Waste Not Want Not

I want something that is a jar that I’m going to be able to reuse again or something, right? So I really try to have minimal amounts of garbage. I really am trying to waste not. You know, waste not, want not, right? And actually, that used to be an ethic throughout most of, well, the consumption thing now is like, I think this has totally been programmed into us. I’ve heard that, I don’t know if you’re old enough to remember when you were a kid and I used to stay up late. And the very last thing on one of the three television stations we had, they would play the national anthem and then they would shut down.

And it was kind of cool when you were a kid, you could stay up that late. And now I’ve found out that what the subliminal messaging that they had in that when they were playing that whole thing was obey and consume. So they’ve really been pushing this consumer thing, right? So anyway, but that used to not be. In fact, my mother-in-law passed now, I don’t know how old she’d be now, probably mid-90s or something like that, grew up and lived most of her, all of her life in rural South Texas. And she said, you know, when they bought chicken feed or when they bought animal feed, the feed came in a cloth sack and the women went to go buy the feed with the men because the cloth had patterns on it or they would use the cloth to make skirts and blouses and dresses and things like that.

So everything was used and that used to be a very, very much part of our whole life was being very careful with things. And we will, again, go back to that, right? I saw some video a while ago, like 10 things that Americans throw out of Mexican would always keep. You know, Mexico is, yeah, there’s definitely a lot of poor rural Mexico, but Mexico, not all of Mexico is that way. But anyway, yeah, you know, you know, bottles, jars, bags, stuff like that. And all kind of even old hoses, again, an old hose here that I save it.

It’s really useful as handles when you need to repair a bucket, the gazillion things. Right. And but there is this truth of waste, not want not. And one funny little story. One example was a couple of months ago, horse, the beautiful white stud that lives right next door to her. I mean, he’s my neighbor, got out of his thing and he was this before I put the electric fence up and he was got his hook stuck in this fence here. And it’s like all the neighbors and they they come over and they’re looking at us and they they said, do you have a rope? And I was like, because, you know, we’re just right there.

Right. And I’m like, and then I remembered like, oh, my gosh, I happen to have this ratty piece of old rope that I’ve just kept right here in the in the Jeep. And it really is a ratty piece of old rope, but it has some functionality. And it turned out to be just exactly the size and and what they needed for the horse. And then they gave me the rope back later. They were pretty sweet of them. They could have kept it. I didn’t mind. But more and more, I find that and I’ve been I find that a lot that, you know, I or another example, as I was talking to a friend of mine, I’m like, I need to be growing out this particular type of plant.

Do you have any seeds for? And she goes, well, that tree right there is a huge version of it and it’s seeding. You just, you know, I mean, like that right news right there, you know. So more and more you’ll find as you move into this lifestyle and it’s a frugality or, you know, you know, a penny pincher. There’s some negative connotations that have been associated with that because we’ve been programmed to consume. It’s actually a really, really, you know, delightful and inspiring lifestyle. And you find that you have a lot of things that just almost seem to magically appear at your fingertips when you really truly value and honor the things that you do have.

So waste not want not. Who the thought? There’s a huge amount of wisdom in that and it reaches into these other dimensions beyond just physical. I’ve got cans. All right. I trust you’re having a good day. Make it even better. All right. Talk to you later. [tr:trw].