Use it Up

If you're like most people, you have several bottles of shampoo/conditioner/body wash/etc lining the wall of your shower.  If you share a bathroom with housemates, you might have a tidy little collection for each occupant. You might even have a drawer somewhere just chock full of little shampoolets "in case guests come by". 

If you are strapped for cash for the month, or are fitting more people into your house due to budget constraints, you might want to consider this REVOLUTIONARY new way to consume your shampoo:

Use it up. One bottle at a time.

Pick one. It doesn't matter; you bought them all, right? So pick a shampoo bottle and put the rest in the closet. Use the bottle of shampoo up. The whole thing. Then throw it out. Then go into your cabinet and get another one. Then use that up. You may be surprised at just how long you can last without buying new shampoo. Or, you may be surprised at how clean your bathroom feels without a bajillion bottles of shampoo. 

I know, I know, some hair types require special treatment, etc, and it is absolutely neccessary to have multiple bottles of stuff costing over $25 that you rarely use.  If you have this hair type, this does not apply to you. But for the rest of us, we can think of it not as foregoing a luxury but systematically using all the products that we've splurged on over the months.

You can also use this type of thinking for other consumables in your home:

• Sort your cupboard by expiration date and use up all the canned items before buying any new ones
• Put all your teas and coffee packets in a pretty basket or bowl (or corner of your cupboard) and use them all up before buying refills
• Take inventory of your gift wrapping and use up existing wrapping before buying new stuff
• Organize your bookshelves by what you have or haven't read yet and read all your existing books before buying new ones (ha, yeah right.)
• When you do a project, make alterations to the project to take advantage of the supplies you already have rather than buying new ones. For example, if your project requires glue, do you need to go out and buy glue sticks, or will the white glue work? Will the black thread work as well as the gray thread? It's up to you.
• If you are the sort who keeps several notecards on hand for occasions of any sort, select one from your existing collection rather than purchasing a special new one every time.

This idea may either seem super obvious (Of course I'd use up the ten Kleenex boxes in the house before buying another one!) or super impossible (Why on earth would I wear one pair of strappy black heels into the ground before buying another pair?) depending on who you are, what you like to keep in reserve, and what you enjoy buying. It's really all up to you.