Monday, February 25, 2008

The Story of Stuff

If you do nothing else today - go see this website! It's a 20 minute video and I guarantee you, it's worth watching.

http://www.storyofstuff.com/index.html

I had this site passed along to me by my cousin, Brenda, in the comments to one of my posts. My husband and I watched it and... well... were chastened, to say the least. While we know all this - it's more a back of the mind kind of knowing - not a conscious knowing. And it should be a conscious knowing to help us make better decisions.

We are in the process of replacing appliances - but since ours still work (albiet not that well) we will ensure they get more life out of them by passing them along to someone who can use them. Our dishwasher needs replacing first - and I've had it serviced twice already to extend it's life. Since it could still be useful to someone, I'll put it on Craigslist, etc. to see if someone would like it.

If we sell - and we plan to do so in the next year - we need to have upgraded appliances. We've made ours last over 12 years, and I hear that's good for the quality of appliances we have. That also includes our hot water tank that apparently should have been replaced years ago. Thankfully no one told it about the fact it was supposed to be disposed of after about 6 or so years. All of our appliances have been serviced over the last few years, rather than replaced - and after watching this video, I'm so glad we did that.

And I'm also going to try to hang on to my computer a little longer. My laptop has broken keys, doesn't charge and barely plugs in - but I think I can get a little more life out it - and so I will.

3 comments:

Maisie said...

Very thought provoking Jackie!!

Shel said...

hey jackie - have you checked out surrey reuses? its a great website and people can leave a post for freebees and re-useables. You probably have this, but I didn't scroll through all your posts to see if it was there....take care...michelle

Unknown said...

I have, actually. Mostly I use craigslist and what is now Surrey Full-Circles (was freecycle) as they seem to bring about results faster, but I have looked there and posted there, too.

It's such a good idea for people to look for local sites like this as it can help people to reuse items and it saves us so much money! Vancouver has a site, too.