Please give a warm welcome once again to my husband, Ryan. If you’ve missed Ryan’s other posts, you can check them out here. (The post below is a break from his usual humor articles, so make sure you read the others if you need a good laugh!)
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I’m afraid this post might be unpopular among some of you. But like a half-clothed prophet in the wilderness, I feel compelled to preach it. My apologies in advance if it offends.
“So, we’ve gotta know. Do you run your Ziploc bags through the dish washer?” It took me off guard. “Because we had a bet. You guys do, right?” Apparently my wife’s reputation had proceeded me once again. “Are you serious?” I stalled. Heads wagged eagerly.
“No, we absolutely do not reuse our Ziploc bags.” I chucked awkwardly. “Is that what you’re asking?” The two grinning faces nodded in agreement. “We throw them away and buy new ones like everyone else.” Their eyebrows rose in surprise. Teasing aside, I could see that there was genuine curiosity in the question. And neither of them got the answer they expected.
As I walked back to the car, I was both intrigued and confused. Why did they assume we’d be so fastidious with our sandwich bags? It didn’t make sense.
I thought through the numbers: Ziploc sandwich bags cost about $.01 each (after coupons). We go through about 15 every week, at a cost of $8 per year. Say we did reuse our bags. Assuming it takes about 20 seconds to wash, dry, and restock each bag, we’d spend 4 hours and 20 minutes a year doing it. Four hours for less than $10 bucks! That’s a savings of less than $2 per hour, a tiny (and maybe unsanitary) return on investment. The bottom line: we don’t do it, because it’s not frugal.
The average person is surprised by that last part. Why isn’t it frugal to reuse Ziploc bags? It does save money. And every penny counts, right?
Not quite. Like a savvy business person, an experienced Frugal knows that return on investment is far more important than mere money-saving. A Frugal invests her time (that scarce resource) in the things that will save her the most money and give her the highest quality of life in the least amount of time. A Frugal is more than a cost-slasher. A Frugal is an investor. That’s the difference.
And it’s an important difference. I’ve seen too many overzealous money-saving converts stray from the path of frugality to the land of the cheap. They start well, cutting coupons, eliminating credit card debt, thinking through purchases. Then they veer of track. They start reusing Ziploc bags. They start sweating the small stuff. It’s the hard road toward insanity.
Check up on yourself. Evaluate your frugal techniques. Which ones are really worth it? If you wouldn’t accept $2 per hour as payment for your labor from another, don’t accept it from yourself under the guise of frugality. Valuing your time is the subtle and important difference between being cheap and being frugal.
The frugal experience is about living better on less. If you miss the living better part, you’ve missed it entirely.
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amen!!
Well said!
I must say I do reuse plastic bags unless they have contained meat or cheese. The reason is more environmental than frugal though. Most of the time I don’t need to wash them out though. A bag that had crackers in it one day can have a sandwich in it the next.
I definitely agree with the idea of being a good steward over our time, as well as our money! If we are spending all of the time that the Lord has given us on being “frugal”, then we are not glorifying Him. Sasha, I too use “dry” ziplocs again for other items, but I would not reuse ones that needed to be washed!
Teresa´s last blog ..Rite Aid 10/11-10/17
Welcome back Ryan! Our family loves your posts!
And good for pointing out that when it comes to “saving” money you have to look at return on investment. Our time is worth something too.
I totally agree. Good post!
No feathers ruffled here! You are so right in that if you “miss the living better part, you’ve missed it entirely.” My husband is always commenting on how much better we are eating these days thanks to our frugality. We never would have imagined that in such tough times we could find a way to feed our family better meals with healthier foods.
As always, I enjoy seeing your perspective!
Mary Martin´s last blog ..Today’s CVS Deals $63.56 for $3.19
Yep, if I reuse, it’s for environmental reasons. In fact, I’ve made some snack bags out of flannel this year for my daughter’s lunch box to reduce the number of plastic bags we’re buying and then throwing away.
One family using 15 bags a week throws away 780 bags a year. Multiply that by millions of families…. It may not be cost effective to reuse things, but it certainly is environmentally responsible.
Thank you for writing this post. Excellent points. Our time is important to all of us and we need to remember what is important in life everyday. Our family and friends! Not money or things. God has provided us with time and we must use it wisely.
Holly´s last blog ..Rite Aid Shopping Trip 10/10/09
Ryan and I agree that reusing items like Ziploc bags can be the environmentally responsible thing to do. And we do often use re-usable containers instead of Ziploc bags for Ryan’s work lunches, leftovers, etc. But this post is, at its core, about thinking through our “frugal” behaviors, weighing both time AND money to determine the return on investment. The environmental motive and impact are subject for an entirely different post! The Ziploc bags were just a small example and came from the story Ryan shared about his colleagues’ frugality question.
I love this post!!! It is so true – so many times people forget about the time element. The last sentence is dead on too!
Andrea @ Mommy Snacks.net´s last blog ..FREE Box Tops for Education Collection Bin
Very well said. I think of myself as a home-manager, and I must keep the big picture in mind. Sometimes good enough really is.
Hi- we reuse our ziplocs for environmental reasons- i only rinse them out and dry them upside down on our cookie jar. It takes us all of ten seconds. I even buy the new evolve ziplocs because there is nothing wrong with doing my part to reduce, reuse and recycle! Somethings are just worth the extra cents- like my planet…
I see where you are coming from regarding how much money you are making per hour when you do certain frugal things.
However, for me, I find that when I get stubborn about doing the small things that reap very small savings, I have a better mind set about frugality in general. For example, am I really going to blow $2.00 on XXX when it takes me that long to wash baggies to recoup my money. Often times the XXX doesn’t seem worth it to me anymore.
In the Complete Tightwad Gazette on page 49 there is an interesting article about washing baggies and how the lady that wrote to them said she calculated a savings rate of $30 per hour.
Johnlyn´s last blog ..Is Dave Ramsey Evil?
Well said! I find that I can easily get hooked by finding the best deal, even if that best deal only saves me a few dollars and took an hour to put together. Running a blog site and another small business from home means that time is indeed money! Thanks for the reminder to keep the whole saving thing in perspective.
Jennifer´s last blog ..New Shortcuts.com E-Coupons Available
Well, I wouldn’t say it is always better for the environment to wash the bags.
You’ll use a fair amount of water doing it (and some soap, too).
Where I live, we get about 2 inches of rain a YEAR. Water is tiered in 4 tiers on our bill, and it can easily go up quite a bit. My water bill in the summer is $200. (I also do 4 loads of laundry a day in a front loader, run the dishwasher twice a day, and have 7 people at home all day).
When I lived in France, I saw someone rewashing ziploc bags because they don’t sell them there! She had some sent from the U.S., and she used them carefully.
For me, there are other things invlved in time. I have had 3 children in diapers consistently over the last 4 years (not the same 3 children the whole time; I have 5 small children). I already spend over an hour a day JUST changing diapers. I tried cloth for a while, but the time investment for me was not worth it, as it meant I had to change diapers more often and do more laundry. It became so time consuming that it made it difficult to do anything else, including making food for my family! So, I swtiched back to disposables. Changing 16-20 disposables a day is much easier than changing three times that many cloth ones a day!
I agree with the main point of your post, but I have to say that I liked what one commenter said about the little things being a great motivational tool. It’s the little things that add up. A quarter here, a quarter there, and before you know it, you’ve spent many dollars. Being faithful in the small things can help change your mindset on the big things.
I’m a frugal zealot in a rural and expensive area and after sales and coupons my ziplocs cost 10 cents a piece and only take 5 seconds to rinse out and hang on a special line in my kitchen just for them. Raw meat ziplocs do get tossed. As other commenters have said, it’s not just about money, it’s about the waste too. I want my kids to learn about being responsible stewards. You have to consider the pay-off for re-using ziplocs is also less garbage, less to haul (we have to haul our own garbage), less money spent at the dump (it’s $5 a load and going up in price soon) and less time spent shopping for that item again and clipping more coupons for it, digging for those coupons, another item to check-out, store, and organize. I’d say recycling ziplocs is GOOD bang for a buck and I think you are missin’ out BIG TIME!
Okay. I’m curious. I don’t use Ziploc SANDWICH bags ever. Not in the 2+ years I’ve been married. Anything I can use a sandwich baggie for I can use a tupperware container for. That being said, I do use the Ziploc FREEZER bags. They’re thicker, more durable – and definitely worth washing I think! I bought over 20 boxes about 2 years ago for only .17/per box. And I still take the time to wash the non-gross ones. I only have the freezer space above my refigerator, so it really is worth the space it saves to use ziploc freezer bags as opposed to hard plastic containers. So tell me. Do you wash the freezer bags? If not, is your reason for not doing so the same as the baggies?
Jill´s last blog ..What’s in Your Food?
Jill- We do often use tupperware instead of bags for lunches and leftovers. As for freezer bags, I always get those for free. Right now, I have almost 15o freezer bags of different sizes on hand that I got for nothing. So I don’t reuse those. It’s not worth my time- and like another commenter mentioned, it’s also not worth the cost of water, which is very expensive in my area.
Rachel- Yes, I also like the Evolve bags. I got some boxes for free recently and like them. And I completely understand doing something like re-using Ziplocs for environmental reasons. While we don’t personally re-use bags, we do take other environmentally responsible steps. The Ziploc bags were just an example used to demonstrate a larger point.
Dana, I am very impressed with your ability to communicate! Your responses are correctly (to me) analyzed. Wow. Just wanted to thank you for explaining things so well.
I was a missionary kid (referred to as an MK in the missionary world) in Brazil and my mom would usually reuse plastic bags only because at the time (1970-80’s) there were no such things as plastic bags there. So for us it was a matter of being able to have it on hand.
I completely agree with yours and your husband’s point. There are frugal people who go a bit overboard and don’t realize it. In fact, it seems that way in other areas of life. Giving a kid constant anti-biotics because you think he needs them even though it’s viral… Alas, I could go on, but that would be a waste of frugal time.
I might browse thru some of the other articles though.
this was a great and much-needed reminder for me. I definitely am learning I am not as frugal as many but have always tried to be careful with money. I have recently started couponing and am seeing how much it could take over your life shopping at “every” store for “every” hot deal or free item out there! ROI is a great reminder to me that even if I get every free item at Rite Aid this week (or make money, heaven forbid!) but my kids and husband have a “crazy” mom and wife who is only focused on saving money…not worth it! thank you!!
I agree completely! There was a point when I was trying to snag every deal out there and, let’s face it….that can just be flat out exhausting. And in the end, I’ve come to the same conclusion. Time is a commodity too. And you’re so right… I’d never work for $2 an hour, much less load my toddler up and get out in the rain for $2 – yet I was doing that to avoid losing $2 of ECBs or RRs when I first experienced that saving high. I’m glad a blogger put this out there! Keep up the good logic.
Dana and Ryan-
for several reasons- b/c I want to teach my daughter to love and appreciate nature, and b/c, like a little hard work, it feels good to garden, and also cause of the whole organic benefit.) When he starting comparing my time spent gardening to how much I could have made at work (I work per-diem as a nurse) I said, “Yeah, but I’d rather snip greenbeans anyday!” and laughed! THAT’S what it’s all about– doing what you love (or like) with those you love!
Great post! Couldn’t agree more with everything you’ve said. My husband (an engineer who loves to crunch numbers just like Ryan) and I realized how little we were saving by growing our own greenbeans this year with all the time involved planting, gathering, CLEANING and DE-STRINGING and SNAPPING, ugh! But, with all that being said, I will still do it again next year! lol
As you’ve said, Ryan was just siting an example w/ the Ziplocks. You have to pick and choose your battles in the frugal world, just as you do in the environmental world. Not everything can be perfectly in line with your beliefs/ intentions. You do your best and forget the rest. Most important is finding enjoyment in the way you spend your time… whether you’re rinsing your ziplocks or snipping greenbeans!
Heck yeah! Preach it Brother!