So much great advice! Thank you Ingrid and Michaelg! I know someone who goes to a feed store for horses. I will tell him to pick me up some 40lb bags of alfalfa and I can collect leaves from the local parks to mulch with. Checking Ashdown and Vintage for the sales, too. Thanks Diane_nj, Moroseaz, Silverkelt, Karl_bapst_rosenut, Predfern, Terryjean, Sammy, Jacqueline3, Roselvr and Canadian_rose for the wealth of info.!!! You all have made me realize that compost makes the garden world go 'round. Also thanks Hoovb and Particentral, for putting things in perspective. I suppose it's all relative and there are other hobbies that can be more expensive, but creating a gardening budget will help me get to the point of being wealthy enough to fly airplanes as a hobby, keep show grade koi and collect expensive art. Now, dealing with show dogs is not a hobby I would pursue. :) Juliet

While I'm throwing water saving tips out there, here's another one.... Most of us have heard of polymers. Until recently, polymers were only available in a crystal chunk, they would absorb water and release when conditions were dry. The biggest issue with them was they had to be applied under your new sod or covered with dirt because they couldn't take direct sunlight. Another company has a new type out. It's basically a grain of sand coated in a polymer. It can take direct sunlight and won't form a large gel clump like the crystal can. Here's the link. http://www.readyplaysports.com/TopMenu/Products/FieldMagic_Turf/Description_copy1.aspx They use it on athletic fields to enhance their turf. My only goal here is to help people save money and water. I'm not a tree hugger, it's mainly to help people save money.

We offer first to family/friends. If nobody wants it, it goes to charity. My MIL was sure her house stuff was worth money. It wasn't. However, family members were happy to take the big furniture, so she didn't feel bad. Oddly, the various tschotskes DH and I couldn't stand, made her several hundred $$$ from an estate liquidator. Who knew, LOL? There is a wonderful charity here run by our city. They collect ONLY business clothes - cleaned, pressed, on hangers - suitable for job interviews. Low-income residents can go to their various training classes, which include what to do/not to do on job interviews and how to properly fill out job applications. For those attendees who don't have nice clothes for interviews, the charity allows them to pick two outfits for free. When my DH and I retired, we brought them enough to fill an 8' clothes rack. My MIL just passed away and I realized many of her clothes also qualified as "interview ready". DH and I cleaned out our closets again. His was clothes that had gotten too small or shrunk (he's fond of 100% cotton and some of that stuff shrinks more than others). I had hung on to some of my favorite work clothes, including some designer stuff, but finally decided after five years of retirement it was time to pass them along. So there went another 8' clothes rack out of the house last week! We also sorted through our books. We have around 2-4,000 books at any given time. Out went a load of those yesterday to the local library for their monthly sales. But the core of our collections remain: my art books, his hobby reference books, and the fiction novels we deem worth keeping and re-reading. Of these, only the art books are worth anything, and only to collectors. After I sorted through my art books we asked a couple of friends if they were interested in any that we planned to get rid of. They took two paper bags full. They were happy and so were we! Our collection is valuable only to us, especially since much of it is out of print. I used to give very elaborate dinner parties in the '70's. I had six different sets of interchangeable dinnerware and handmade bronze flatware, with lots of serving pieces collected from various places. Entertaining has changed and nobody does this stuff any longer. The main part of the dinnerware was a classic Mikasa bone china with an embossed gold rim, in a service for 12. None of my Millennial friends was interested in it, but fortunately one of our younger Boomer friends was complaining about her grandmother's soft-paste china. Such patterns can't go through the DW so she had to hand-wash it, so as a working mother (she was the breadwinner, in fact) it was too time-consuming to use often. She was familiar with our china and said she would be thrilled to have it. Made her ecstatic, and opened up space for new plain china for us. Yes, I still have the bronze flatware. Nobody else wants it, like silver it has to be kept polished or in bluecloth. Doesn't take up much room in a drawer. Oddly, one of the modestly valuable things I own might someday be thrown out by some relative who doesn't realize what they are. Back in the psychedelic '60's when impresario Bill Graham presented unknown local bands at the Winterland ballroom in San Francisco, for publicity they did not only posters, but fliers and postcards. I have half a dozen pristine, unused postcards of concerts listing Jefferson Airplane, Janis Joplin, Cream, Moody Blues, Blue Oyster Cult, etc., stuffed in a box in the garage.

We have been working with a modular company out of Virginia. 90% of their homes are custom. Their engineer was able to take my plans for a custom home and tweak them for modular building. They improved on our original plan. We visited the factory and were impressed by their level of construction. Ours will be 3 sections. The nook, garage and screen porch will be built on site. Transporting each section runs $2000 each based on our location. 5 sections may bump that price up. When talking to a builder 3 weeks ago, he said modular can run 10 - 12% cheaper. The savings is getting as much finished in the factory as possible. We are still in the discussion stages. BTW, the company is ModuCraft or Excell. They even had ceramic tile installed in the bathrooms!