We spent our first few years in Washington state being pretty frugal about everything. I summarized a bunch of those habits in 27 frugal ideas nearly a decade ago. But somewhere in there I crossed a line I didn’t notice at the time because there’s frugal, and then there’s a cabinet full of yogurt tubs you’ll never use, lol. I know that line now because I’ve lived on both sides of it.
Now, because I’ve been trying to clean up around the house lately, mostly the garage, I’m “discovering” a lot of those supposedly useful items I’ve been hanging onto over the years and I’m regretting some of my decisions. (Yes, the yogurt tubs is a thing. I just tossed about a hundred of them.)
Glass jars win by a longshot when it comes to what it seems people actually save. Old pasta sauce jars, coffee jars, canning jars, all of it … but mostly Mason jars. Mice and rats can’t chew through glass, it handles heat fine, and it doesn’t hold onto smells or stains the way plastic does. But they are easily broken, and even mason jars can become problematic. Personally, I’ve got multiple bins of them stacked in the garage for “just in case” SHTF scenarios. I can’t bring myself to get rid of them yet, but I’m tired of hanging onto things, so they’re on the chopping block.
Pill and vitamin bottles come in close behind, and for a lot of people they’re the top pick. They’re small, they seal well, and if you run a strip of electrical tape around the lid, they’re almost waterproof for all but an extended submersion. That makes them perfect for fire-starting kits, first aid supplies, spices if you buy in bulk, or whatever. I’ve even turned them into hidden supply stashes, but I tend not to keep empty pill bottles for any reason. If you’ve got good uses for them, I’d be interested to know.
Plastic tubs from yogurt or cottage cheese are good for odds and ends and shop parts like screws and nails. (The 100+ yogurt tubs I was holding onto were for seed starting, but we use something different these days.)
Ice cream buckets and maybe even coffee cans handle outdoor jobs like water bowls and seed starting. I think some folks hold onto those square cat litter containers for similar uses, but I haven’t tried it myself. Wide-mouth peanut butter jars are hard to beat for sorting screws, nuts, and bolts if you’re willing to clean them thoroughly.
Cardboard boxes in the right sizes tend to fit shelves better than almost anything you’d buy these days, at least, around my house. But I’m not sure they entirely count as “containers” in the sense that I’m thinking of a container.
Warning: skip any container that held harsh chemicals if you’re planning to reuse it for anything you might consume, especially liquids, but also for food or dry goods. Residue soaks into plastic more than you’d realize, and it’s not worth the risk to your health because you got a free container. In fact, I wouldn’t use any repurposed container for holding anything I might later consume. Use FDA-approved food storage containers only!
The reason people hang onto these things comes down to two things: preparedness is one; frugality is the other. Small, sealed, waterproof containers are exactly what you want for a bug-out bag or a first aid kit. And there’s something to be said for a free container that could be used for a variety of purposes around the house. I’m a huge fan of 5-gallon buckes for this very reason. Clearly, buying storage bins when you already have a useful container sitting in the recycling doesn’t make much sense for some items.
But here’s the problem, and it’s the same one I keep running into: You can end up with many more empty containers than things to put in them, and at that point you’re not being frugal, you’re just storing trash with the best of intentions that never come. It’s easy to do. Like I said, I’m feeling the pain this summer.
If you’ve been hanging onto items, whether that’s containers or something else, because you swear you’re going to use/need/regret not having it down the road, ask yourself if that’s a true statement. Are you really going to use it later?
My mother-in-law, as the perfect example, is the queen of believing she’s going to use many things down the road, but there’s a good portion of those “must keep” items that haven’t seen the light of day in five years or longer since we moved in together. My guess? She’s got more good intentions than I do, and almost none of them will ever get fulfilled. 🙂
So where’s your line? Do you have a container stash that’s actually useful, or one that’s turned into its own kind of clutter, like ours?
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