I waste water....I drink so much and most of it ends in the septic system! ;-)

For you paper towel wasters.....try a pack of flour sack bar towels. They are super absorbent, lint-free, durable, and easy to keep sparkling white. I use them for all but the most disgusting messes and therefore go through about a roll of paper towels every couple of months. I have a drawerful of them in the kitchen and keep a stack of two or three on my kitchen counter.

letting stuff disappear into the back of the fridge, go rotten and then have to throw it away.

I do use rags rather than paper towels except for cat throw-up.

I do waste paper towels but I think I waste more food. I'm trying to work on the food!

I had cut down on water until a plumber made a comment that most single people do not run enough water into their sewer pipes to prevent some of the natural gunk that will build up in them.

Another professional procrastinator here. And I'm really very good at it! Also, and I'm ashamed to admit it, I waste food. But I am really trying to correct that.

Rusty

I would have to say kitty litter. Generally speaking, im a frugal person but theres just something about kitty litter that makes me want to change it before its really needed.

Water - lots and lots of REALLY hot water. And tissues - can't live without those. I'm fairly economical with paper towels.

Time - I never seem to do what I need to be doing

About 2 or maybe 3 years ago I realized how many paper towels I was using. I bought a ton of flour sack towels. I easily have 75. They are used like paper towels and dinner napkins.(except when we have guests) I don't use them with raw meat or anything pet related. Spilled juice I just grab one. They go into a wicker basket in the laundry room which is directly off the kitchen. They are covered with all sorts of food stains. I wash a load about every 6to7 days with Tide with Bleach powder on a very long, hot, at least 158degF . I do not use chlorine bleach. Every towel is as stain free and as white as new. With kids this has saved me a lot. I've been thinking about cutting them in half and running them thru the sewing machine. They are plenty big enough to do that.

Time. I have absolutely no concept of time. None! Otherwise I'm quite frugal.

MP, isn't it crazy how nothing seems to stain those things?

I use about a roll every 6 month. I detest waste. But give me a nice long shower any day...thus, I guess it's water for me.

Rhizo, yes it is amazing how nothing permanently stains flour sack. I do love them and the fact they are lint free is a plus for drying clear drinking glasses. I was looking at them at Walmart recently and was disappointed to see how the brand they sell is now very poor quality. They are more like gauze. Sigh.

Time at least at home. at work I'm not a time-waster. I too use cloth as opposed to paper towels.

I read that if you use paper towels you should get unbleached recycled material ones and don't use them on chemicals so that you can put them in the composting. I don't do much raw meat or anything like that so I'm fine with cloths.

Food. I've been slowly going through cupboards and throwing away expired stuff. I have found things with expiration dates from 10 years ago. I'm careful what I buy now, only when I need it. No more stocking up during sales.

Fruit, especially bananas. It's amazing how fast they turn, and I detest an overripe banana. And no, I don't make smoothies and I don't eat banana bread.

I think time is easy to waste for me since I retired...spend way too much time on the net!! I guess I'm making up for all those days of nonstop rushing when I was working.

Not that I'm wasteful about it, but one thing I can never get right is the right amount of floss. You'd think after so many decades of flossing, I'd have the right amount down pat, but somehow it seems like I pull too much or too little!

Wasting food. We make too much, eat it that day and maybe the next then throw the rest out.

With me it is water, I should feel guilty, but I don't. Perhaps because it is well water and we have a septic system. I take very long showers, use large capacity washer with two rinses and leave the water running while using the sinks.

A waster of time and food here also. But I am probably most guilty of wasting electricity. I live in the woods and with very little natural light so I always have lights on. And usually the TV......not so much to watch but because of background noise. And I leave it on for the dog when I am gone all day. If not the TV, then the radio or CD player. They keep me company - otherwise it is just too darn quiet!!

I also go through a LOT of tissues!! The older I get I seem to have a perpetually runny nose.

Not a lot of stuff, really. Maybe money? I am learning to hoard it now. I got all of our debt and the house paid off so now there's all this extra money. I've never in my life had "extra money". I didn't know there was such a thing. So now I have automatic savings plans setup with Tangerine so I don't spend it. I do waste money. My house if full of stuff that I've wasted money on. As for paper towel? I don't use them nearly as much as I did when the kids were small. We still use them but not much. I find them a waste of money and have for years. I would rather use a cloth. I'm more mindful of water usage, especially since the water meters were forced on us. My last water bill was $65. I've even stopped showering every single day. If anything, my skin isn't itchy anymore. :)

ETA: I thought of something: food. We waste food. So much of it. We will buy food and it doesn't get eaten then it gets thrown out. Mostly fresh fruit and vegetables. I went through my cupboards not too long ago and found so much expired (and I mean so expired I wouldn't keep it) food. It all went to the garbage.

Definitely paper towels...sometimes I'll punish myself by making myself wait till I buy the next pack at Costco when I run out. I see how long I can without them. I do like MamaP's idea.

Bananas. I buy only 2-3 a time, and the last one always doesn't get eaten. I at least try to put it in the compost bin. Which I also waste. We have had the bin for 5 years and have yet to use it. Because I waste time. When I could/should be making a garden, I'm, well, on GardenWeb lol! And I waste gas. I have no problem making two trips to do something.

I'm sure we all waste more of just about everything in a day than our ancestors would have used in a month -- even if they'd had paper towels and running water -- let alone HOT water from a faucet IN a house.

I am trying to avoid buying anything PLASTIC because the earth will never be RID of it.

Water and electricity, with electricity probably being the worst. We are away from home for the weekend and I forgot to turn change the setting on the AC. I did remember to turn a ceiling fan off, though.

You’d think I would really try to cut back on both water and electricity, though, since they’re costing me $$$.

Some recommend washing in cold to save money. Not to get into a debate about cold water washing (which I do not do personally) but doesn't one have to factor in the price of cloths, price of detergent/additives, electricity and water usage for a load plus cost to dry? Compared to paper towels, I am not convinced it would save money or be a time saver. Just a thought, as I haven't done the calculations, but find it interesting.

Paper towels are made out of trees so you have to factor in logging and chipping and processing etc. I buy inexpensive bundles of hand towels and wash cloths at Costco and use them for spills, messes, clipped around the broom to mop my floors, folded up as hot mitts etc. I don't care that most of them get stained (I keep some nice) so I just toss them in the regular wash until they look too awful then I boil them-toss when they shred. DH is the paper towel user. I do waste food though. I lived remotely for many years and got in the habit of buying too much. These days I can get to the store-hard habit to break. My broccoli turns yellow and my asparagus goes slimy. I am working on it.

Cloth, whether cotton or other textiles, also has expense involved in processing, shipping etc. I was referring more to the final product and consumer cost.

As an example - - eating out is considered expensive by many. In some cases I find it more cost effective than making a dish at home if I consider the cost of ingredients I would need to purchase and so on.

Terry, I have always only used cold water to do my laundry in. I get so mad at my husband when I see he's washed clothes in warm or (give me a heart attack) HOT water! Clothes come out just as clean and you aren't wasting gas by having to heat that hot water.

Debby, I hear you and if it works for you that is great. I think much depends on water quality, detergent, washer and soil levels too. I didn't want to make this a debate on water temperature and so on. That could be another topic. But definitely cold water is more cost effective than heated.

Edited -- mamapinky posted as I was wasting time multitasking and taking one step forward and two back and typing lol.

A lot of things I do would seem wasteful if you follow the present day feel good about yourself politics of what is wasteful, bad for the environment etc.

I use incandescent lighting throughout my home. However my power company sends notices periodically about how we are doing regarding energy use. Mine is consistently that or better than similar households. Why? Well, those people with the energy saving lights leave them ON all the time. We turn off lights we are not using. We don't light up our property like a prison yard in the name of "security". Easy. We open windows in the evening. The norm is to turn on the whole AC. We do plan to get put in some AC.. A mini split for the rooms that actually need it. No reason to cool an entire house.

I buy outlawed plastic bags for my groceries. I pay around 2 cents a bag. I use and reuse those bags. Those that don't carry food home are reused again for shopping. Those that carry foods like meat and vegetables are reused as kitchen trash liners, poop bags etc. The others are used for wet clothes, shoe bags for travel, dust covers etc. Now those bags people pay 10 - 25 cents for at the register? They seem to be going directly into the landfills. They are too awkwardly shaped for trash liners, too heavy for easily wrapping around shoes or putting in a pocket as a poop bags etc. I have never seen anyone brings them into a store and reusing them. They just pay at the register for more. So much for the environment. My bags are not considered reusable. They are bad. they heavy weight bags they sell at the register are considered reusable yet probably take 4 or five times the space in the landfill and who knows how much longer to break down.

We have a very small front yard. our small lawn is green. Watered for just a couple minutes literally (3 minutes) several times a week in the summer. On a timer. In the middle of the night. I mow it with a push mower.

We are surrounded by neighbors with brown lawns. They are saving the planet by not wasting water. However they have their "gardeners" come by weekly of every other week to mow the brown grass with gas mowers, blow leaves and stir up dirt,dust and pollen and add to the noise pollution and pollution in general with the smelly emissions from those gas powered noisemakers. But it's for the planet. LOL

So to all appearances I am wasteful But not.

Time, for sure! I love that I can be slothful after a lifetime of working long hours. In fact, I get downright testy if I have to adhere to a schedule for some reason for more than three days in a row.

I'm very careful with natural resources generally, but I've used up a crowd's worth of carbon footprint during my current reorganization and purge of my house's contents. Many black plastic garbage bags of trash have been taken to the landfill and I've purchased a truckload of plastic containers to house what's left.

mamap said:

"I don't think I've ever washed in cold..it destroys washers for one thing because of residue build up of detergent and soils."

"Destroys" washers? Nah.

You should try using cold, especially if the item's care instructions say so. There are many fabrics that manufacturers specifically recommend be washed in cold water. Or at least, not in water that's warm or more. I take washing instructions on items as being much more "in the know" than random comments from people without training and real expertise in the area.

I do agree, many people use cold water in their washing machines to excess. Often when warm or even hot water would do a better job. Check the care instructions of the items being washed when in doubt.

Washing clothes in hot water is hardly wasteful. Especially if using a front loader, it's not a significant amount of water.

I've been using the same reusable bags for groceries for at least five years. (I wipe them out to keep them fresh.) Some have insulation for cold/frozen items. The State of Hawaii banned flimsy plastic bags at stores except to wrap meat, and the highways are cleaner for it. When we had a dog we used plastic sandwich baggies for his poop when we walked him. Somewhere, in some garbage landfill, his poop is preserved for eternity! (Along with all the baby diapers.) We still use too many plastic containers, but I'm trying!

Wondering how many that are anti-plastic use the moist wipes. Most forget that those are plastic.

Most of the reusable plastic bags in this area are a woven?? extruded fiber that cannot be wiped clean. Couple of washings and they start separating. I recently ordered some supposedly cotton canvas bags. They arrived today but they feel like they are plastic of some type. Will see if I used them for much because these are the widest I could find that did not have some type of plastic sewn into parts.

Money. I waste money on fresh food that I don’t eat, leftovers I toss and stuff that dies in the freezer. I waste it on paper towels. On clothes I buy and almost never wear. I waste it on impulse purchases and restaurant meals. Well, that is not really a waste because I enjoy the company of friends. I just threw out a slew of very expired OTC medication. And so on and so on, including time because time is money!

Aok, I am with you on bananas. I can’t stand to eat overripe ones and as a result many bananas have gone to compost around our house. I have frozen some for smoothies but I don’t even like them in smoothies much. So I have stopped buying them for the most part.

Yeah, we seem to waste our share of food. I have been just cooking what we are going to eat for one meal unless I plan to freeze something like leftover sauce. Or make chicken salad. It’s more work in some ways but less waste.

I'm quite sure cold water doesn't damage the washing machine. Mom and dad are in their mid-80's and have always used cold water. I think they're on their third washing machine since they bought their first one when I was nine. Before that they had a wringer washer and hung the clothes out to dry.

We do the same thing as Patrice does, we have white bar towels that we use for a lot of things that used to be cleaned up with paper towels. We do waste a lot of food and time though.

I am not often washing with cold water. But my washer is terrible with growing something or the other in and under the compartment for the detergent. Terribly hard to clean. Also on the rubber seal. Helps to keep that drawer open, but then I am constantly running into it.

It is not the build up that causes mold to grow but keeping the door shut so the inside does not dry out. If you worry about the build up run a cycle without anything added to it. My most recent washer has it's own clean cycle.

It would be hobby supplies for me. Whenever I learned a new skill such as quilting, knitting, sketching, to name just a few, I would stock up on wool or fabric or materials with a vision that I would make gifts for friends and family. I ended up with too much as that never happened. Fortunately I was able to donate to groups that put these items to good use, so not a complete waste. I have learned to buy what I will need for a project.

I could say water. A couple of years ago I went out of my way to get a non HE top loading washing machine. ( Speed Queen). I don’t want to use a frugal amount of water to wash clothes and I want to be able to soak things as needed. Plus my laundry room is small and I wouldn’t want to squeeze past an open door on a front loader. Back in the day we used disposable diapers and put poopy ones ina ziploc -diaper genies didn’t work as promised. I use less paper towels than I used to. I prefer rags for a lot of things.

I wash just about everything on the hot cycle.

The hot cycle is what used be be called warm. The warm cycle is the basically the temperature of cold water from a tap on a moderately hot day. In order to get what used to be hot you have to use the misnamed sanitary cycle. Of course it will take 2 hours to use it, but hey we're saving energy. So very glad the EPA is finally getting reined in. Its partnership with the DOE and those crazy guidelines for the Energy Star program are a farce.

I really dislike it when people make claims and then delete, delete, delete when they are challenged. It ruins the thread basically.

I think I waste too much time reading posts that get deleted.

I do use a lot of paper towels, but a close second (I know we were to choose one) is food I put in the freezer. Almost always it stays in there way too long and becomes inedible. I have good intentions, but just don't use it up.

Interesting thread, Ritamay.

I probably mismanage time -- I have a lot of interests and a lot of curiosity and so it is super easy to do. I also like looking out the window at wildlife. That isn't really a waste of time, nor is reading on the Internet, but it doesn't have any physical product to display at the end of my musings. "Hang it, nail it, paint it" personalities would likely consider it wasteful. I tend to think of it more along the lines of unbalanced resource use.

We use "sorta warm" water for laundry with a cold rinse. The washer is an older, compact (not huge) top-loading Kenmore that was barely used for $100 in Craigslist and it fit in the SUV (older, bought used). I don't wash on cold because from my experience washing and observing (dishes, hand laundered items, cleaning), I find that oils (everywhere -- food splashes, perspiration) are better removed or broken down by detergent if water isn't cold (like our icy deep well water). That cheap washer spins cycle is good. We hang, line dry but often machine dry 2/3rds of items.

I love leftovers, but groceries can get forgotten. I try to make a rotating list of perishables for the front of our refigerator/s. We compost vegetable scraps (not rice) and fish skin, trimmed fats, skins get frozen to feed to birds in winter. I'd like to feed our opossum chicken bones after I've used them for broth, but it's likely that raccoons and coyotes would also come by & we don't want that. Most of what's in the compost is not very attractive for scavenging wildlife & it gets coffee grounds dump over it and mixed throughout.

MamaP & others: know a good source for quality flour sack towels? I like them. We try to minimize our use of paper towels, not for tree preservation, but to sa e money. Like others, I buy a dozen or so plain white or light colored inexpensive (thin) face clothes to use (and keep clean) for all sorts of things, including as a dish cloth (bleached daily & washed). if you have a sewing machine, or can find a used inexpensive serger, you can make lots of no-fray cleaning cloths from older towels. Here is a link that gives ideas: https://www.seasonedhomemaker.com/un-paper-towels-reusable-paper-towels-paperless-towels/

We re-use those plastic shoppers, but Re_cycle most of them. Grocery stores have Recycle bins dedicated to clean, dry "plastic film" (packing film, wrap, shoppers).

We use a lot of LED bulbs when we can, but we live in a wooded area and I like and need a lot of light. Off at night.

Annie D. -- I for one am thankful that you spend time on the Internet ;) You post so many interesting contributions.

Space, is the only thing I can think of that is wasted here. Food, water, and electricity are never wasted, as sadly, DH grew up in extreme poverty, overseas. But he saves things that he thinks can be used for something else, which ends of taking up space. I guess you could classify him as a 'neat hoarder' because everything he won't throw away is clean and very neatly organized.

But we have a two car garage, and only one car, so the other half of it is filled with shelving, on which he stores his 'collection.' It is mostly glass jars, that are filled with odds and ends he won't part with, so it's a vicious cycle. I've informed him that if his collection of containers ever exceeds the space on the garage shelves, I'll have our kids (all adults) help me bring them to a recycle place, because I will put my foot down about any 'collections' taking up space in the house, since I'm the one who does the cleaning and dusting.

The comment on this thread has been bothering me the whole day! So now we cannot have an opinion or any sort of expertise unless we have job credentials and advanced degrees in science and engineering? OMG...these are the sort of comments that run long time members away such as what happened in the cooking thread to one of our long time and very helpful members. I'm sorry, but a person does not have to have a college degree and job credentials to know how to do laundry! Next we will have to hire experts to come in and wash our clothes for us. :( sigh....

mamap....water off a ducks back...just keep saying it!

Mine would be time...too much on here and Facebook!