Shower With a Friend

OK, I didn’t really mean that.  In my experience it always takes more water to shower with a friend than the combined water from two individual showers.

What you can do, though, is get together with a friend and find out if there are things you both either purchase or would like to purchase at Costco that are too large for one of you to use by yourself but you would use half of that amount.  I’ll be more specific. 

I use about one box of zip-lock bags a year.  Yes, I wash them when they’re still in good shape but mostly I use alternate kind of storage.  Anyway, I have a friend who uses lots more than I.  We recently purchased a Costco-size package of the quart and gallon size bags.  I paid for 1 of each and he paid for the rest of them.  It was perfect.

I’ve done the same thing with the huge box of oatmeal, a giant bag of rice (the smallest Costco carries), a 2-pack of gallon milk jugs, a 10-pack of paper towels (I use between one and two rolls a year) and several other things I can’t recall off-hand.  There are a ton of things that last a long time and I can buy the whole thing by myself but when it comes to things like tea bags (yes, that was one of the ones I had momentarily forgotten), sharing is a definite possibility.

Make sure you keep it as simple as possible and agree with one another that you will only do it on things you really want to get right now.  It may not always work out and that’s fine—nothing lost—you would have purchased whatever it is at the grocery store anyway if you hadn’t decided to try this out.  As with other giant warehouse stores, make sure their price is lower than a regular store’s sale price before making that decision.

By the way, I’ve also taken advantage of this kind of “bulk” buying on other things as well.  The two that come to mind are being the second adult in a family admission at the fair and the movie theater.  I went with a single mom and her kids and we saved the cost of my ticket which we split between us.  We made certain both offers specified two adults rather than a dad and mom or two people living in the same household so we didn’t provide a negative example for her kids.  I also have a membership at a beautiful private park setting that specifies the membership is for me and up to three guests of my choosing every time I go there.  Considering the cost of two visits with just two of us going pays for the cost of the annual membership and I know I’ll be going at least that often with my photography buddy, we split the cost of the membership and we’re both happy as clams. 

Think creatively with these opportunities and see how two (or three or more) truly can “live” cheaper than one.

Enjoy…