Shop your house

There's a good chance you already own something that works

Acquiring new things is quite easy. When I want something, I add it to my cart on Amazon and often the item is on my doorstep within hours.

But many of us already own a great many things, which is why it can be delightfully satisfying to take a different approach: shop your house.

For instance, maybe you need new contact lens solution…or maybe you have a dozen half-used bottles of travel-sized solution that could be used up first. Maybe you could buy toothpaste, or maybe you have three small tubes from your last three trips to the dentist that are just sitting there. Using them up frees up space and pushes forward the time you actually need to buy anything. It’s a double win.

This works in the kitchen too. Maybe you need to order dinner…or maybe those frozen chicken breasts could be thawed, mixed with a sauce and rice from your pantry, and turned into something tasty.

Maybe you need a new puzzle…or maybe one you put together three years ago will feel quite new when you pull it out again. I recently finished re-reading Anna Karenina and I can tell you that I remembered very little from when I read it twenty years ago. Maybe a once-loved book would be just the thing to re-read and fill your downtime this weekend.

Decorative objects, in particular, can be easy to create from existing stuff. I wanted something elegant to put on a console in my bedroom. Fortunately, the prior owner of my house wound up including an old china set in one of our transactions, and many of the serving pieces are quite whimsical. So I shopped the collection and some of them got put to work.

It can be fun to acquire new things, but in many cases, modern sorts have forgotten about many of things we already own. Shopping your house offers the same thrill of the hunt as shopping for real, without the credit card bills.

So if you need an outfit, toiletries, office supplies, new decor, or entertainment, why not see what’s lurking in a drawer somewhere? You might be surprised, and save a little cash in the meantime.