Take Inventory of Your Home to Avoid Buying Duplicates
Have you ever done what you buy a pack of batteries, take out two of them that you need, put the rest in the back of a drawer and forget that they are there?
This means that the next time you need a couple of batteries, you go out and buy a new package, pull out the two you need, put the rest in the back of the drawer and … you get the idea.
This weekend I cleaned out my toilets and after about three minutes I realized that I needed to start writing down all the things I forgot that I already bought so I don’t accidentally buy them again.
Band-aids, for example. (Yes, I mean Band-Aid band-aids.) I found two separate boxes in two separate boxes.
Ink. I found a whole cache of them, which, as I forgot, I hid.
Pomade. I bought my favorite shade in bulk a while ago and found one full tube I forgot about (in addition to the tubes I knew were in my purse and makeup bag).
Travel toiletries. It can take a full year between the things I bought, the things I stole from hotel rooms, and the free tiny toothpastes I get every time I go to a dental check-up before I need another miniature hygiene product.
Light bulbs. Dental floss. Sticky notes. You get the idea.
I consider myself a thrifty person and rarely shop without some planning or forethought, but my “Don’t Buy These Things Because You Already Have Them” list now includes twenty items , and this includes all travel toiletries in one group. …
So now I have two lists stored side by side in the same table: things I need to buy in the near future (like a new toilet brush) and things I don’t need to buy because I didn’t use it hasn’t happened yet.
That way, the next time I need a patch, I can open one of the two boxes I already have.