When You Start to Get Poor, Shop in Your Closet

Apparently Oprah's doing some series on finance with Suze Orman. You'd think I'd be all excited about this, but as it turns out it's pretty lame. Suze just gets all up in these dummies' faces because they'd rather buy their 5-year-old a trip to Disney World than pay their mortgage. Come on! Don't waste my time. Last week some mom was martyred because she could feed her family of 5 on $4 a meal. Really? And she's proud of that? She's serving meat--which means the sick giblets the butcher scrapes off his boot and onto the styrofoam tray and marks with a special sticker that says "half price." I mean, I'm frugal, but sometimes you need to have standards!

Anyhoo, I got a bee in my bonnet to clean out my closet this past week. Suddenly, it was as if my messy, unorganized closet was the one thing that is holding me back. It was as though clearing, cleaning, sorting, and folding was going to change my life forever for the good. And I must say, I already feel better about being organized in general. Anyway, my point is thatI unearthed a ton of stuff--which was a seriously smugal move.

I found a tub of face cream (ran out last month, have been scraping by on regular face lotion--not the same!), 2 bars of scented soap (running low, won't need to buy new ones!), some reasonable stuff I could sell for cash (sweet!), hair product (I'm pretty sure I will not run out of hair prods until I'm 83 years old, but always good to find new ones), a few clutches I hadn't seen in a while, a pair of boots for fall, and 2 bottles of shampoo! I won't have to hit target for another 9 months at this rate! Going through all the stuff I have is like the gift that keeps on giving...gets rid of my crap and saves me TONS of money. I figure I easily save $80. Try it!