One frugal thing (and thoughts on how being frugal can lead to community)

The other day, my husband mentioned he saw a sign that our neighborhood was having a community yard sale this Saturday. At first I felt anxious to pull together a sale of our own, but I just didn’t have the bandwidth to look through our things on such short notice. So I decided to do the next best thing, be a patron of the sale!

I woke up at 7am and walked across the street to our neighbors’ house. I’ve never met them though my husband and older daughter have each spoken with them on separate occasions. And while I wanted to look around for any yard sale deals, I really just wanted to introduce myself and thank my neighbors for cutting one side of our yard.

We previously had our grass cut by a lawn care service but decided not to go that route this year. Mostly to save a good bit of money but also because my husband wants to teach our teenage sons how to mow our lawn. It was a great plan in theory, until we realized our electric lawnmower only reached about half of our yard. But our kind neighbor saw my son in distress and road his lawnmower over and cut the rest of the yard for him. And he’s been doing it ever since. So I was excited to go over and formally thank him as well as introduce myself.

I had a great chat with him and his wife and I’m glad to now have a friendly relationship with another neighbor. But it didn’t stop there. I went home for a few minutes and told my husband about the interaction and he decided to head back out to more sales in the neighborhood with me. So we drove around our neighborhood and stopped at a few sales. (we could have walked, but had to run an errand right after)

We didn’t buy much but we got to chat with a few neighbors. I learned that one neighbor is a skilled artist and I bought one of her sketches because original artwork is always a good buy in my eyes. We also met her brother who’s a fisherman. He sold us a set of binoculars and hunting knife for our teen son who’s been into wilderness adventures more recently. But I think I admired his story of cleaning out a washed up puffer fish more than anything.

Further down the street, we met a little boy selling lemonade and cookies. He was adorable and proud to tell me he and his mom had baked the cookies but purchased the lemonade.

We went to a few more neighbor houses, and now have a pending lawnmower purchase from one of those neighbors. But my favorite purchase of the day was this Little Green Cleaning Machine. I’ve been eying it for a couple of years and almost pulled the trigger on a refurbished one. But I’m glad I waited, since I got this one for $9!

I’m grateful for my yard sale deals, but more than anything I enjoyed getting out and seeing my neighbors.

Many of the things I purchased today could have been quick online orders with no contact deliveries. And while I understand the desire for convenience, I appreciate the friendly interaction between someone in my immediate community.

I for one understand the anxiety involved with talking to strangers, but yard sales and Buy Nothing groups often make the interaction just a little more bearable. I mean, you already have something to talk about…the item being exchanged. So the ice is basically broken for you all because of your shared interest in frugality!

And I just love when being frugal brings you closer to people!