vanilla and sandalwood oil run out. (At that point, I'll have to decide if I want to replace the sandalwood oil, which I've recently learned comes from a rare and over-harvested plant, with something more sustainable—like, ironically, a synthetic fragrance oil.)

Meet the new toothpaste, not the same as the old toothpaste

Brian and I have a few very specific requirements for toothpaste. I insist on a brand that's cruelty-free (not tested on animals). Brian needs one that's free of sodium lauryl sulfate, which seems to give him canker sores. And we both want a toothpaste with fluoride, which, until recently, was the only chemical available that could actually prevent tooth decay. (Nowadays, there's an alternative called hydroxyapatite, which appears to be equally effective. But it's also more expensive, so most fluoride-free toothpastes don't contain it.)

None of the leading toothpaste brands (Crest, Colgate, Tom's of Maine, Sensodyne) meets all these requirements. So, for the past several years, we've relied on Trader Joe's toothpaste. Not only did it tick all the boxes, it was also much cheaper than the major brands at $3.50 for a 6-ounce tube. But last summer, we learned that Trader Joe's had discontinued its store brand on account of problems with its supplier. Our man on the inside (a friend who works there) told us the store was working with a new supplier and expected to get its product on the shelves by the end of November, but our one remaining tube wasn't going to last us that long.

So, after squeezing every drop out of that tube and exhausting all the sample tubes we'd received from our dentist, we went looking for a new toothpaste that met our stringent requirements. After a bit of online research, I determined that the best alternative was a brand called hello (without an initial capital letter). We picked up a tube of that for $5 at Target and, on the whole, liked it very much. The flavor was pleasantly minty, and being greeted by the cheerful "hello" on the tube made a pleasant start to the day. 

There were only two things we didn't like about it. The first was the price: $1.06 per ounce, nearly twice as much as our old Trader Joe's toothpaste. The other was the tube it came in. Our old toothpaste came in the traditional squeezable tube we'd both grown up with, which we could flatten and roll as we worked our way down the tube to squeeze out the paste more effectively. This new tube was made of a springier plastic and would reinflate itself after being squeezed, making it more or less impossible to squish every last bit of the paste out of the tube.

So, as November drew to an end, we kept an anxious eye on the toiletries shelf at Trader Joe's, hoping the new store-brand toothpaste would show up before our first tube of hello ran out. But November ran into December with no sign of one, and it got harder and harder to squeeze anything out of the hello tube. Finally, we gave in and bought a second tube—which, of course, was the cue for the new Trader Joe's product to show up at last. In fact, not one but two new toothpastes appeared: a "sensitivity" toothpaste with fluoride and a fluoride-free whitening toothpaste with hydroxyapatite. Both were the same price, $4 for 6 ounces—more than the old store brand, but considerably less than hello. Although we already had a full tube in reserve, we decided to spring for a tube of the new TJ's toothpaste anyway and open it first. That way, if we didn't like it, we'd have the other tube to fall back on. We hesitated over which of the new toothpastes to try but eventually settled on the one with fluoride, since it was more familiar.

After one brushing with the new toothpaste, we realized this might have been the wrong choice. It had a sort of weird taste that we could only guess was due to the desensitizing ingredient, potassium nitrate. (We'd tried sample tubes of Sensodyne before, and it also had a hint of that odd flavor, but with stronger mint and sweetener flavors to cover it up.) So now we face a bit of an ecofrugal dilemma. Do we (1) try to use up this whole tube of weird-tasting toothpaste, (2) go back to the pricier hello toothpaste that we know we like, or (3) try the other Trader Joe's toothpaste, which may or may not have the same peculiar taste?

No matter which we choose, there's one downside we'll definitely have to live with: those pesky, self-inflating tubes. The new Trader Joe's toothpaste comes in the same kind of stand-up plastic tube as the hello toothpaste. If we go for option 1, we probably won't be all that bothered about being unable to use up all the toothpaste from this tube, since we don't really like it anyway. But with option 2 or 3, we may have to resort to buying (or making) one of those special tube-squeezing tools or even cutting open the tube to scoop out the last few drips.

What we'd like best, of course, is to have our old toothpaste back, in the same old tube. But since that's not an option, we'll have to figure out which choice is next best. C'est la vie ecofrugale.

Is thrifting really thrifty?

For the past eight years, my aunt and I have had an arrangement about holiday gifts: When she comes to visit over Thanksgiving weekend, we hit the local thrift shops together and buy each other's presents there. This year, I invited my youngest nibling to join in the exchange as well. I had perused their wish list on Gift Hero (our more socially responsible alternative to the Amazon Wishlist) and noticed that a lot of their picks were clothing items, so I suggested we look for them the ecofrugal way.

Well, this was a semi-success. As usual, I couldn't find anything I particularly liked at the thrift stores, so my aunt wasn't able to get a gift for me there. But both she and my nibling found items for themselves: a cute little fuzzy jacket and a colorful striped sweater, respectively. And Brian, who joined us on the trip, also found a nice green sweater for himself. That's the good news. The bad news is that the three items together cost $87. 

Mind you, I'm not objecting to what I paid for my relatives' gifts; there are definitely other items on our gift list that cost about the same (though there are also some that cost less). But it seems a trifle high for secondhand clothing. Consider that last year, Brian and I spent only $52 at Goodwill for six pieces (two pairs of shorts, one pair of jeans, one pair of sneakers, one pullover, and one turtleneck)—an average of $8.67 per garment. These three items averaged $29 per garment—more than three times as much.

This leads me to an uncomfortable but inescapable conclusion: thrifting isn't always a thrifty choice. That's not to say it never is; at a store like Goodwill, where most garments are under $10, you'll certainly pay less than you would buying fast fashion, and you'll probably be able to find better-made garments too (though it may take a bit of Goodwill hunting to find them). But at consignment shops like Greene Street, you're likely to pay more than you would shopping the Black Friday sales at Target or Old Navy.

Of course, secondhand shopping still has other advantages over fast fashion. It doesn't require the massive amounts of water, energy, and other resources that go into new garments, and it doesn't produce the massive amounts of waste and emissions that come out of the process. It's unquestionably the more eco-friendly choice. But it's not the ecofrugal no-brainer I thought it was. Instead, it's one of those awkward cases in which the best choice for society and the best choice for your bottom line are often in conflict, and you have to figure out which matters more to you.

Thrifting can still be an ecofrugal choice if you stick to the nonprofit stores, such as Goodwill and local church basement shops. But unfortunately, there aren't very many of those around here, and the ones we do have are a bit of a mess. Our one local thrift shop at the Reformed Church is small, cluttered, and hardly ever open; the nearest Goodwill store, while bigger, is poorly organized, making it hard to unearth the few pearls hidden in the massive dunghill. So if we want to visit a thrift store with real bargains, we have to go some distance out of our way. We still go once in a while, but we can't drop in on a regular basis to find the good stuff before it's snatched up.

Consequently, we tend to have our best luck visiting thrift shops away from home. When we go to visit my in-laws for Christmas, we make a point of stopping by at least one of the three Goodwill stores in their area, all of which are much better than ours. And when we saw my sister's family for Thanksgiving this past weekend, they invited us to come visit them in Boston next year and check out a chain called Savers, which they visit regularly. It's a for-profit chain, but apparently it's a big enough one to boast a substantial selection of decent stuff at reasonable prices. We can usually find enough during these out-of-town thrift-shop visits to fill the gaps in our wardrobe and tide us over until next year. It's not ideal, but if we want to shop ecofrugally, it's our best option.

Is there an app for ecofrugality?

There are all kinds of useful tools to support an ecofrugal lifestyle. In some of my Thrift Week series, for instance, I've discussed my favorite ecofrugal books, websites, and recipes. Now that I've finally entered the 21st century and acquired a smartphone, I've realized I should add apps to the list as well. 

Over the past year, I've tested out several apps that looked like they could be handy for ecofrugal folks. As it turned out, most of them weren't all that useful for me, but that doesn't necessarily mean they wouldn't be for you. It all depends on where you live and what you want your ecofrugal life to look like—something that, as I've noted before, will vary from person to person.

Ecofrugal App #1: Buy Nothing

For over 15 years, Brian and I have been avid users of Freecycle. We use it mostly to get rid of stuff we no longer need, but we've also acquired a variety of useful items through the site, from a bicycle to, literally, the kitchen sink. So when I started hearing about another giveaway network called the Buy Nothing Project, I figured it would be worthwhile to check it out. 

When I first learned about the Buy Nothing Project, around 2021, it existed mostly on Facebook. There were thousands of local Buy Nothing groups across the country and around the world where people could offer or request items from each other, just as they do on Freecycle. However, the organization had recently developed its own app and was encouraging people to migrate their groups onto that platform. So when I decided to give Buy Nothing a shot, I downloaded the app and signed up for the nearest group in my area. 

Unfortunately, it turned out to be a bit of a wasteland. Practically no one ever posted anything on the site, and only a few people seemed to be using it at all. Eventually, I figured out that most people in my area were ignoring the app and continuing to post on the local Facebook group. So I joined the group, which I now check whenever I happen to be on Facebook, and deleted the app. 

Verdict: For me, the Buy Nothing app was not at all useful. The Facebook group is somewhat more so; it gets a lot more traffic, and I occasionally see an offer for something that I might be able to use or a request for something I might be able to provide. But so far, I have never actually obtained or donated anything via the group. The local Freecycle group, which is considerably larger and busier, remains my go-to site for disposing of excess stuff. But your mileage, naturally, may vary. It's quite possible that your area has a bustling Buy Nothing community, either on Facebook or on the app, and nobody at all on Freecycle. So check out both to decide whether either one, or both, is worth your time.

Ecofrugal App #2: Faircado

I can't remember exactly where I first heard about the Faircado app and browser extension. I may have seen it mentioned in a newsletter or just happened to run across a mention of it online. In any case, the idea behind it struck me as a sound one: make it easier for people to find secondhand clothing by popping up listings for used versions of items they shop for online. Since I do most of my online shopping on my computer rather than my phone, I installed the Firefox browser extension rather than the app.

Over the next few months, the add-on appeared to be working as designed. That is, whenever I visited a clothing store online, it would dutifully pop up a list of suggestions for secondhand alternatives to whatever I was looking at. Unfortunately, these suggestions were generally not useful for me, and for a very specific reason: the company that runs Faircado is based in Germany. Consequently, most of the secondhand garments it found for me were listed on European sites. Shipping them to the U.S. would have more than doubled their price (not to mention their carbon footprint). The extension did pop up a few items from U.S. sellers, but there was no way to filter the list to see only those items. Eventually, I got frustrated and removed the browser extension.

Verdict: This app was not useful for me, and I don't think it would be for other U.S. shoppers. I'll keep an eye on the Faircado website to see if it ever rolls out a "search by location" feature, and if it does, perhaps I'll consider reinstalling it.

Ecofrugal App #3: Too Good to Go

I learned about the Too Good to Go app from the Washington Post's Climate Coach column. Its purpose is to help grocery stores and eateries dispose of perishable food they have left at the end of the day, rather than sending it to the landfill to produce methane. You can use the app to purchase a "surprise bag" of leftovers from a nearby establishment. The prices are fairly low—in my area, they typically range from $4 to $6—but you never know exactly what you're going to get for that amount. Consequently, it's hard to evaluate whether you're getting a good deal or not. Ya pays yer money, ya takes yer chances.

Columnist Michael Coren says he "fed [his] family for days" using food salvaged from the trash with the help of this and a similar app called Flashfood. The business model for Flashfood sounded a bit more useful to me: Coren called it "a discount grocery shelf" from which you can select fresh produce and other perishables at up to 50 percent off the original price. But unfortunately, when I consulted the Flashfood website, it said it didn't have any participating stores in my area. So I decided to give To Good to Go a try instead. 

I downloaded the free app and found that there were several local establishments signed up on it, but they were mostly bakeries and pizza places. That didn't look too useful for us, since Brian makes all our pizza and baked goods from scratch—probably for less than it would cost to buy from the app. There was only one nearby grocery store signed up on the app: the George Street Co-Op in New Brunswick, which offers up bags of its worse-for-wear organic produce for $4 at the end of each day. The problem is that you have to order your bag after 5pm and come to pick it up between 7pm and 8pm. That's not a very convenient hour for us to head out for a walk of around 45 minutes each way, particularly in the wintertime. So to take advantage of these produce deals, we'd have to make a special trip by car to pick them up—not exactly an eco-friendly way to acquire groceries.

Still, I felt like I shouldn't give up on the To Good to Go app without trying it at least once. So one Monday evening, when we were planning to go play board games at a local bar called Pino's, I ordered a surprise bag from Salonika, a Greek deli and grocery just a short distance from our house. We'd be passing right by it on our way to Pino's, just at the designated hour for pickups, and we could share whatever goodies the bag contained with our gaming buddies, thus reducing the hazard to our own waistlines of coming home with a whole bag crammed with rich pastries.

As it turned out, our surprise bag wasn't quite so naughty as all that. For $6, I got just two pieces of savory pastry: one largish portion of spanakopita (spinach pie) and another of cheese pie. These proved a bit awkward to share with our fellow gamers; since we had just two large pieces rather than several small ones, I had to get out my little pocketknife so people could hack pieces off. But folks seemed to enjoy the cheese pie, and Brian and I enjoyed the spanakopita later at home. Still, I didn't feel like I'd gotten that much of a bargain for my $6, and I didn't feel all that inclined to repeat the experience.

Verdict: For us, this app isn't very useful. We'd probably use it more if we lived close enough to the  George Street Co-op to take advantage of its cheap produce deals, but in our location, there's just not enough of anything we can reasonably use. I haven't deleted the app yet, but I probably won't keep it much longer.

Ecofrugal App #4: Gem.app

I learned about Gem.app just within the past couple of weeks. My phone or my computer popped up some story about secondhand clothing, and along with all the references to specific secondhand marketplaces I was already familiar with (Poshmark, eBay, Mercari), it mentioned Gem.app as a tool for searching all those marketplaces. Unlike Faircado, Gem doesn't automatically pop up search results whenever you're shopping; you have to physically go to the app or the website and do a search. But with that one search, you can find clothes from all the secondhand sites at once, rather than laboriously searching one at a time.

As I mentioned, I tend to shop with my computer more than my phone, so I haven't installed the actual Gem app. But I have used the Gem.app website several times, and I must say, it makes shopping secondhand much, much easier. Not only can I find items from many stores at once, Gem's search algorithm gives me much more useful results than those on most individual sites. If I do a search on eBay or Etsy for "women's colorful sweater," I'll find some things that fit that description, but many more that aren't sweaters, aren't colorful, and/or aren't for women. On Gem.app, all the results are, in fact, colorful women's sweaters, and I can narrow those results based on size, price, brand, and other criteria.

Verdict: This one's a keeper. I've haven't actually found anything I want yet through the Gem app, but I now waste much less time scrolling through pictures of things I don't want. Instead of hunting fruitlessly through page after page on eBay and Mercari, I can do a quick search on Gem and, if I don't see anything I like, plan to try again another day. And I imagine anyone else of an ecofrugal bent would find it equally useful.

Yard-sale haul 2024

Most years, when we head out to shop Highland Park's annual yard-sale weekend, we aren't looking for anything specific. Our goal is simply to score the most interesting, fun, and/or useful items for the lowest total sum of money. These days we tend to pass over the sales that focus on kids' toys, since we no longer have any children under 10 in our lives, but we always brake for books, board games, adult clothing, or tools that we don't currently have.

This year, however, we did have a particular quarry in mind. Over the past two years, our Christmas gift exchanges have been such a big hit with the niblings on Brian's side of the family that we knew we wanted to do another one this year. But, since we've already done gift exchanges featuring books and board games, we didn't want to repeat either of those themes. So we decided that the theme for this year's exchange would be simply "interesting objects"—something we knew we had a good chance of finding during yard-sale weekend. So, along with seeking out items for ourselves, we were keeping our eyes peeled for any whimsical items that might show up on our neighbors' sale tables. And, as luck would have it, we found some, which is why I won't be too specific in describing or displaying all our finds in this blog entry.

We knew when we set out on Saturday morning that we wouldn't be able to shop for more than a couple of hours at a stretch. I had my monthly Citizens' Climate Lobby meeting at 11:45, and I had to be home by 11:30 to tune in over Zoom. (Normally I go in person, but I wasn't willing to sacrifice an additional hour out of my yard-sale time for the drive.) This turned out to be a blessing in disguise, since what seemed at first like perfect weather for a yard sale—bright, clear, and warm—became uncomfortably hot after two hours of traipsing around. 

But we couldn't bring ourselves to head home any earlier than we had to, because the sales were thick on the ground and we were finding lots of good stuff. As we worked our way westward along the south side of town, we accumulated three potential gift items, three books for ourselves, a pair of pants for Brian, a turtleneck for me, and a tall stack of plastic flowerpots, all for a total of just $10. By the time we headed home, all three of the shopping bags we'd brought with us were bulging.

After my meeting and a bite of lunch, we went once more into the breach. This time, we worked our way west along the north side before heading down to the farmers' market parking lot, where we knew there would be a large collection of sales, as well as entertainment from some local bands. Unfortunately, the music was turned up so loud that we couldn't stand to spend much time browsing. However, the thrift shop at the Reformed Church, which is normally open only until 1pm on Saturday, was open for the occasion, so we ventured in there and emerged with two board games and one jigsaw puzzle, all for $5. We also received two freebies at a booth run by Sustainable Highland Park: a packet of butterfly weed seeds (a native plant) and a small, decorative flowerpot much nicer than all the free ones we'd found earlier.

Next we made our way to Pino's bar, which was hosting a thrift market of its own, with both new and used clothing from a large number of sellers. Most of the customers were a lot younger and hipper than either of us, displaying tattoos, piercings, vivid hair colors, and outré outfits such as a black mini dress with a large spider embroidered on the butt. Yet somehow, we didn't look glaringly out of place; I even got compliments on my sun hat and my colorful patchwork skirt. Unfortunately, most of the clothing at the market was either too small, too fancy, or too rich for our blood, but I picked up a nice T-shirt for $2. By that point we were feeling pretty tired, so we plotted a course for home, stopping only at the sales that happened to be on our path. En route, Brian scored one additional item: a set of earphones to replace the unreliable pair he uses at work. (He wasn't sure the new ones would work either, but they seemed worth risking $1 on, and once we got home he confirmed that they were usable.)

On Sunday, as usual, we encountered far fewer sales. But, to compensate for that, we saw quite a lot of free piles full of rejects from the previous day's sales. In our first two hours of shopping, we picked up a hedge trimmer, four cool-looking glass bottles, two possible stocking stuffers, and one book, all without spending one red cent. We didn't so much as pull out our wallets until we reached the huge, chaotic sale at the synagogue on South First, and even there we spend only $1 on a little stuffed animal (possibly another stocking stuffer, or possibly too cute to give away). After that, we started wending our way home, peeking at other sales and free piles but not actually acquiring anything except for one small houseplant at a "Mama's Got Too Many Plants" sale. (It was perhaps a tad overpriced at $5, but Brian felt the need to help out a fellow gardener.)

Here you can see our complete haul for both days (strategically arranged to disguise the future gift items). Total money spent: $24. Total time spent: 7 hours. Being part of the joyful chaos that is the annual Highland Park sales: Priceless.

Frugalversary 2024: We'll take Manhattan

Most years, Brian and I celebrate our anniversary in a modest style. For the first few years of our marriage, I'd put on the bodice from my wedding dress, we'd buy a little 4-inch version of our wedding cake, and then we'd go to the park where we got married to eat it. When the bakery stopped carrying small cakes, we started going to Princeton instead and visiting the bakery cafe to order a slice of the same cake. And when the cafe shut down during the pandemic, Brian started baking the cake himself. Our gifts to each other were either small tokens (like the game I made for Brian and the aluminum-foil flower he made for me on our tenth anniversary) or practical items (like the cherry tree we planted for our fourth anniversary, which sadly didn't survive, or the glass-and-silicone lids I got Brian for some of our Pyrex containers on our fifteenth). The biggest celebration we ever had was going shopping at IKEA and having lunch in the cafe.

But this year, for our twentieth anniversary, we decided to splash out a little. We've discovered that one activity we really enjoy is going to a town where we haven't spent a lot of time before and just exploring, wandering up streets and into shops looking at whatever takes our fancy. So, for our anniversary, we decided to carry out this activity on a grander scale by visiting the biggest town on the whole East Coast: New York City.

Although this trip was bound to be much costlier than our usual anniversary outings, we tried not to go overboard. We made no attempt to get tickets to a show, which could easily have cost more than we'd spent on all our previous 19 anniversaries put together. We didn't even plan a visit to a museum, not even the intriguingly named Museum of Illusions or Museum of Sex, which would have cost over $70 for two tickets. Instead, we looked for things we could do at little to no cost within walking distance of Penn Station, thus avoiding any need to find our way around on the subway. 

Our first stop (well, second, after the rest rooms at the station) was 9th and 31st, where an article from Beloved City had promised we could find a "magical art installation" called Citrovia. But as it turned out, this article was several years old, so the exhibit was no longer there. Fortunately, we hadn't gone very far out of our way, so we just continued on to the next site on our list: the High Line, a park built on a disused set of former elevated train tracks. It's only about 1.5 miles long, but it has lots to see, including a variety of native plants, some funky art exhibits, and an above-the-fray view of the city. 

We also got a look at the neighboring Hudson Yards, which is both a resting spot for the city's trains and an open-air food court. We weren't quite ready for lunch at that point, but we did get a peek at a huge public sculpture in that area called "The Vessel": a series of staircases and landings visitors can explore. The ground-floor level is normally open to the public for free, but it was closed for construction, so we had to content ourselves with snapping a photo or two from outside.

Being thwarted by construction continued to be a theme of the trip as morning wore into afternoon. We'd planned to exit the High Line at 16th Avenue and then descend to street level to go visit Chelsea Market, a sort of Bohemian shopping mall with lots of eateries, but the section of the park between 23rd and 16th was closed for maintenance. So we got off at 23rd and wended our way through the streets to Chelsea Market in the wake of a large crowd of students all wearing yellow backpacks with "MLA" on them. (My first thought was "Modern Language Association?", but a quick search showed it referred to Moving Language Ahead, an English course for foreign students that culminates with a trip to an English-speaking country.)

For lunch, we chose a place called Berlin Currywurst, which offered an intriguing-sounding tofu kielbasa. Sadly, the sausage itself was disappointing, a bit mushy and lacking the garlic punch I expect from a proper kielbasa sausage. Also, the bun it was served on (along with some unremarkable sauerkraut) disintegrated about three-quarters of the way through, and Brian's more traditional meat bratwurst sandwich didn't fare any better. So, 6 out of 10 for the sausages, but 10 out of 10 for the accompanying French fries, which had a crisp, golden exterior over tender insides. The only fault I could find with them was that they were perhaps a trifle over-salted, but Brian thought they were just right. 

We ate our sausages at a small table, shoulder to shoulder with several Italian students, then spent some time exploring the rest of the shops. We ventured into a fancy bakery, an artists' market, a vintage candy store, a place called Imports from Marrakesh featuring an intriguing assortment of clothing and decor, a quaint delicatessen, and finally a genuine independent bookstore called Posman Books. We browsed through the volumes and found nothing irresistible, but I did drop $5 on a little LED flashlight for my key ring. I'd been looking for something like this anyway, so I took the opportunity to support an independent bookseller and pick up a little souvenir of our trip at the same time.

After reascending to the High Line and continuing down it to the end, we wove through the streets and crossed the bridge to Little Island, an artificial island built out in the Hudson. It's mostly used in the evenings as a live music venue, but it was a fairly interesting place to walk or, more accurately, climb along sloping paths and natural stone staircases. After rambling up and down in the midday heat, we were feeling a little tired, so we stopped into Pier 57—another large, upscale food court—to have a cup of coffee and spend some time in the air conditioning.

Refreshed by our rest, we sallied back out and made our way to the garment district, where we strolled up 7th Avenue peeping into shop windows. I slipped into one store just long enough to check the price of a dress I'd seen in the window, which I'd guessed would be too rich for my blood at $278. Apparently I'd failed to account for the Manhattan conversion rate, because the actual price tag read $795, causing me to back carefully out the door and flee before a salesperson could spot me. 

The only store we actually explored in detail was the always entertaining Williams-Sonoma, home of pricey kitchen gear. (An amusing and very New York sales clerk at this particular branch described it as a "toy store for adults.") None of the on-sale items appealed to us, but Brian found one thing he thought he could use: a candy thermometer to replace the wildly inaccurate one we have now. Unfortunately, it was a $65 model equipped with Bluetooth, a feature for which we'd have no use whatsoever. So instead, I bought him a more reasonable $29 instant-read thermometer, suitable for a variety of applications, as my anniversary gift to him. (He's already used it once to test the temperature of an ice cream base he's preparing in our new-to-us ice cream maker.)

As the clock ticked past 5pm, we had to decide whether to stay in the city for dinner or head home. Deciding that we didn't want to wait that long to eat, we settled for a quick bite at New York Pizza Suprema right near the train station. Beloved City had described this as the best slice of pizza in New York, but I strongly suspect this isn't true; both the fresh mushroom and the vegan margherita were pretty good, but neither was superior to Brian's homemade pizza. (The crust was nicely crisp on the edges, but a bit soggy in the middle, and the cheese on the vegan slice had an odd, liquid texture, not nearly as good as our homemade vegan mozzarella.) Still, it was unquestionably an authentic New York experience, and at $12.50 for both slices, undoubtedly the cheapest meal we could have expected to enjoy in the city. After this light supper, we roamed just a few blocks farther north before heading back to the station and home again for cake.

Although we hadn't officially made a budget for this trip, my private goal was to keep the entire excursion under $200: $10 for each year of our marriage. As it turned out, we met this target with plenty of room to spare. Our expenses were:

• Two round-trip fares on NJ Transit: $64.40
• Lunch at Berlin Currywurst, including tip: $31.30
• Mini flashlight from Posman Books: $5.44
• Tip for a busker playing the erhu on the High Line: $2
• Coffee at Pier 57, including tip: $6
• Thermometer from Williams-Sonoma: $29.34
• Dinner at NY Pizza Suprema: $12.50
• Parking in New Brunswick, which saved us a long walk at the end of a busy day: $16.00
• TOTAL: $166.98

Even if you add in the $21.27 Brian spent on my anniversary gift (an amusing board game called Cat Lady) and the groceries we bought for our anniversary cake, our celebration still easily rings in at under $200. It's more than we'd usually spend for a one-day outing, but when you consider that Arthur Frommer's 1957 feat of seeing Europe on $5 a day would cost at least $125 today—or $250 for two people—New York on $167 a day doesn't sound so bad.

More ecofrugal episodes

Once again, we've been having some ups and downs in our ecofrugal life this week. Rather than recount these ecofrugal episodes in chronological order, I think I'll arrange them from most disappointing to most satisfying. That way I'll be able to end the post on a nice positive note. 

Thus, we'll start at the bottom, with:

Ecofrugal Episode 1: The Earth Fair Washout

I spent most of this afternoon "tabling"—that is, setting up a table and talking to people—for Citizens' Climate Lobby at a street fair in town. Unfortunately, the event was a bit of a washout—literally. The weather was chilly and wet, progressing from clouds and drizzle in the morning to steady, soaking rain in the afternoon. Fortunately we had a canopy to keep us dry while we were actually at the table, but we got pretty wet whenever we ventured away from it. By the time we finished putting away all our gear at the end of the event—including the canopy itself—we were all pretty well soaked.

Furthermore, there were fewer people to talk to than there would usually be, since many people were sensibly staying home and keeping dry. All in all, we had about 30 conversations over the course of four hours—five if you count the time we spent setting up and putting away all our gear—and only a few of those could be considered enthusiastic. It's not a lot to show for the amount of effort we put in. 

On top of that, we had to put up with a lot of other annoyances unrelated to the weather. The organizers of the Earth Fair put our booth into a slot right next to the music stage, so we couldn't converse at normal volumes. The parking lot they told us to use for unloading our gear was completely filled up five minutes before the time they told us to arrive, and we weren't allowed to use the nearby bank parking lot—not even for the few minutes required to unload—because it was reserved for an EV car show. (Fortunately, we'd already unloaded our car by the time they told us this; otherwise we would have had to find a parking spot on the street and then haul all our gear several blocks to the site.) Given how much hassle we went to for such a small benefit, I'm inclined to think it's not even worth signing up for this event next year.

Ecofrugal Episode 2: The Case of the Compacted Soil

Yesterday was our big spring planting day in the garden. We put in seeds for twelve squares of beans, four of cucumbers, six of basil, and two of herbs, and we transplanted eight tomato seedlings and four peppers. This proved to be a much harder job than I expected—literally. I'd expected to just poke some holes in the dirt and put the seeds in, but the soil was so dense and compacted that I could barely get the blade of a trowel into it, much less my fingers. I had to spend several minutes hacking at the soil in each square to break up the clods of clay before I could put the seeds into it.

This is both puzzling and frustrating, because we've had these raised garden beds for about fifteen years at this point, and we've spent that whole time following the advice in all our garden books about building healthy soil. We double-dug the beds when we first built them, turning over all the soil twice to break it up, and we haven't tilled it or walked on it since then. We add compost to it every year during spring planting and mulch the beds with leaves in the winter. And we've never once used any sort of harsh synthetic fertilizer or pesticide. By now, our soil ought to be so rich and soft we could plunge our hands right into it, not packed so hard we can barely dig in it.

Based on all the sources I've consulted, the best explanation I can find is that we're not adding enough organic matter to the beds. Our little home compost bin only provides enough compost to add a thin layer—less than one inch—to each of the beds each year, and we should be piling on at least a couple of inches. Bagged compost isn't an ideal solution either, since we would need to buy several bags and then test every one of them to make sure the contents weren't herbicide-laden "killer compost" that would kill our plants. If any of the bags failed the test, we'd have to buy new ones and test them too, repeating the process until we got only clean results. But that would seriously delay our planting schedule, so to avoid the problem, we'd have to buy a lot more compost than we thought we needed—at least twice as much—in the hope that at least one bag in two would be usable. 

Probably the best solution is to go to the Belle Mead Co-Op every year and load up with half a yard of bulk leaf mold. We haven't been using this stuff regularly because we learned that it's not actually a great source of soil nutrients, but it should be effective as an amendment to loosen up the soil, hold moisture, and attract earthworms. The only problem with this plan is that we can't do this at the same time we buy mulch because there isn't room in our car, or our garden shed, for both at once. So probably we should either buy a load of mulch every spring and a load of leaf mold every fall or vice versa.

Ecofrugal Episode 3: The Case of the Disappearing Eggs

One of the things that made Lidl an instant hit with Brian and me was its prices on Certified Humane (CH) eggs. We used to buy these at H-Mart, where sale prices ranged from $2 to $4 per dozen. But at Lidl, we consistently found them for $2.40 a dozen. Even during the pandemic, when most food prices soared, this price held steady. We did encounter occasional shortages, during which we'd go in and find the CH-egg shelf empty, but we figured these were due to temporary blockages in the supply chain. The eggs were always back a week or so later, so we didn't worry too much about it.

But in the past month or two, Lidl's CH eggs seem to have disappeared entirely. The case where they live is still there, with the price on it marked at $2.40 a dozen, but every time we show up, it's empty. Brian guessed this could mean that the store's delivery cycle has changed, so that the eggs now arrive on Friday morning, and consequently they're always gone when we show up on Thursday evening. (We found a little support for this theory last week, when we showed up a little earlier on Thursday and found exactly one carton of eggs in the case, with one of them smashed. Clearly it hadn't been sitting there all week, so it was most likely the last one left, passed over on account of the damage.) But given how full our schedule is this spring, we haven't found an opportunity to go to Lidl at some other time and check.

For a while, this problem left us stranded without a good source of CH eggs. The $8 per dozen at the farmers' market was much too rich for our blood; we hunted around at other local food stores, but none of them—not even our once-trusty H-Mart—could do much better than $5 per dozen. (Trader Joe's, we discovered, didn't carry them at all; it had only "cage free" eggs, a much wimpier standard.) And then it occurred to us to check the refrigerated case at Rite Aid, which carries a small selection of dairy products. To our astonishment, not only did the store carry CH eggs, they were only $3.20 per dozen—about 35 percent less than their nearest competitor.

We don't know how a drugstore chain, of all places, manages to offer humanely farmed eggs at better prices than any local supermarket. But we're pleased to have a new source of eggs so close to home. We'll still keep checking the Lidl when we visit to see if our cheaper eggs have returned, but we won't need to rearrange our whole shopping schedule in the hopes of catching them there.

Ecofrugal Episode 4: A Reusable Replacement

My favorite way to brew coffee, hands-down, is the Aeropress. It's much faster than a drip machine, uses much less ground coffee to brew the same volume, and produces excellent coffee from fairly cheap beans. It's also much easier to clean than the French press so beloved by coffee snobs. All the grounds get compacted into a dense little puck that you can shoot directly out into the compost bin, so all you have to do is rinse off the plunger. 

The Aeropress has only two downsides. First, it takes a lot of effort to depress the plunger; I often have to put my full weight on it for a minute or so before it finally sinks. And second, it's not completely zero-waste. The paper filters it uses are fairly tiny and cost only a couple of cents each, and they can go straight into the compost bin with the coffee grounds, so the waste it produces is fairly minimal. But still, I have thought from time to time that it would be still more ecofrugal to replace those paper filters with a resusable one.

So, when I noticed that I was running low on paper filters, I decided this was my chance to give it a try. This was an easier decision to make since the paper filters had gone up in price, from $6 for a pack of 350 to between $8 and $10, not counting shipping. By contrast, a set of two reusable metal filters from a site called Mason Jar Lifestyle was only $10 ($14 with shipping). The price was barely any higher, and I'd have two filters to experiment with and see which I preferred. And if it turned out they were both unacceptable, I'd still have time to switch back to the paper ones.

Having now tried both filters, I can say they have both advantages and disadvantages compared to the paper ones. Most obviously, they're more ecofrugal; they produce no waste and should last for years, making them much cheaper on a per-cup basis. They also let more air through than the paper ones, which reduces the amount of muscle needed to depress the plunger. This is particularly noticeable with the perforated metal disk rather than the fine mesh one.

One downside of these metal filters is that they allow more sediment into the coffee than the paper  ones. However, this isn't a huge problem, particularly with the fine-mesh disk. A much bigger drawback is the extra cleanup work. Removing the filter from the press before knocking the grounds out into the bin doesn't sound like that much added hassle, and it wouldn't be if the filter came away cleanly. But no matter how carefully I pry it off (after running cold water over it so it's cool enough to touch), at least half the coffee grounds end up stuck to the filter rather than the press. And unlike the grounds stuck to the plunger itself, they don't come off cleanly. If I simply rinsed them off the filter, I'd be washing several grams of coffee grounds down the drain with every cup of coffee I brew, and I think it wouldn't be long before our plumbing objected to that. I've tried scraping the grounds off the filter onto the plunger before emptying it, but that never works neatly. Some grounds stay stuck to the filter no matter what I do, and some get all over my hands, so they have to be washed too.

I consulted Reddit on this subject and found two suggestions for dealing with this problem. Some users say that sliding the metal filter off sideways rather than lifting it off removes most of the grounds. Others say pulling the plunger back slightly and then inverting the press and letting it rest (without unscrewing the cap first) allows the grounds to drop back onto the plunger and away from the filter, leaving it mostly clean. I'll give both methods a try, and if either one works, then I'll be able to say definitively that the mesh filter is superior to the paper ones. 

[UPDATE, 5/5/24: I have now tried both methods of cleaning the metal filter. Neither one is perfect, but the first is much better than the second. When I invert the plunger and let it rest before removing the cap, the grounds do not fall away from the filter; they remain stuck to it at the top. When I remove the cap, some of the grounds fall off onto the top of the plunger, but at least half remain on the filter:

By contrast, when I rinse the plunger, unscrew the cap, and slide off the filter, it leaves only a thin film of coffee grounds behind. A quick spray with the faucet hose is enough to get them off. And I'm not concerned that the amount of coffee washing down the drain will clog it up.

I've also discovered another advantage of the metal filter: it fits more securely than the paper ones. With those, I always had to take care that the filter was exactly centered in the cap before screwing it on. If it wasn't, it would slip to the side and let some of the grounds through into my cup of coffee. I'd have to strain it a second time before I could drink it. 

So, in addition to saving me money and eliminating waste, this metal mesh filter has eliminated the two biggest problems with my Aeropress: the stuck-plunger problem and the slipping-filter problem. The additional step of rinsing the filter is a small price to pay for that.]

[FURTHER UPDATE, 9/13/24: I've now figured out that the best method of all for cleaning the filter is to combine the two suggestions. After rinsing the press and unscrewing the filter basket, I pull the plunger back slightly so the metal filter is flush with the bottom of the tube before sliding it off. This takes only a few seconds and leaves almost nothing stuck to the filter.]

Ecofrugal Episode 5: A Pressing Concern

A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned that I had ordered us a new (or more accurately, new-to-us) garlic press to replace our old Oxo one that broke. After a little research, we decided to go with the Joseph Joseph Garlic Rocker, which got consistently solid reviews from cooking sites. A new one costs $15 at Amazon, but since we don't do Amazon, we bought a secondhand one from eBay for $14 ($17 with shipping).

It has since arrived, and after testing it out several times, Brian reports that it's better in almost every way than its predecessor. It takes a couple of passes over a garlic clove to mince it as finely as the old one, but on the plus side, it does mince the entire clove rather than extruding part of it and turning the rest into a sort of squashed blob. It's easier to clean than the old press and takes up less room in the drawer. And since it's a solid piece of metal with no moving parts, we can be confident it won't simply fall apart like the previous one.

This espisode makes me inclined to add a seventh principle to my Ecofrugal Manifesto: Buy It to Last. (You could call this a subset of my sixth principle—Mend It, Don't End It—but I think it's different enough to deserve a principle of its own.) If you have to buy something new, buy something that's built to last as long as possible. Look for sturdy materials and construction, check reviews for complaints about durability, and minimize the number of moving parts that can break. And, other things being equal, opt for mechanical rather than electronic controls whenever possible. Electronics of all kinds usually cost more to repair than to replace—if it's possible to replace them at all.