How do you reduce the amount of purchased things that you have to buy?  Let's
not include here various forms of energy, fuel, water.  Do you buy things that
will last longer?  Do you do maintenance and repair?  Do you trade unneeded
items with friends?  Do you wear clothing that is no longer fashionable?  Do
you avoid buying things with lots of packaging?

45 responses total.

Dave & I are usually trying to minimize money spent, not items purchased as
such, but it works out about the same.  We fix what we can, reuse as long
as we can, shop yard sales, and gratefully accept appropriate castoffs.

We bought our first bread machine only after I had calculated that its 
payback time was within its reasonable life expectancy (because of Dave's 
food allergies, we can't buy most cheap breads).  I'm not much of a seamstress 
but I can put on iron-on patches; our younger son, who sometimes plays
football & such at recess, has a still-respectable pair of pants on  
which each knee patch has been replaced twice).  Usually I don't know
what the current fashions are, so probably little of what we wear is 
fashionable!

That's great!  I thought I was the only one to mend knee patches.  I can list
on maybe one had the number of things we buy new each year.  Over the years,
I bought a new computer (in 1985, still in use), two new printers (the first
a 9-pin, the second a 24-pin, both still usable, the second is faster), a new
camera (still good after 20 years).  I have on occasion purchased new
footwear, but most other clothes are available used.  My file cabinet was
found headed for the dump.  Computer desk was $10 delivered (Freebies) plus
about $4 for a custom cut new fiberboard top where the linoleum had gone. 
Desk chair, leather, $9, and we replaced the missing stitching.  Desk lamp
was at the curb.  Ditto desk phone (one of three, this one works, even has
a speaker that you can hear, but no mike to talk into).  Bookshelf from a
dumpster, we made the missing shelves.  Another from a friend who moved. 
Stove was being thrown out, as was the fridge.  Table was a friend's yardsale
leftover, with chairs.  Dresser from a friend I helped move.  Armchair from
a yard sale, $10.  Our bathroom space heater was beyond repair, as we finally
admitted.  Last week we found one at the curb.  I plugged it in to see what
was broken and nothing was broken.  Large painting hanging on the wall, real
oil painting of a field with a house, at the curb.  Other desk, at the curb
(carried home on Jim's head).  Printer paper from Kiwanis, diskettes ditto.
        Our CD player was purchased used, more recently we got one for $1 at
a yard sale with a half-broken pair of tape decks (one works, one needs the
door repaired) and a working radio in it.  Receiver was at the curb, ditto
on the tape player (needed the door spring repaired).  Records and turntable
from the curb (minor mechanical repair).  Tapes from yard sales at 10 cents
each, for recording library CDs.
        We have bought most of our building materials new but find some scrap
lumber, and DaveL brought us some 2x4s, for which many thanks.  We used 1500
recycled concrete blocks and collect drywall scraps and used insulation.
        Are there things people absolutely need that cannot be acquired used,
other than food?

Medication is an obvious "new only" thing, although you could reuse
applicators/needles to some extent.

Light bulbs you need new, unless you can live entirely with salvaged 40 watt
appliance bulbs.

Furnace filters, car filters of various kinds.

Filters often show up at Kiwanis at low prices.  We attempt not to get sick.
Have found antibiotic cream in the trash and at Kiwanis, for cuts.  So far
we are doing okay with 40 watt bulbs, and an occasional fluorescent to work
by, but you can also get short tubes at Kiwanis (not the 4's usually).  I know
they are not used, but if we don't buy them they sometimes get dumped.
        Bike tires often get thrown out before they are used up.

Used antibiotic cream, found in the trash?  It would probably be significantly
safer to do without antibiotic cream.

Clothing kind of depends on your needs.  If you're an unusual size or have
to dress to a code at work, the clothes you need may not be available used.
At least not enough of them to be your sole source of clothes.

(Ever tried getting a sized 28 suit at a consignment shop? <shudder>.

Re #5, why is antibiotic cream in a closed tube not safe?  It is not as if
anything would be growing in it, or that it would be any different from what
we already have at home in a tube (probably older than what we found).
        Misti, I am very glad I don't have a job I have to dress for.  But I
do envy people who wear standard sizes.  Nobody but Levi seems to make pants
in 28, and the only pair I found looking through everything at a rummage sale
was an inch too short.  Nearly everything fits Jim (32/32) unless it is too
tight for his biker's thighs.  (Then again, almost nothing fits his feet).
Some day I will find the time to learn to sew pants.  My first effort was not
wearable, despite following the book about how to make my own pattern.  There
were some hidden assumptions in there somewhere.

Cynthia, if that tube of antibiotic ointment isn't factory sealed and
fresh then it would be risky to use it.  People would have used it because
of an open wound or infected lesion.  Most folks take the cream right from
the tube, using a finger, and rub it on the sore, then return to the tube
for more, using the same finger. 

Too, once opened the tube should be used for only a short while then
discarded as the cream itself can become a growth medium for resistant
bacteria. 

The expiration date on the tube is for an unopened tube.  Drug companies
don't make promises about the safety of an opened tube because that can
vary greatly depending on how cleanly it was handled and the storage
conditions. 

Or you can continue to use it all up, then melt the tube to make
homemade dental fillings. 

What types of bacteria grow in antibiotic cream?  I had not imagined this
could happen.

As Mary said, antibiotic resistant bacteria. Most of the deadly ones that
occur in hospitals have antibiotic resistant strains. 

I would think there is a high probability that a discarded antibiotic
ointment tube is safe, but this is not absolute. I'm not eager to expose
myself to other people's puss, even from the end of an antibiotic cream
tube.

I have seen some really awful things in refrigerators.  One lab I use to
work for kept half gallon containers of cows blood in a residential
fridge.  Some of it would stay in there for months, clotting, leaking
out into the workings of the fridge, etc.  As I recall, they even had a
human sternum in the freezer section.  Not the kind of thing I'd want to
pull out of the trash and put my food in, even after a good cleaning.
(Not to worry.  This refrigerator was destroyed when they were done with
it.)

Have you ever seen plastic made?... :)  Anyway, that seems more an emotional
than a practical response. It does not matter what had been in a container
so long as it is cleaned and sterilized. The exception to that would be
in the case of a deleterious substance that diffuses into the substance
of a container sufficiently to be a subsequent hazard. Radioactivity is
especially in that category. [I just realized that you were speaking about
the *refrigerator* itself...not the containers. Those would be harder to
clean and also sterilize, but a good washing and spraying with BKC should
take care of it - except for radioactivity. Keep a Geiger Counter handy
when you collect trash for reuse.

Returning to the question at the end of #2, some paper products need to be
new.  We use very few paper towels, I mostly use rags -- which I wash & reuse,
or throw away, depending on how messy they get & how I feel that day -- but
I would hate to do without toilet paper.  (Six-plus years of a diaper pail
was enough)  Sometimes computer paper can be reused, though not indefinitely,
but my son's fifth-grade teacher objected when he kept using the backs of
other paper to do his homework (because he wouldn't trouble himself to get
fresh notebook paper when he had the chance).

I think your son should have been commended in public for reusing paper rather
than buying new.  I always write letters on the backs of used paper and brag
about it, and use those envelopes that come in junk mail (friend's junk mail,
I no longer get much myself) to send letters (but I send few paper letters
nowadays).  Are children allowed to e-mail rather than write or print out
assignments in school?  I am looking forward to the day when I can get highly
legible faxes on my computer rather than on paper - so far the dots don't seem
to match up quite right.  But then I would need to run two computers to do
my translations, which produces a fair amount of heat (or perhaps I could
manage with a split screen somehow).  
        We bought new scissors to cut hair with, have not found good sharp ones
used.  I use unused staples (but I find them at Kiwanis, not the store). 
Kiwanis has quite a few short used fluorescent tubes donated in lamps.

Any computer with good enough graphical resolution to handle reading faxes
on the screen should be able to run Windows and let you get by without having
multiple computers for faxing.

Can you tell me if you get good quality faxes on your screen, using Windows?
So far I have had no reason to acquire a computer that can handle Windows,
but this might be a reason for it.  From what I have heard, the legibility
is reduced when you match up the output from a fax machine with the dot
pattern on a screen, and I get pretty illegible stuff at best.  Do you happen
to know more about dot patterns and matching software, or whatever it is
called?  I would love to stop buying fax paper (even at Kiwanis).  Problem
is, I would not be able to get faxes when I am not in the office, unless I
left the computer running all the time (and possibly tied up the phone line,
or maybe the fax phone switch would work on it).  I suppose I could leave a
fax machine hooked up for when I am not there.

It depends a lot on your monitor.  With a decent monitor, reading faxes
shouldn't be too hard, although it will depend on how big the writing on the
fax is.  You can also magnify the document to make it more readable on your
screen.

To receive faxes, your computer would, of course, have to be on.  It would
also have to be plugged into and answering a phone line, just like a regular
fax machine.  I don't have any experience with the phone fax switches.  I
haven't been impressed by what I have heard about them.  If it will work
with a regular fax machine, it will work with a fax modem.

Can the monitor be turned off while the computer is on?  How much power does
a turned-on computer waste compared to a turned-on fax machine?  Maybe the
fax paper is environmentally better than the computer on all the time.
A color monitor that I looked at was 2.0 amps, or 240 watts.  My monochrome
one is .35 amps, or 40 watts.  Whoops, my fax machine transformer is also 2.0
watts, maybe I should not be using the fax phone switch and leaving it on all
the time, at least during warm weather.  It feels really hot to the touch.
My computer output is about 1 amp, it says.  Fax output 2.1 amps.  My little
infrared heater is 300 watts, the fax over 240!  Sounds like the computer with
the monitor turned off would waste less electricity.
        What gets sent to me is pretty illegible before faxing, I cannot stand
to lose any quality.  Magnifying does not improve legibility.  A standard
setting fax is often unusable.  How does a fax card compare with superfine
fax machine and paper?
        Is there some way to not have the fax transformer on all the time, just
when a call comes for it?  Maybe I should move this discussion to the agora
lighting item, computers use a lot more energy than my incandescent bulb.

You may turn off the monitor. A fax machine would usually draw much less
power than a computer: its computational capacity is very small and it
has no hard drive. I don't know where they get those amp figures: my
whole system (CPU, monitor, printers (on by not printing), ZIP drive,
together draws 1.3 amps (ca. 150 watts) to the UPS. 

What do you mean by computer, fax, etc *output*? They are not power sources.

Don't trust the current ratings printed on things.  Those are absolute
maximum ratings and rarely correspond to the actual current being drawn.
The best way to measure power consumed is with a power meter, capable
of compensating for power factor. (Current lead or lag due to capacitive
or inductive loads.)

You also mention that the fax transformer is 2.0 watts.  That is not much
at all for a fax machine.

A good faxmodem will support fine fax resolutions.  Once you have the fax in
memory, you can look at it down to the tiny-little-block level.

It was not 2.0 watts but 2.0 amps for my fax transformer.  It feels about as
warm as a light bulb (total heat output).  Perhaps less power is used when
it is not actually sending or receiving (motor and thermal printer).  We will
try a meter on the various equipment.
        Would anyone volunteer to receive and print out a sample text which
I fax to their fax modem, so that I can compare it with what I get by copying
it on my fax machine?
        What is the minimum hardware requirement for a computer set up to work
as a fax machine?  We have the makings of a 386 and possible a 586, with as
yet no use for them, but perhaps as a fax machine it might be justified.  

Modem, computer and printer (and fax software).

Oh, and a scanner, if you want to send fax. How much of a computer you
need depends upon the scanner. I use a HP B&W scanner for faxing with
a Powerbook 145B. 

I am not concerned about sending faxes with a fax machine, it would just be
nice not to have to recycle fax paper, so skip the scanner.
My modem does not do faxes as far as I know.  What sort of computer and
monitor are needed to produce the same resolution as a fax machine?  The
printer should not be needed, but if I did occasionally want a hard copy, is
a dot-matrix printout as good as thermal fax printout?  We have a paper white
VGA monitor and can assemble a 386, will those do?  My impression was that
even plain paper fax machines did not give as readable copy as thermal ones,
and that the problem was in matching up dot patterns (180x 180 vs 200x200 or
some such difference) between the sending machine and the receiver.

You'll want Windows of some version, meaning you'll need a 386 or faster. 
The limitation here is not really whether you can get a modem, but whether
you can find non-Windows/non-Mac software.

Give me a call in the afternoon some day, and if I'm around I'll be happy to
act as guinea pig.

One really cool thing about sending faxes from a faxmodem is that you can
(under Windows, at least) set up the fax as a printer, and skip paper
completely for sending.  The cool part is that since you drive the fax
directly, the output is much better than from a scanner.

You can send any file - text or graphic - as a fax with a computer. I
should not have implied a scanner was necessary, but I was thinking in
terms of some documents we recently had to sign and fax. (I now have
my signature in a graphic file, which I can paste into a word processing
document and fax that.)

I would not normally send text that was on my screen via a fax, it is much
more efficient to modem (e-mail) it.  Thanks for the offer, Scott, I will fax
you the same illegible page two ways and then we can compare the results.
(I mean fax to your fax machine and to your fax modem.)  What afternoons
are you around?
        How is a faxed signature in a graphics file any more legal than
anything else in a graphics file?  You could fax it to someone who would then
be able, using the right software, to fax your signature on any document.

While lawyers are starting to have e-mail as well as fax, *forms* are
still a problem for e-mail, and the law is swamped with forms. Someday 
they will all be useable on line (or rather, on web), but now the only
way to send most signed completed forms electronically is via fax.

Quite right - my signature in a graphic file could be misused. But 
the law will accept faxed signed documents, and that signature is nothing
but a piece of a graphics file. I just snipped it out, and keep it on
hand - sort of like having a signature rubber stamp.

I would think some sort of password would work better for identification than
a rubber electronic stamp.
        Scott, do you have a thermal printer type fax machine?  The plain paper
ones are already more illegible than thermal types.
(And why afternoon, we are around evenings as well?)

Lawyers haven't gotten that advanced. But a graphic signature *is* a
somewhat complex password (if you write out all the byes in the file),
so there is really no difference. 

I don't have a fax machine.  I have a PC with fax software, and a 300dpi ink
jet printer.

Well, I can run the page through my fax machine to make a copy, then compare
that with your screen output and your printer output.  I think that neither
of the latter have exactly the same dot pattern as my fax machine scanner puts
out, which is 200 x 200 dpi (certainly does not match your printer - what is
the pattern on your screen?).  This makes the copy less legible, and I get
pretty illegible copy to start with.  Another friend has a plain paper
(inkjet) fax machine.  Let me know when and to what number to fax, and when
we can come look at the results.  Thanks.

Afternoons are convenient... I don't leave my fax software running normally,
so give me a call when you want to try it.

Back there on #22.  Are you talking input or output current?  If it's output
current than you have to multiply the output current by the output voltage.
Be sure you aren't multiplying the input voltage by the output current!

I will save the voltage etc. calculations until after deciding if the fax
modem is worth even trying.  I don't like generating all that paper, but I
can't handle less legible copy.  (It is already pretty terrible, maybe the
places sending it to me have switched to 300 dpi plain paper faxes?)
I turned off the fax transformer for the weekend to save energy, but maybe
I should turn it on, the office is a bit chilly now.
        Off to test the efficiency of European style versus conventional
American coil style burners for boiling oatmeal water and pressure cooking
potatoes.  There is a good change we may go American.  The coil type stove
has the additional advantages of a nice aluminum thing that you can pull over
the oven window (to save energy while baking - you can't see through the black
glass window in the other enough to see if the bread is done anyway), a timed
outlet (for plugging in electric frying pans and cooking while in another
room), a stove-top light, and the burner controls conveniently in the middle
instead of behind two of the burners.  And a white door which makes the
kitchen lighter and has more insulation in it.  The coils adjust better to
our pressure cookers, which are not very flat bottomed.  
        Too many tests to run in one lifetime.  Will give you a call some time
next week, Scott.  What dot pattern does your monitor have?  If it is 300 x300
the test is not worth running, actually.  A multiple of 200 would work.

The dot resolution of my monitor is completely unimportant in this discussion,
since I can zoom in to whatever resolution the fax itself has.  Mapping to
300dpi printer might be an issue, in which case I can tell the software to
double the print size, thereby doubling the effective resolution to 600dpi.

I would not be able to use the output from the 300 dpi printer, but there is
no need to do so, since I have a thermal paper fax machine to use if I need
hard copy sent.  If you can get 200 x 200 dpi on your monitor, this should
work (barring unforeseen software problems).  I will pull out a page of
Ukrainian that got faxed on the standard setting three times and see if it
is any less legible on your monitor.  Maybe tomorrow afternoon?

We tested the solid-element burner and the regular thin-coil burner, same
sizes on two different stoves.  THe solid-element one shoudl in theory be more
efficient since it is insulated below and there are no air currents carrying
off the heat, but our pressure cooker is not all that flat.  THe coil burner
should in theory conform to the pot shape, but it did not (we could see part
of the burner element glowing).  Both cooked our potatoes with about .5 Kwh
of electricity (give or take 10%, our measurements were done on the electric
meter which is not precise).  The coil stove took 18 instead of 16 minutes,
also within experimental error (the air was colder when we used the coil
burner).  We have also tested boiling a pot of water for oatmeal on the coil
element (9 minutes, I think it was) and will test the solid element next.
        The oven window on the coil-element stove does not have black dots all
over it and is therefore usable for chekcing the color of baked bread.  You
can also close an aluminum door over it to save heat.  THe decorative black
glass oven window is useless.  We will compare efficiencies of the two ovens.
Biggest heat loss is the hole on top which lets out the heat.

My 15" monitor running at 1024x768 seems to be 11" across and 8" tall, which
translates to about 95 dpi.  It's certainly not as good as what you can get
from a printer, but since you can zoom in on the document, that shouldn't be
much of an issue.

- Backtalk version 1.3.30 - Copyright 1996-2006, Jan Wolter and Steve Weiss