live lean

Individual Containers of Crap

A Frug Rant about Doubling Down on Duplication

By Brad Beckstrom

Okay, once a while I just need to do a quick rant to get something off my chest. In this case, about 40 plastic bottles of shampoo, conditioner and body wash.

Growing up, we had two types of shampoo (Pert and Head & Shoulders) and a bar of soap, usually Dial, or if someone got fancy, “Irish Spring.” In college, I had a roommate who shaved, showered and shampooed with one bar of soap. He was ahead of his time.

Alas, my simple living college days are over. With a teenager, a tween and my lovely wife SuperK, the shampoo, conditioner, body wash situation has gotten a bit out of control. I did a quick count including our three bathrooms and various other cabinets around the house. Grand total: 41 bottles of shampoo, conditioner, face soap, and body wash.

We may be uniquely ridiculous in this regard but I was so fascinated, I needed to share it. Turns out, with all the different flavors of body washes and rinses and shampoos, the kids and SuperK have been trying certain products out, then not finishing the less popular ones.

Looks like a lot of these bottles just get chucked in cabinets or put into the rarely used basement bathroom. I guess we’re hoping some guest will love one of the seven or eight bottles of three-year-old shampoos that we’ve displayed for them. There was also a dog shampoo in the basement bathroom. I did not include that in the total count.

I have no problem with grooming but we need to really work on using up all of these individual containers of crap. I tried setting an example by complaining to the family about it at dinner, letting them know that I was personally using up all of their unused soap. That was until I tried using some of my son’s AXE Shock Body Wash Gel. It had pieces of mint scrubbing crystals in it and smelled like a very strong industrial cleaner. It made my eyes water and burned hair out of my sinuses.

I also bought some nice soap and tried to explain that this was a better way to keep clean and get rid of all these plastic bottles. They just end up having a third of the gel/crap stuck to the bottom, unused or in some landfill somewhere. This suggestion was met with outrage and angry stares.

Well, if it was up to me, I think an ideal solution would be something like this:

Yea, it’s called MAN 2.0. It’s a combination body, shampoo and shaving bar. I guess once we use up the other 40 containers I’ll give this a shot.

I’m not going to kid myself and think that we’ll end up with my ideal solution. However, I am hoping to go from 40 to about six bottles total.

Frug rules for containing shampoo gluttony

Don’t buy any more shampoo until the current three year inventory is used up.
When you must buy shampoo, soap etc. open it up in the store and smell it, they won’t mind. You are a great customer.
Replace all body wash with a quality bar of soap.
Find a good combo shampoo conditioner.

That’s it, end of rant. Look for future rants on other types of individual containers of crap. I’m happy to have problems as insignificant as these, and share my futile attempts to save the planet.

Put a Knife in the Heart of your Junk e-mail

10/13 by The Frug Leave a Comment

Do you hate unsolicited e-mails? I’m not talking about straight up spam, I already know you hate that. I’m talking about e-mails you may have signed up for intentionally or unintentionally. It kind of works like this, you purchase something online, donate to a political candidate, request some information from a company like healthcare, banking services, widgets etc.

The Hook

You may have even checked off the please do not send me any more information box at the bottom of the from. Somehow they find you. The biggest abusers are often companies you gave permission to. So, for instance, I may follow my favorite hotel for special offers, the next thing you know I am receiving offers from three or four other hotels in the same chain.

Or, I may have donated to a certain political candidate and now I’m receiving multiple e-mails from candidates and other talking heads in his party. I definitely did not want to hear from these people. I could haplessly search at the bottom of these e-mails for the minuscule hidden unsubscribe link. Then login with more information and attempt to unsubscribe, often a fool’s errand. I could just mark the e-mail as SPAM or JUNK, however, I may be blocking actual e-mails I want to receive. This also often fails to block or trash e-mails from others in this group.

The Suckiness

Okay, regardless of how many ways I describe this, it sucks. It’s also unfair to bloggers, organizations and companies that spend some time creating newsletters, offers, and information you actually want to receive. This pisses some people off so much they declare e-mail bankruptcy and just shut off their e-mail address only to create a new one and start all over. Another trick I’ve used in the past is to use a “junk persona” or just a working junk e-mail address on Yahoo or Gmail, for those times you need to receive confirmations or links but don’t want to use your personal e-mail. This is also a pain in the ass.

The Solution

Now that I’ve completed my rant, I will share a FREE solution I’ve been using for the past year. It’s called Unroll.me. Once you sign up it scans your in box automatically searching for e-mails that you’ve subscribed to either willingly or unwillingly. Unroll.me then asks if you would like to consolidate these e-mails into a single rollup.

Unleash Your Inner Ninja

This is where the fun starts. This is where you get to exert your new found knife wielding powers on your unwanted e-mail guests. Unroll.me will present you with a list in alphabetical order of all of the e-mail subscriptions it has found in your e-mail account.

You don’t need to deal with them right away. They will stay in your inbox until you mark them as,” add to rollup” or “unsubscribe” you also have the choice to select “keep in inbox.” As you can see, my work e-mail was out-of-control. I actually unsubscribed to 174 lists so far. As far as all the other lists they go, into the roll up which is sent to you once a day allowing you to quickly scan any of the e-mails you’ve chosen to keep. My current rollup includes 481 lists. Some of these lists you may only hear from a couple times a year and they will neatly be placed in the roll up. My daily rollup averages about 5 or 6 rolled up messages. You can always unsubscribe or move them back to your inbox at any time.

Here’s what the subscription page looks like so you can quickly go through and unsubscribe, add to roll up or keep an inbox as new lists appear. You will be amazed at how many lists you’re actually on.

Some of these lists you will want to keep in your inbox and others you’ll have never heard of, and can dispatch them immediately forever with a click of the mouse. Generally, I won’t recommend something that I haven’t used for quite a while. I can say that Unroll.me is really onto something here.

End Game

If you’ve ever been distracted by an e-mail, this is the tool for you. It allows you to batch all of this less than important stuff into a quick daily single e-mail you can quickly scan through or trash. There are definitely organizations, companies and bloggers I want to hear from but don’t need them filling up my work inbox.

As you click on items to read in your daily rollup, you will be taken to a page where they are all consolidated by day. You can also sort them by category.

If you’re not sure about this, try it with a personal e-mail or one of your old junk e-mails. You’ll quickly see the value in unsubscribing and working lean with a much trimmer inbox.

Feed The Pig

09/13 by The Frug Leave a Comment

This photo does not do justice to SuperK’s seafood gumbo. It tastes even better the next day. I’ve always been a huge fan of leftovers. In our family, groceries are our second-largest expense, so as The Frug, I am always going out of my way to make sure nothing goes to waste unless it’s absolutely necessary (mold growing on it, stinks, slimy to touch etc.).

The average family of four in the US spends about $1025 a month on groceries. In urban areas, like the DC Metro area, this number is closer to $1250. My wife SuperK tells me our grocery bill is even higher due to the fact that we eat lots of Meat, Seafood and other high protein delicacies.

So, it’s a bit of a conundrum to be a Frug and still really enjoy giant lumps of crabmeat floating in your gumbo! One way we like to deal with this is maximizing the leftovers. Years ago, I came across the website http://www.feedthepig.org/. It has links to some simple calculators and ideas to put your savings in high gear by skipping all kinds of things, including expensive lattes, $13 lunches and premium cable plans. Feed the Pig also lists all types of expense slashing ideas (by habit) to help you reach your savings goals.

Replacing some lunches out with leftovers is a great way to do this. One big advantage of working from home, or an office with a nice fridge, is the ability to really tap into the leftovers and skip a few lunches out a week. You’ll also find that, if you do it right, most of the leftovers will be a lot healthier than what you might find at that gourmet burger joint or KFC.

Here’s a quick look at some results from the lunch calculator. Notice I still eat out once or twice a week. The key message here, is that you start to apply these frugal tools to other expenses in life, like a latte-a-day habit or shoe addictions, you can really start to see results. As you get closer to financial independence, you’ll find that you’ve applied this type of thinking to many parts of your daily life and have started putting those dollars to work for you. Keep in mind every dollar that you save and invest will continue to work for you and produce returns year after year long after you’ve stopped working for a paycheck.

Live Lean Food Hacks

08/13 by The Frug Leave a Comment

It’s football season. That means a lot of us will be doing some hard-core snacking. Football helmet full of nacho cheese dip anyone? Anyway, in preparation, I’ve come up with some food hacks for those of you who like to snack but prefer to do it following a live lean philosophy.

I’m a big fan of the #slowcarb diet, so I was excited to find some chips and dips that fit with the diet and still taste good. For instance you can’t do corn chips or potato chips on the slow carb diet, but you can have all of the beans you want. Doug and Dave Foreman came up with Beanitos. These chips are made with nutritious black beans, free of additives, preservatives and corn. Beanitos are also gluten-free, high-fiber, high antioxidant, certified kosher, dolphin safe …etc. etc.

Team these bad boys up with some of this crazy spinach or egg plant dip from Trader Joe’s and you are ready to go. It’s like having the top fantasy football quarterback and running back on the same team.

Enjoy