Have you noticed that grocery stores are very generous lately in giving away plastic grocery bags. Sometimes one plastic bag contains only 1or 2 items. For example, when you buy a birthday card for a friend or loved one, they will put it in one plastic bag. What a waste! In one grocery trip, I may get 10-15 plastic bags. If you go to grocery store twice a week, you will have about 30 bags or more.It depends on how many items you buy of course.

I’m always sad to see how people in the U.S. (not all) are so easy to throw away something that, in fact can still be used. In Asia we have to work so hard to get anything and we have to leverage our economic principles in life. Life is difficult and you have to appreciate everything, not stingy but frugal.

That includes plastic bags that we get from the grocery store. Instead of throwing them away, why not use them as trash bags? I know small plastic bags can only be used for small amounts of trash and using them means you have to go to the dumpster more often.

These days, we tend to spoil ourselves too much. We spoil our children too much. Look at how many toys our children have that they never seem to appreciate. We prefer the comfortable and instant life. We don’t want to try new ways or come out from our comfort boat. Especially if it ruins our pleasure, comfort, habits or happiness.

Forming frugal habits is a matter of how we educate ourselves. We want to make sure that we always save money in everything we shop for, even though it’s just a dime. I know this sounds radical. How can plastic bags can save you money? How 15$/month can make a difference?. Definitely, you won’t get rich with that one habit. That’s the wrong attitude. Saving money, big or small, is saving money. This is all about how to educate yourself to not waste resources and to appreciate small things. I remember a Bible phrase that says

“if you are faithful in small things, God will entrust you with big things.”

Also another phrase says

“little by little, it will build up to be a hill after while.”

A dime here, a dime there; that’s the way we save money.

Sometimes, I don’t understand why a lot of people continue to live lives of luxury even though they have mountains of debt. For them, outer impressions are more important than inner peace. You have to learn to be a poor person, then you will appreciate material things more. Trust me! Remember life sometimes moves so fast. Life is like a wheel, sometimes you are at the top and sometimes you are at the bottom. Ready or not ready, you have to prepare yourself.

I better stop before this turns into a real sermon–okay let’s get back to our plastic bags

Here are a few tips on how trash can save you $150 a year.

1. You can get a bulk trash bags at Walmart/ Discounted store. But save them just for emergencies or for really large amounts of trash. Keep them in storage as backup.

2. Make a habit to save all your plastic bags from the grocery store. Don’t throw them out because that’s cring (my pet word for money).

Before you store them, check the bags’ condition. Don’t use broken plastic bags, of course. When you get a lot of plastic bags, they can clutter things up and often we don’t have anywhere to keep them. Typically, we just toss them in the kitchen cabinet. Again clutter is a big NO, NO! Not to worry, here are a few tips than I can show you on how to fold plastic bags. STBS – Small trick big style so you can save hundreds of plastic bag without taking all your space.
You can do this while you are watching TV or when you sitting on your deck with the blowing in your face and humming birds singing a sweet song with the smell of fresh cut grass…… oooopss!! before we start daydreaming, we better get back to our folding trick . Below are the steps to fold your plastic bags :

• Flatten a plastic bag on the table or in a flat area. Fold in the handle tidy.
  

• Join the edges both right and left to make it smaller, then fold it again until you get a lean long fold in the bag.
  
  

• C. Go to the clean edge (usually at the part of plastic bottom) and fold it in triangle shape.
  

• D. Follow the triangle shape to the end of plastic bag, but leaving about 3 inches short. Tuck the rest of the 3 inches short end into the space between the triangular fold.
  

• E. Wualla! You get a cool folded plastic bag.

  

• F. After you fold all your plastic bags, you can put them in a container or in a box.Put the box/container full of folded plastic bags nearby in the area where it is easy to reach.

  

3. Some stores like Target or JC Penney or shopping mall stores have a big plastic bags. I’m always happy when I get their plastic bags. I save them with a big smile. Use the best for last. Just save them for a rainy day.

4. When you’re throwing away big boxes of trash, try to break them apart or cut them into small pieces so you can put them in the plastic bag. Again, use a little bit of effort. True frugality means that you have to step out from your comfort zone.

5. Instead of throwing away your trash once/twice a week, throw it away everyday. It takes you 5 minutes to do it. You can do it before you go to work everyday, before you go jogging or whenever you leave home. In that way you won’t pile up your trash.

6. If you have a few small plastic bags full of trash and you don’t want to go back and forth to carry them, here’s a way you can simplify your life.

1. Tie the handles of 4 or 5 small plastic trash bags. Take one plastic bag, stretch it lengthwise to form a sort of rope. Weave it into the small holes/spaces between the tied up handles.





2. Pull it tightly and tie it up. Now you can easily pick up all those small bags and march away to the trash dumpster. It’s like carrying a suite case



My husband gets a little grumpy when I tease him asking him to be a trash bag model

7. The first or second time will probably be uncomfortable for you, but after a week, you will enjoy it and feel satisfied. You can now be proud of yourself that you can save money from simple thing like conserving trash bags Make your life fun. Even small things like this can create a smile on the face of your family. Being frugal doesn’t mean that you will suffer. Use a sense of humor in anything you do. Create something funny. In that way you will enjoy your frugality. You might even enjoy it enough to form a habit.

The laundry room is one of the last areas of the house to get our attention. The reason is that we ask ourselves, who will see that tinny bitty place–the place where we can just dump all our dirty clothes or where we can hide a trash can. Washing clothes is never a cool thing to do in life. That’s why sometimes we are so lazy to do laundry, especially when the time to fold the clothes comes. Watching TV beats that any day. Now, let’s face it, laundry is something we have to do from time to time. There just may be a way we can make our laundry time fun.

We call our house

“home sweet home.”

Wherever we go, no matter how bad our house is, we always miss it and want to go back to it. We have an attachment to that place where we can be who we are. Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz describes it perfectly when she says:

“there’s no place like home.”

Most of the time, we like to do an activity when we enjoy doing it, when the surrounding environment sustains us. We can spend hours and hours doing things we like to do. It’s the same way with laundry. To enjoy the time, we have to attach and build a connection to where we are.

Here are a few tips we can do to change our laundry time from dreading it to loving it:
We will start by changing our attitude toward specialization. Make every place in our house as important as other rooms in the house. Treat each room equal. By adding our personality, it will make the house not just a sanctuary but also a place to retreat. No matter what the size of our house is. small, medium or big, or how much budget we have, we can always maximize decorating it. They key here is our willing to improve the quality of our life.

1. FIND YOUR THEME

Every human being has a child-like nature in their heart. Use your imagination. Do not be afraid to express yourself. Be who you are. For example: I always fantasize about living in a bird house. You won’t believe if I tell you that I still like toys even though I’m too old to play with kids’ toys. But that’s no problem at all. As long as you like it, enjoy it. It’s your house, isn’t it? I want to create my laundry room to be as warm as possible, a place where I can release my imagination.

2. DECIDE YOUR COLOR

Play with your imagination. It’s okay to play with color. But since the laundry room is a hot place, make sure to make it as cool as possible. Choose a cool and peaceful color that matches your personality.

3. REMOVE CLUTTER

Clutter is not trendy. In small place, being organize is really important. Throw away things you don’t need: empty laundry bottles, irreparable clothes and etc. Just keep things you really need. That can help you saving time and perhaps money.

4. BUILD YOUR OWN ORGANIZATION STYLE

If you think your laundry room is really tiny and you need more space and storage area, recouping space vertically is likely a better solution than horizontally. You can always build many shelves up high all the way to the ceiling if you want.

Well, let’s start our project. Below is an example of my 6′ X 5′ laundry room. The make over itself cost me below $40.





Here are the steps and tips how you can do your laundry makeover in really small budget.

• 1. Low cost paint
  

For a small room like a laundry room, a gallon of paint is probably more than enough. Go to local Home Depot or Lowes or any hardware store and find the “oops paint” section. What is oops paint? Oops paint is the paint customers return to the store for whatever reason. The store can’t sell oops paint except by reducing the price.There are many cool colors you can pick out from the oops paint corner and the prices are usually very cheap. The regular price for 1 big can is about $25 or more, but you can get oops paint for $5, and a small can for only $1 at stores like Home Depot.The problem here is you can’t choose your own color. But no worry, you can always work with it. If you want to live in frugal way, you have to be smart and play with your frugality.

Here are the steps and tips how you can do your laundry makeover in really small budget.For a small room like a laundry room, a gallon of paint is probably more than enough. Go to local Home Depot or Lowes or any hardware store and find the “oops paint” section. What is oops paint? Oops paint is the paint customers return to the store for whatever reason. The store can’t sell oops paint except by reducing the price.There are many cool colors you can pick out from the oops paint corner and the prices are usually very cheap. The regular price for 1 big can is about $25 or more, but you can get oops paint for $5, and a small can for only $1 at stores like Home Depot.The problem here is you can’t choose your own color. But no worry, you can always work with it. If you want to live in frugal way, you have to be smart and play with your frugality.I always go to the oops corner and collect paint colors that I like even though I may not need the color at the time. I always know I will need it sometime soon because one of my favorite hobbies is changing paint colors

• 2. DPY- Do Paint Yourself

A small room like a laundry room only takes an hour or two to paint. While waiting for your paint dry, you can use your time to clean your washing machine. Here’s a cheap tip to make your washing machine glow again: combine 1 full lid of bleach and 1 tsp of dish detergent. Use gloves and soft sponge to wipe the washing machine. Wait for 15 minutes before wiping it out with a warm wet towel. Guaranteed, it will remove all the dirt from your dull, dirty washing machine.

Clean all the washing machine pipes from the dirt, make sure you remove all the dirt because it can cause fire.

• 3. Build your own shelves
  

You don’t need to have an expensive storage solution. Shelves are really easy to build. You just need to buy a few pairs of triangle hooks. They cost usually under $1 each. Plan how many shelves you want to build according to your need and where you want to put them. Mark the place where you want them hung. Use a leveler for the right measurement and balancing. Remember the aesthetic aspect is important too, here. You don’t want to build them carelessly. Be professional.

For shelves, you can find ready a laminated shelve piece for about $7/piece in any hardware store. If you want them cheaper than that, you can buy a few pieces of lumber that are usually sold around $3/piece. Ask the hardware store to cut them as you desire. They will be happy to do it for you free of charge in most cases. You can always paint it later with your own color.

• 4. Get ready
  

get your screw driver and start building your own shelves.
Screw the triangle hook first in both right and left on the sign you’ve marked earlier. Then put the shelf on top of it. Simple isn’t it?

• 5. Being Organize
  

Organize your laundry stuff on the shelve.
I like to buy all my laundry stuff in the same color to match/compliment to my laundry room colors.

• 6. Decoration ideas
  

Put some nick nacks on your selves e.g. photos, frames, radio, toys, a vase of flowers, pictures of your favorite celebrity, Elvis or Lindsay Lohan for example–anything you like. There are no rules here. Make the place as warm as possible.

• 7. Cheap Curtains Solution
  

Since I don’t like to see my stuff bare, I like to cover my shelves with curtains.
The easiest way to get a cheap curtain is goodwill or the thrift store. You should find a lot of curtains or fabrics for only $2. Or, you can always find a good bargain/sale at Wal-mart, or many other discount stores. It’s important to budget yourself. It’s not funny it only costs you $20 for a makeover and it costs you $100 for curtains. So, be reasonable.



I built 2 storage solutions, upper and lower. (Upper) There 3 shelves built vertical to the ceiling. I used upper storage to keep things like boxes and all kitchen tools that need more space. Below, next to the washing macine, I built a few open cabinets for all clothes that I need to iron soon.

And at last, the most important thing is being organized. No matter how great your room is, if your sloppy, it will look bad.
Good luck with your makeover.

There is a treasure in every piece of trash. One only has to go and look at the possibilities of every piece and finding great ways of reusing them. One of the things that we often ignore is a button.

Perhaps, because of its size or the fact that we can easily buy them from craft stores and tailor shops, buttons are often ignored and most of the time thrown away with the rest of the unwanted things in the house. Either that or they are kept in old sewing boxes where they remain in forgotten heap for centuries.

This, however, should not be the case as there are lots of uses for buttons. People only have to find the ways. Here are some suggestions on how to make the most of the buttons that you have at home.

Home Decoration

For people who love crafts and make-your-own projects, buttons are wonderful accessories that you can add to your creations. You can sew them in curtains for example to achieve a professional eclectic look.

Another creative use for buttons is to combine them with other beads to make great lampshades for the bedroom, placemats for the dining area and pillowcases for the living room. Children will also love to see buttons sewn on their bed sheets and pillows especially colorful ones and those that come in various shapes.

Making memories

Buttons are very popular with album and scrapbook enthusiasts. Metalic buttons and those with shapes are often used in albums as they provide sharp and fun contrasts to the colorful and bright photographs.

In fact, buttons are so popular that there are craft stores that sell especially made buttons for albums and scrapbooks. But why buy when you probably have a lot stored in your attic?

Besides, some buttons hold memories. A button can actually remind you of a special trip that you took. The button may be part of the parka that you wore when you rode the rollercoaster in Disneyland or took that boat trip near the Niagara Falls.

One idea is to use a portion of an old blouse or jacket and not just the buttons. They will serve as great reminders of a special occasion.

Bags and accessories

Buttons can also be used to spruce up ordinary cloth bags. This is especially useful in hiding stains that cannot be removed anymore. Filling an entire bag with buttons will also create a really unique and colorful effect that young children will definitely enjoy.

Buttons can even be used to put lock in pockets of bags that do not have locks. This will prevent their things from falling off whenever they would break into a run.

Old pairs of children shoes can also have another lease in life by putting cute buttons as designs. The same goes with hair ribbons and clips that are old or broken.

School stuff

Buttons are also wonderful designs that you can add to your child’s schoolbooks and notebooks. This will make their things more personalized. You can even put buttons on their pencil boxes and boxes.

Buttons are also great ways to decorate bulletin boards. Because of their shape, they can serve as hooks in bulletin boards, which your child can use to hook their IDs up.

About the Author

James Monahan is the owner and Senior Editor of ButtonSearch.com and writes expert articles about buttons.Â

Holding a garage sale can be a profitable and fun way to make sure items are reused. It’s true that garage sales are a lot of hard work, but the returns are more than worth the effort. You should be pleased at how easy the planning of a garage sale can be.

Plan – Don’t discard those old clothes and items just yet. In fact, don’t throw anything away! You will be surprised at what people will buy. Your trash truly is another person’s treasure. Check with family, friends, and neighbors to see if they would like to hold a joint sale. More sellers mean less work, and more items mean more buyers. Also, advertising will be lower with more people to share the cost.

Promote – Most community newspapers have a weekly garage sale section to advertise in. Put up signs in your neighborhood a few days before the sale. Make sure the signs are large, readable, and if possible, waterproof. On the day of the sale, put a large sign and some balloons at the intersection closest to your house. Remember to take down all of your signs after the sale.

Be Organized – If possible, plan to set up items in a covered area so that you can still hold the sale if the weather is bad. Have each family mark their items with a different color dot to prevent mix-ups. Make sure that every item is priced and set up in a secure place by at least the night before the sale. Price your items fairly, but not too low. Some people will want to bargain with you. Have plenty of change on hand, as you will be dealing with a lot of paper money.

You will be surprised how the day of the sale can take a toll on you. Try not to let your sale go past noon, and it helps to have someone there to take turns managing the sale, so that you can each take breaks.

About the Author
This article has been written by Vanessa Pruitt, a work from home mom promoting wellness. To learn more about working from home visit http://www.tricitymoms.com/ . She is also the owner of two subscription blogs, http://loveworkingfromhome.blogspot.com/ & http://netmommy.blogspot.com/ .

Thrift Shops and Consignment stores can be an excellent source for your product inventory–they always have fresh items to pick thru and you can find some great deals!

* Consignment Stores, are commission-based. People bring in products for the store to sell on commission–what doesn’t sell is returned to the owner.

* Thrift Stores are often ‘not for profit’ and get most of their goods via donations.

In comparing the two, Thrift Stores are typically more willing (and able) to bargain with you simply because they have more room to do so.

Online retailers sometimes feel that these types of resale stores are not a good place to find inventory because there’s not enough of a profit margin. But Kate Holmes, Founder of “Too Good to be Threw” (http://www.tgtbt.com/) and author of Too Good to be Threw, The Complete Operations Manual, disagrees. Holmes asserts that these stores “have a very limited market. If there is nobody in their town that happens to want to buy a pair of Jodhpurs that week, those Jodhpurs will be sitting there waiting for an eBay seller…to snap them up.” The end result can be amazing deals on quality items there is a demand for online!

In addition to a limited market, Holmes also cites limited space as a factor in resale stores’ bargain pricing. She points out that “they only have so much space so they can only carry so many things. So if they can move it on and bring something else in they’re pleased with that.”

3 Rules of Sourcing Products in Thrift and Consignment Shops:

1. Shop the Edges–Even resale stores tend to carry certain types of products. What doesn’t fit a shop’s profile, they usually want to move out quickly. They tend to put these products around the store’s edges, so start there.

2. Shop Often–They are constantly turning over product and bringing in new items, so don’t let a dry trip or two discourage you. Your persistence can pay off in a big way.

3. Cultivate Relationships with the Shopkeepers–If they like you, they’ll be much more willing to give you deals. They may also be more willing to set things aside for you if they know what you’re looking for and guide you to items you might have otherwise missed.

If you’re just starting out, a good place to find resale stores is in the Yellow Pages, under either “consignment” or “thrift.” Don’t be afraid to ask the shopkeepers if they know of other stores in the area–if they don’t have what you’re looking for, they’ll usually be happy to refer you to someone they think might.
About the Author

Chris Malta and Robin Cowie of WorldwideBrands.com are the Writers and Hosts of The Entrepreneur Magazine EBiz and Product Sourcing Radio Shows. Click Here for more FREE eBiz info from Entrepreneur Magazine Radio!