Saving the Soap

By Kirsten Scott

I did something last week I swore I'd never do. I microwaved a cup of leftover coffee for breakfast. 

This should make coffee aficionados everywhere swoon. The Starbucks barista down the block is rolling over in her barista, um, bed ('cause she's not dead yet). Yes, it's true. I took the extra coffee I had brewed the day before in my French press -- which, admittedly, had been sitting there on the counter all night -- and microwaved it instead of making a fresh batch. 

Boggles the mind, right? 

What caused this strange and ill-advised behavior? The economy, of course. I'm testing myself. What can I give up? What behaviors can I change? Where can I cut back and how can I learn how to live with less? 

Now don't worry. I'm not going to begin to talk about what the country is facing, or what we might be facing as individuals. You don't come to this blog to worry about that. You come to escape from that. But it occurred to me that we've got a lot of wisdom around here. And probably more than a few tricks up our sleeve. The microwaved coffee wasn't too bad. I could save some money drinking microwaved coffee instead of dumping out the extra and making it fresh every morning. I was intrigued by my little success. If microwave coffee works, what else could I try? What other tricks are out there? 

So I'm coming to you to learn a few new tricks. 

Here's a couple more I've tried since the coffee incident: 

My daughter makes Valentines for her kindergarten class. This year, I'm not buying those prepackaged ones. For one, I never liked them in the first place. And for another, they're expensive! So this year, we're going old school. Pink paper, stickers, crayons, and some candy hearts. I'll be honest. We aren't that crafty. They don't look all that good. But what the heck. Things are different now. We can do this sort of thing in the name of the economy. 

I wrapped a birthday present the other day in paper that had been used before. There were some marks where I'd pulled off the old tape. I figured that was okay. 

I had a bar of soap in the shower that was really tiny. Annoyingly tiny. Usually, I'd just throw it away, or send it down the drain. This time, I smushed it onto of a new bar of soap, merging the two together. I felt very proud of myself. Saving the soap. Taking this "doing more with less" thing to an all new level. 

So what tricks can you share with me? Any ideas for saving the soap in today's crazy, mixed up world? The sillier the better -- I'm sure we could all use a laugh, as well as a few extra pennies in our pocket! Source URL: http://violeta-diario.blogspot.com/2009/02/saving-soap.html
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