Thrift

If there is a piece of paper which is printed on one side and blank on the other side, you save it for scrap paper.  When you have written on 2/3 of the formerly blank side, then you tear off the 1/3 that remains blank and save that for scrap paper.

When you receive a package in the mail, you save the box so you can use it.  When you use the last piece of kleenex in the box, you save the box so you can use it.

When you open a new bottle of pills and there is cotton in the top of it, you save the cotton so you can use it.

When you boil vegetables, then in addition to eating the vegetables, you also have to drink the water in which you boiled the vegetables, because it has become vegetable broth and you don't want to waste the vitamins..

This is how I was brought up.  It's just part of the normal things that you do, like sleeping on a bed at night and wearing boots when you go out in the snow.

People scoff at it.  They call us packrats.  But the people who are wrong are not the people who save things.  The people who are wrong are the people who throw things away, who fill up the landfills.

But the problem is, I have more scrap paper than I can use, more boxes than I can use, more cotton than I can use.  The problem is, I live in a world of material abundance.  I can't give stuff away because no one wants it.  When there is more stuff than people want, that means we are living wastefully.  We need to be better stewards of the earth's resources.  How can I stop things that I don't need from coming into my house?  How can I stop the society's overproduction of things? The store shelves are filled with plastic junk, stuff no one needs.  But companies keep producing them, because they find they can get rich that way, by convincing people to buy stuff they don't need.