Extreme Measures

So far throughout this No-Spend journey, I've contemplated several "extreme" swaps. I've looked for extreme ways of saving money like using coupons to turn our guest room downstairs into my "stock pile" and audition for Extreme Couponing (is that still a thing????) My friend has a sister who doesn't use trash bags. Like apparently she carries the smelly, stinky, oozing bin out to the outdoor can and dumps it, then rinses it and brings it back inside to fill up again? We literally fill our full size 13 gallon trash bag once a day. That's a lot of trash-can baths I would rather not give. So, that one got vetoed....I'll have to make my contribution to saving the planet another way. Alas, I have continued to buy plastic baggies and plastic forks to aid in convenience for my children's school lunches. But one thing I went to buy, and then thought twice about was.....cat litter. Yes, the material I clean and scoop and refill just so my pet happily relieves itself on a daily basis. 

So, this switch-out, is the first one that I would consider extreme. Not washing my car once a week, a close second. But this, this is saving me about $26.00/month. I know that doesn't sound like much, but this whole experiment was based on the idea of discovering how much money could be saved by not simply accepting a "want" as a "need" and not mindlessly spending money. I plan to be completely jaw-dropped by the amount of money saved by not spending the small amounts here and there....because lets face it, all those $1 diet cokes add up. 

Anyway, back to cat litter. So, when we adopted our cat in 2016, I found this fantastic cat litter from Pets Mart. A cat litter made from recycled newspaper. It's in little pellets so it doesn't fling all over your floor when your cat does his thing. Perfect. It was costing me about $13.00/bag and I would buy two every month. 

Just as the calendar switched to "January", I was reminded of what our vet had suggested we do several years ago after our first cat had his front paws declawed. The vet had suggest we use shredded paper as cat litter so the little grains of regular cat litter wouldn't get stuck in his wounds. Made sense. My mother-in-law had brought home garbage bags full of shredded paper from her office and that provided us enough litter to last till our poor little feline was completely healed. A little lightbulb went off in my head and I thought "if it was good enough then, what's wrong with using it now?" 

Well, I put it to the test. Literally the papers that come home from school (granted I save a few for their books from each grade) but lets face it we get A LOT of papers home from school on a daily basis, right? Well, I declared one particularly sturdy box the "RECYCLED PAPER" box and all returned homework, unwanted artwork, junk mail, ripped envelopes, and ads go into this box. I take a stack downstairs to the paper shredder, spend about 2 minutes shredding and voila! I have a full pan of cat litter. 

I have a full pan of cat litter that cost me NOTHING. It was completely free. FREE! Which, I mean it should be, considering it's sole purpose is to collect unmentionables. 

Now, I have had to be very consistent and change his litter more often than needed before. It also cannot be scooped out, and must be completely changed each time (I do every day or every other right now) because all the paper soaks up all the liquid, but there is no odor stopping power with plain old paper. 

My cat had literally zero issues switching from regular litter to this paper. He's a champ at no-spend year as well and should be included in the award speeches. 

So, my verdict on absolutely free, cost-me-nothing cat litter is that we are sticking with this extreme switch. What extreme things do you do to save money??? Share with me, because I plan to be testing several more options out soon! 

Awww....Here's my precious baby boy! He's worth all the work!