Green Minded Wallet

So yesterday I was walking back from the library and I cut through the parking lot of a grocery store that I frequent. It just so happened that there was a lady there with the trunk of her SUV open and she had all these plastic bins inside that she was wiping down. As I got closer I realized that they were full of honey! It was actually the local brand of honey that I buy, so I asked her if she was buying or selling. She said she was selling: turns out not only do they make the honey themselves but they drive it all in personally to a number of groceries around the state once a week! Personally, I just think that there’s something really neat about meeting the actually producers of your food. I made sure to tell her that I love their honey (I have one at work and one at home), then wished her a Happy Thanksgiving. To me it was a very cool discovery.

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So I love the idea of homemade products, nice personalized items that match my individual tastes. I have a number of projects that I would like to start from a bunch of old sheets, worn out jeans, and fabric picked up on the cheap. But the truth is that summer has come and gone and I haven’t gotten a lot done (which is to say anything). I definitely believe in the idea of recycling materials and saving money versus going to box stores, but I’m just not passionate about homemade projects like I am other activities. Well, this weekend I decided to explore a different option, buying someone else’s homemade products. At our local farmer’s market, not only can you get an excellent selection of local produce, meat, and baked goods, but they also sell craft items as well. I picked out a nice set of cloth napkins with a fall oriented theme for $1.25 each. To me that’s a price that is so inexpensive, I’m not sure if it would be more economically prudent to make my own. The way I figure it, even if I could make all four napkins with a 1/2 yard of fabric it would probably still cost me 3 dollars or so. When you add in the cost of the other sowing supplies, and the time it would take for me to actually make the napkins, it would definitely seem to be advantageous to just buy them from the farmer’s market. Now I would think that once you start look at more expensive (larger) items that can be made from recycled materials (for example curtains), it might be more advantageous to make my own, but I don’t think that’s always the case. While there is the fact that the napkins are using new, not recycled material, their projected longevity makes me feel this difference is fairly negligible. What do you think, did I get a good deal or am I just lazy?

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