365 Ways to Live Cheap (9 page)
97. U
SE
H
OUSEHOLD
I
TEMS
Y
OU
A
LREADY
H
AVE TO
R
EMOVE
S
TAINS
Most minor clothes stains can be fixed with just a few items from around your house. Try this simple solution for stains on furniture, carpet, and light-colored clothes: Make a paste by mixing ¼ cup hydrogen peroxide with ¼ cup baking soda, then spread the paste on the stained area liberally and rub it in deep. Let it sit for fifteen minutes, then rinse the area thoroughly. This procedure can take out sweat stains, mud stains, bloodstains, and many others and is a great (and cheap) first action to take before breaking out more expensive cleaners (or throwing the clothing away). On darker clothing, take a stick of clear underarm deodorant and rub it vigorously on sweat stains. On other stains, try rubbing the area briskly with a slightly damp bar of soap before washing it. These techniques will eliminate the vast majority of stains that you might face without having to buy expensive washing machine additives or pretreatment solutions.
98. C
UT
D
RYER
S
HEETS IN
H
ALF AND
R
EUSE
T
HEM
Dryer sheets are a great way to reduce static cling and make your clothes smell fresher when they come out of the dryer, but a single dryer sheet can actually help with four loads of laundry, not just one. Just cut the sheet in half and use one of the halves in a load. Then, leave that used dryer sheet on top and use it again for a second load. This can cut down greatly on the cost of dryer sheets while still getting almost all of the laundry-freshening effect.
C
HEAP
T
ACTIC
$
FOR
C
LUTTER
99 Realize That Clutter Itself Is a Giant Money Sink
100 Sell Specific and Individually Valuable Items on eBay
101 Sell Bulk Entertainment Items at a Secondhand Entertainment Shop
104 Put a “Sell By” Date on It
105 Don’t Replace Clutter with More Clutter
107 Trim Your Magazine Subscriptions
108 Borrow Stuff You’ll Only Use Once or Twice
109 Every Time You Buy an Item, Get Rid of One
110 Start a “Mail Basket” and Process It Weekly
111 Go Through the “Clutter Attractors” Regularly
112 Read Your Favorite Newspaper Online
114 Unsubscribe from Charity Mailings
115 Sign Up for the Do Not Mail Registry and the Do Not Call Registry
116 Don’t Upgrade Your Living Space to House More Stuff
99. R
EALIZE
T
HAT
C
LUTTER
I
TSELF IS A
G
IANT
M
ONEY
S
INK
Clutter accumulation is one of the biggest money sinks in a house. Unused objects and items, merely saved for “someday” or for faint nostalgic reasons, not only make your home or office appear cluttered and unfriendly to outsiders (reducing the value of your property), but also contain within them value that you’re not using elsewhere. A $5 trinket shoved onto a shelf with dozens of other $5 trinkets is $5 that could be used to pay down your debt and make your environment look better at the same time. It’s a way to simultaneously earn a profit while decreasing the cluttered look of your home.
100. S
ELL
S
PECIFIC AND
I
NDIVIDUALLY
V
ALUABLE
I
TEMS ON
E
BAY
The first place to start in the clutter battle is looking at your collections. What do you collect? Where do you keep those collections? Do those collections provide genuine value to you, or do you keep them for reasons you can’t really explain? Go through your D
VD
s, your C
D
s, your clothes, your collectibles, your video games, and so on, identifying items that you don’t have a specific and clear attachment to. Clean out your closets and see what’s in there that you actually need. Identify the valuable individual items in those collections and sell the individual items online on eBay or Amazon. Just focus on the items with significant individual value—the bulk, ordinary D
VD
s and C
D
s, won’t earn you enough to make it worth your while.
101. S
ELL
B
ULK
E
NTERTAINMENT
I
TEMS
A
T A
S
ECONDHAND
E
NTERTAINMENT
S
HOP
What about the remaining bulk items, the unwanted collections of D
VD
s you’ll never watch again and C
D
s that went out with the ’90s? Box them up and take them to your local used media shop. You’ll generally get a dollar or two a pop for these items, which you can then use to start saving or pay down your accumulated debt. Even better, your home will have less clutter in it, meaning less maintenance time for cleaning and less effort to make it presentable for guests.
102. H
AVE A
Y
ARD
S
ALE
Still got items left over? Have a yard sale and price everything to sell. The best yard sale tactic is pricing everything at the same price, then lowering that price at regular intervals throughout the weekend. So, start your yard sale on Friday evening with every item for $2. On Saturday morning, lower it to $1 an item then in the afternoon, go down to fifty cents. On Sunday morning, go down to twenty-five cents; then on Sunday afternoon, go down to ten cents. This will not only help you move all your stuff, it will attract repeat visitors who will elect to come back and try to get that item at a cheaper cost later. This can eliminate a lot of clutter and earn you some extra money as well.
103. D
ONATE TO
G
OODWILL
If you’re still holding leftover items, donate them to Goodwill or the Salvation Army. Get a receipt and use that on your income tax next year—even a small donation can get you a financial benefit. Plus, those unwanted items will wind up with someone who wants them.
104. P
UT A
“S
ELL
B
Y
” D
ATE ON
I
T
If you have some items that you’re thinking about getting rid of, but aren’t quite sure, put them in a box and label the box with a date six months or a year in the future. If that date passes and you’ve never even looked at the items, it’s safe to sell them. After all, at that point the items are no longer an active part of your life and are just taking up space and holding value that you could be putting into saving for the future or reducing debt.
105. D
ON
’T R
EPLACE
C
LUTTER WITH
M
ORE
C
LUTTER
When you finally do get rid of all of the excess stuff, your home will feel emptier. Don’t use that as an excuse to fill it with more stuff just for the sake of having stuff. Instead, enjoy the space. Spread out some projects that you’ve been thinking of working on. Enjoy more free time now that you don’t have to deal with the clutter. Perhaps you’ll even realize that you don’t need all of the space that you have and look at downgrading your living space, or perhaps bring in a roommate to help share the costs of the rent or the mortgage.
106. A
VOID
P
RINTED
D
OCUMENTS
Many people get several different statements in the mail, often taking up pages and pages of space. These printed documents come at a price. They take up more space in the trash, increase chances for identity theft, and require more time to deal with. Find out whether you can switch to electronic copies of many of these statements. It’ll reduce the amount of mail you have to deal with (which can decrease trash pickup costs), reduce the potential threat of identity theft, and perhaps also save you the cost of stamps if you can switch to electronic payments as well.
107. T
RIM
Y
OUR
M
AGAZINE
S
UBSCRIPTIONS
Another great way to reduce clutter and save money at the same time is to reduce your magazine subscriptions. If you find that you’re not keeping up with a magazine subscription and old issues are stacking up, unsubscribe from the magazine and focus on those you actually read. Not only will this reduce clutter around your home, but it’ll also save you money to invest elsewhere.
Another tip:
If you hold on to old magazines, go through them and just remove the material from each issue you might use again, then get rid of the issue. It’ll free up space and make it easier for you to find information.
108. B
ORROW
S
TUFF
Y
OU
’L
L
O
NLY
U
SE
O
NCE OR
T
WICE
If you’re considering buying an item that you’ll only use a few times, look seriously into borrowing opportunities. Not only will this save you money in terms of buying the item, it also doesn’t require the space to keep it around. For media sources, like books and movies and C
D
s, check out the library. Need some equipment or tools? Ask around the neighborhood (but be willing to lend your own stuff out in return). If you’re close with another person in the area, you can even consider “sharing” significant purchases that you won’t be using simultaneously, like lawn mowers.
109. E
VERY
T
IME
Y
OU
B
UY AN
I
TEM
, G
ET
R
ID OF
O
NE
This is a clever clutter-reduction tactic that keeps you from accumulating stuff and also saves you money. Every time you buy a nonessential item, commit to getting rid of another item you already own. For example, if you decide to buy a nifty new kitchen knife, commit to eliminating another similar knife. If you buy a new book, get rid of a book you already have by giving it to a friend or taking it to a used bookstore. This makes you carefully consider a new purchase and helps to eliminate clutter when you do decide to bring home something new.
110. S
TART A
“M
AIL
B
ASKET
”
AND
P
ROCESS
I
T
W
EEKLY
Clutter can sometimes cause additional problems, such as misplacing a bill in the clutter and having to pay a late fee even though you had plenty of money to pay it. The solution is simple: Get a “mail basket” that collects all mail that you receive, then go through it completely once a week and process everything in it. Throw away any junk, pay any bills, handle any correspondence, and so on. If you successfully empty that mail basket each week, you’ll never accidentally fall behind on a bill again and you’ll never be caught up in a clutter of unhandled mail.
Bonus tip:
Start a filing system for your papers when you start a “mail basket” and handle all filing each week when you go through the basket. That way, you’ll always be able to find important papers that may be costly to replace.
111. G
O
T
HROUGH THE
“C
LUTTER
A
TTRACTORS
” R
EGULARLY
Every home has a few “clutter attractors,” spaces where things seem to clutter over time. Like the catch-all drawer, the table near the front door where you toss your keys after a day at work, the bedside table, and the downstairs closet. These places almost always wind up catching little important things, things that you should have acted on, like bill statements or checks to be cashed, and sometimes these things can be forgotten in our busy lives. The remedy for this is to check those clutter-attracting areas regularly. Go through the items you find there and see if there isn’t anything important you may have missed. This can easily end up saving you money if you discover a bill that needs paying or a check that needs cashing or a rebate form that needs filling out.
112. R
EAD
Y
OUR
F
AVORITE
N
EWSPAPER
O
NLINE
If you get a newspaper delivered every day, consider canceling the subscription and reading it online. Not only does this directly save you money by cutting out the cost of subscribing, but it also cuts down on the clutter in your home and the amount of trash you have to throw away. Many newspapers earn significant revenue from their websites today, so don’t worry about hurting the newspaper’s bottom line if you unsubscribe and replace it with regular viewings of the newspaper’s site.
113. U
NSUBSCRIBE
F
ROM
C
ATALOGS
Catalogs are just collections of temptations. A catalog in the mail will do nothing more than encourage you to buy things that you wouldn’t have otherwise purchased, and an unnecessary purchase is the mortal enemy of living cheap. Unsubscribe from any catalogs that you receive by calling the number in the catalog and requesting removal from their mailing list. Not only will this save you money, but it’s also a useful way to reduce the amount of clutter that your house catches.
114. U
NSUBSCRIBE
F
ROM
C
HARITY
M
AILINGS
Another effective method of reducing temptation in the mail is to unsubscribe from charity mailings, particularly those that you do not intend to pledge to in the future. Call their number and ask them to stop their mailings to you, informing them that you’ll be planning your charitable giving on a regular basis and will send them gifts of your choosing without the mailings. Giving to charity is a powerful thing, but it’s something that’s worth the time to carefully plan and budget for, not write out an unplanned and unbudgeted check on a whim. Not only does this reduce the costs for that charity, since they’re no longer sending out wasteful mail, but it reduces your clutter and also reduces the chance that you’ll send out a check without giving it the thought that charity deserves. Instead, plan your charitable giving well in advance and focus your gifts on charities that really matter to you, not on the charity that happens to send you something in the mail that week.
