The votes are in! This week’s most popular post: May 25th is National Brown-Bag-It Day

It may seem like common sense to most of us, but you’d be amazed at how many people I see filling up food courts, pizza places, and McDonalds every lunch hour, buying their $10-$15 lunches and throwing away the cheap, grease covered cardboard and styrofoam containers minutes later. I’d take homemade leftover lasagna over slimey deep fried “beef” burgers any day!

I work from home so have no need to brown bag my lunch (wouldn’t that make me a weirdo though) but I do have a plethora of reusable cloth bags from a number of places like Loblaws, Loeb, Shoppers Drugmart, Topia Greenstop, Canadian Tire, and even a four-slot wine tote from the LCBO. And I use them all the time! Why would you even want to carry plastic if you can use those nice, comfortable cloth handles instead? Brilliant things.

R.B. writes:

I used to eat out all the time and I spent at least $15 a meal. I now eat at work for 2 meals a day(I work at a restaurant and eat for free) and usually go somewhere for dinner and it costs me maybe $20 including a tip. On the weekends, I eat breakfast and lunch at home and my boyfriend buys me dinner[:)] That saves me soooo much money!!

I really need to work on getting some more meals for free, myself! But until then, I’m happy to make a bit extra at supper time and stock up on the reusable food storage containers. There’s no easier way to make the guy in the cubicle next to you jealous than to pull out a homemade extra cheese lasagna, a caesar salad, and dinner rolls — no waiting in line, no carrying around cash, no putting on your coat, even! Mmmmmm environmentally friendly.

Kittens dry really fast if there's a good breeze, mom always says

Do you feel like your house is sucking away all your money every time you turn on a lamp or run the dryer? I don’t know what it is exactly that instilled this fear in me, but I’m going to assume it was my mother (Love you, mom!).

As kids, we hung our clothes to dry on the line — which was the most exhausting task for my little arms (wet jeans are the worst!). Why did we do this? There was a perfectly good machine dryer in the basement, but mom insisted that as long as it wasn’t raining or snowing (and even then, there were exceptions), we had to hang our clothes on the line. Mom was on to something — it saves a ton of money.

Now that I have grown up and have my very own hydro bill, I can attest to the notion of doing away with the dryer altogether. So I hang/drape my clothes to dry. Sadly, I have no little-armed kids to carry out the task for me, heh.

READ ON: Here’s a helpful list of some other things you can do to save energy!