I rarely buy anything new. Come to my house and I can spend two hours, literally, showing you around and pointing out the stuff I found on the road, got for free, made myself, or got stupid cheap at the thrift. My wife and I often make a day of hitting all the thrift stores in 1 of the 3 surrounding cities.
For example: I just built a kick ass new terrarium. Tank and light fixture from the thrift, painted and wired it myself, had to buy the grow bulbs new. ALL the decorations were found in the woods or on riverbanks, power washed and trimmed to fit. Paid for three of the plants, regretted being that dumb. The purple hearts were found at a gas station, weed eater clippings.
For the substrate, I rolled my own dirt mix, burned my own charcoal, gathered and cleaned the rocks. Hell, even the water bowl is a cut off wine bottle. See the black seedling pot? Found a stack of those in the woods. The seeds were from food we ate. The iguana was the only expensive thing, and I’m working on growing crickets in another terrarium.
Now put all that together out of Pets Mart. LOL, the driftwood pieces alone would be $10-$50 each, $100 for that much aquarium gravel. That’s a $1,000 setup brand new.
LOL, and as to cookware? I have LOADS of cast iron pots and pans. Never bought a piece new. Remember everyone shitting about black plastic kitchenware? All I could think was, people buy that shit? You can get nice steel anything at the thrift for $.25-$1.00.
Until I had to kill some time at a couple of big box stores, I had no idea inflation had gotten so bad. It’s stunning that people buy enough new stuff, and at those prices, to keep stores in business.
I rarely buy anything new. Come to my house and I can spend two hours, literally, showing you around and pointing out the stuff I found on the road, got for free, made myself, or got stupid cheap at the thrift. My wife and I often make a day of hitting all the thrift stores in 1 of the 3 surrounding cities.
For example: I just built a kick ass new terrarium. Tank and light fixture from the thrift, painted and wired it myself, had to buy the grow bulbs new. ALL the decorations were found in the woods or on riverbanks, power washed and trimmed to fit. Paid for three of the plants, regretted being that dumb. The purple hearts were found at a gas station, weed eater clippings.
For the substrate, I rolled my own dirt mix, burned my own charcoal, gathered and cleaned the rocks. Hell, even the water bowl is a cut off wine bottle. See the black seedling pot? Found a stack of those in the woods. The seeds were from food we ate. The iguana was the only expensive thing, and I’m working on growing crickets in another terrarium.
Now put all that together out of Pets Mart. LOL, the driftwood pieces alone would be $10-$50 each, $100 for that much aquarium gravel. That’s a $1,000 setup brand new.
LOL, and as to cookware? I have LOADS of cast iron pots and pans. Never bought a piece new. Remember everyone shitting about black plastic kitchenware? All I could think was, people buy that shit? You can get nice steel anything at the thrift for $.25-$1.00.
Until I had to kill some time at a couple of big box stores, I had no idea inflation had gotten so bad. It’s stunning that people buy enough new stuff, and at those prices, to keep stores in business.