Pushing the envelope -- by reusing it
Posted
Dec 21 2007, 12:36 PM
by
Donna Freedman
When I was a kid, I’d see my elders consulting tattered envelopes with words like DISH LIQUID, FLOUR and CINNAMON written on the backs. None of the frugal folks I knew would waste a perfectly good piece of paper just for a list of what to buy at the Food Fair.
As an adult, I used a lot of Post-its. The little yellow squares festooned just about every flat surface I owned, from dining table to car dashboard to the inside of my wallet (where, as a bonus, they obscured my highly unflattering driver’s license photo).
One day my supply of stickies ran out. I plucked a utility-bill envelope from the top of the wastebasket -- no mixed-paper recycling in our town back then -- and scribbled the next day’s to-do list on the back. One of the first things I wrote was "TAKE OUT TRASH."
It’s been an envelope every other day or so since then. And why not? I have an endless supply of raw material in the form of junk mail, charitable solicitations and bills. These bulk-mail babies prevent overdue library books, missed appointments and additional trips to the grocery store.
However, I don't make lists on an envelope that held a greeting card or a personal letter. I do have some standards.
Coupons, mortgage interest
Leah Ingram, author of The Lean Green Family blog (formerly known as Suddenly Frugal), recently suggested that her readers write shopping lists on envelopes. "You can slip your coupons inside," she noted in a post called "Green Boot Camp Week One -- Paper Recycling Habits."
One of those readers, a teacher, wrote that she takes junk-mail envelopes to school. They're handy for organizing permission slips, book orders and the like.
An "envelope system" also can prevent two major personal-finance snafus: overspending and tax-receipt jumbles. With a cash-based system, you label envelopes for monthly expenses ("food," "entertainment," etc.) and fill the envelopes with the amount allotted for each category. Then you spend only what you've got -- no credit cards, no ATM runs.
Instead of throwing all tax-related receipts into that famous shoebox, label envelopes for "charitable contributions," "mortgage interest," "medical expenses" and the like. That way, you won't be paying the tax preparer by the hour to sort through a box filled with loose scraps of paper.
Reduce, reuse, rationalize
Writing on old envelopes is both frugal and ecologically sound. You save money on Post-its or memo pads, and you're giving the paper one more duty before recycling it.
Ingram won't get rid of any paper -- junk mail, press releases, whatever -- until it's "been used on both sides." I'm with her on that, since I use the backs of university syllabi and reading lists for homework, letters and telephone messages.
Publicly, I rationalize such behavior as "eco-friendly." The truth is that I'm becoming more like the relatives I described earlier. Practical. Frugal. OK, stubborn.
I'm the grocery store customer who challenges the scanner. Yes, it slows things down. But I'm not paying $2.89 a pound just because someone forgot to tell the computer that hams are on sale. Don't hate the payer, hate the game.
Occasionally I pay with a fistful of change because I refuse to yield the Coinstar fee. Quit complaining, you folks behind me. Coins are legal currency and using them is faster than writing a check. Or should be -- and if the grocery clerk gets flustered by adding quarters and dimes, then he's the one you should be griping about.
And yes, that's me in the store squinting at a list on a Qwest telephone bill envelope and crossing items off with a pen I got at a scholarship fair.
At least I don’t have a box marked “string too short to save.” Yet.
