24/24 - Week 6 - A Fun Week!

 This was a fun week for the 24/24 Challenge! I created an instagram account for this- @2424challenge. Follow along!

Acquisitions

  • Deck screws! This spring we are rebuilding our back deck, and while I let myself off the hook when I created this challenge when it comes to the deck project, I still wanted to make an effort to get a few supplies secondhand. Success! I found 25 lbs of donated (but never opened!) deck screws at our local ReStore (where Habitat for Humanity sells donated home improvement items). Total cost with tax = $75. New at Home Depot, these would have cost $170. Achievement unlocked, lesson learned the happy way: When planning a house project, shop weeks/months beforehand at ReStore to get better deals on as much of the hardware as possible. Derrick was skeptical but now he's appreciative, and I think he will be glad to have me scour ReStore again for other items we need for the deck, or other future home improvements.
  • 2 days ago I was reviewing our utility bills from 2023 and they seemed high to me- gas and electric in particular. We use our oven a lot to simply heat things up. Derrick suggested we get a toaster oven (why didn't I think of that?) purely for heating up leftovers. So today I scored a used one on the Buy Nothing group. Derrick tested it out- it works- and this evening I will spend some time detailing it.
  • This morning I realized that I'm one shower away from finishing a bottle of scrub that I've had since 2020- that's how long it lasted. It's that type of upside-down plastic bottle that's tricky to recycle, so I plan to TerraCycle it, and in the meantime, I had a fun 15 minutes this afternoon of making my own salt scrub using this recipe. I added coffee grounds, plus cardamom and cassia (like cinnamon) essential oils. It smells glorious. Used a wide-mouth jar I already owned.
Homemade coffee salt scrub

  •  I went to Savers thrift the other day and bought a slightly scratched non-stick pot exclusively for melting wax- we are interested in DIY fire starters using candle wax and dryer lint! I also bought a dark flip-top bottle for the homemade mouthwash I made last week... Supposedly, stuff like that stores better in dark glass. Both items were under $7 total and I had a 20% off coupon from bringing in donations.
For melting wax to make fire starters


  • My client is moving to Florida- she kindly gifted me a few items that she didn't want to move with, including a bottle of lavender essential oil, which I'll put onto our dryer balls to make our linens smell of springtime and relaxation.
  • I checked out a book at the library on the Yucatán Peninsula since I'm going there in June for almost 2 weeks!
  • While I waited at Scraps KC for them the sort through some donations that I brought in, I bought a patch kit to mend my fleece winter pants that recently got a hole in the knee. 50 cents! I don't know how to mend clothing, but I also have a blanket that needs sewing, and Stacey kindly said she would be willing to barter her sewing/mending skills in exchange for some organizing help! More on this below.
  • Today I bought a like-new charger for my MacBook on Amazon (love that they have a used/refurbished option), which saved me a few dollars and arrives this Wednesday.

Other Wins n' Tidbits

  • Remember week 1 of this challenge when Derrick and I decided to do a House Project Day which meant he had to go out and buy a new deadbolt guide since we didn't have time for me to try to score one free/secondhand? Well, a deadbolt guide is not an item you usually use multiple times- it's sort of one-and-done, then you run out of deadbolts to install. If you do use it again, it might be many years in between. It felt wasteful to me to own an item that others would also have to buy new. So, I did some research and found that Kansas City has an organization called Jerusalem Farm which has a tool library. I called them to ask if they were interested in a deadbolt guide... Yes. So last Monday I drove it there, and now it can be used by many people over and over! What's a tool library, you ask? That link contains a short and sweet answer from another Tool Library over in Buffalo, NY (apparently there are everywhere).
  • My pal Stacey and I bartered recently- she's been improving my newly improved website, and I am now marketing my company as Kansas City's premiere eco-friendly organizer. Here's our new page about Sustainability that Stacey helped create! In exchange I've been helping her organize a few different spots at home, which has been a blast.
  • This afternoon I had fun sifting through the trash receptacle in my car and creating piles of what can go in... Starting at 1 o'clock in the photo below and going clockwise: Regular recycling (one plastic cup), our TerraCycle box (snack wrappers and dental floss pick), the landfill (booo), our burn box which has things we burn in our firepit before composting the ashes (napkins, wax candy wrappers, chopsticks, receipt), our kitchen compost (2 tea bags- one was plastic so I snipped it open and composted just the tea leaves inside), and our Donation Station (YETI sticker and twist ties for Scraps KC).
All my car trash from the week.

Also- the reason I have actual napkins is because a client got rid of them but since they were opened I couldn't donate them, so I use them... Mostly as tissues. However, when I run out, I will not replace them unless more opened/donated ones show up- too wasteful to buy new.
Meanwhile, inside our home I use cut up pieces of old soft t-shirts as tissues, and just throw them in the hamper with the rest of the clothes. They get more use as tissues/rags than they ever got as shirts!

Weekly Stats

No new items this week! The score is still 1.5 out of 24 new items. I'm 6 weeks in and I still feel so energized about this challenge. I can feel that this is going to be more of a permanent lifestyle shift than just a temporary challenge.

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